Overrated and overhyped

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The documentary "The Life and Death of the Peoples Temple" dives into the 1978 murder/suicide of over 900 members of Jim Jones' Peoples Temple due to poisoned punch and is told from the POV of former cult members. These members, all men and women, black and white tell their stories of cult life in an honest, non-flinching way. Jim Jones opened his cult to every walk of human society; young, old, white, black, male and female. These former members tell stories about Jim Jones' drug abuse, God complex, and sexual molestation against them and others. Some like Hue Folsom use a defense mechanism of laughing about Jones' perversions and others like Tim Carver are more solemn when talking about such things. People are different and everyone reacts to trauma in his or her own way. To hear these traumatized ex-members talk about the aftermath of the poisoning is quite sad and chilling. You can see the pain in the eyes of Grace Stoen, Tim Carver, and Vern Gosney when they talk about the loss of their young sons in Jonestown!I do hope doing this documentary was therapeutic for all involved and they receive love and support from the viewers of this documentary and from others.

Wow. This documentary actually made a huge impression on me. I'm more of an animal guy myself, but I have to say, a couple of scenes in this documentary really got to me. I caught this on television without knowing what it was about beforehand, and not having heard of Jonestown at all. And like I said, some scenes towards the end are truly horrifying. One shot in particular took me by surprise, and really stabbed me in the feels(..as the kids say these days). Totally heartbreaking.The whole story is fascinating as hell, and Jim Jones is really charismatic, and you can kind of understand how/why people, for some reason or other, was mesmerized by him.This whole cult-thing is a fascinating and scary concept, and it's interesting to see how stuff like this can actually happen. With commentary from actual people who were actually there. I can also recommend "The Sacrament" which is a mystery/thriller/horror based on these events.

First word tells. Never trust anything starting with 'Peoples...'Unfortunately, Jim Jones' cult (Peoples Temple) was targeting particular groups who were over-keen to believe in Utopia, many of them humble Afro-Americans, who seem to outnumber the other races in a way that makes this rainbow coalition look a bit suspect from the start. The black dimension is, however, the central concern of director Stanley Nelson, and that is how this 85-minute documentary differs from many others on the same horribly fascinating subject. It also means that you are better to have watched some of these first, as the present work naturally gives you a skewed version of the story.Only the first and last sections are directly sequential - Jones' boyhood, and then the climactic 24 hours leading up to the murder/suicide of 900 trusting believers. The main body of the film is taken up with first-hand testimonies by those connected with the Temple, either as bereaved relatives or disillusioned whistleblowers. Not one in ten of these could be described as people of critical insight. In fact, 'uncritical' is probably the key word. Long before they swallowed their lethal poison, they were swallowing a cheap mix of cult-theory, hot-gospeller gabble and theatrical stunts, including a transparently fake miracle with a wheelchair-bound 'patient' who is inspired to get up and walk.Some of their comments are so stupid that they can only be good news for any budding cult-leader, perhaps feeling tempted after watching an exceptionally glamorous whistleblower confessing that she surrendered her virtue to Jones when he said "I'm doing this for you, Debbie." One survivor, clearly unteachable, defends Jones on the grounds that "At least we tried to make a change". (Well, that really does leave the rest of us feeling narrow-minded.) Other reactions include "It all looked so plausible", "It looked like freedom" and "We had fun".At the risk of talking cliché, it is impossible not to note the Hitler parallels, especially the hypnotic effect on crowds and the appeals to turn-in your own family for signs of disloyalty. And his own suicide, at least, was on the cards. For he had shown that he was a man liable to cut-and-run. When the first whistleblower went to the press, Jones was on a plane to Guyana before the morning papers had even hit the street. And once that brave and unusually dutiful congressman Leo Ryan came to investigate on behalf of his worried constituents, it was clear that everything was about to unravel, and that Jones and his ghastly cult might as well self-destruct once and for all.

This story is so much more complex than news reports of the Guyana tragedy would have us believe. The members of The People's Temple had such altruistic intentions: they had a vision of a Utopian society where racial harmony and true brotherhood was the order of the day. They wanted to guarantee care for the poor, the elderly, children....and they wanted to create real community. This doco manages to tell the whole story, while honoring the pure intentions of the Temple members, and even shedding light on the paradoxical cult leader, Jim Jones - a man who was impressively liberal and progressive, politically, but frighteningly meglomaniacal and abusive, when it came to leading his "flock." The strength of this film lies in the fact that it isn't just a play-by-play from afar, but a collection of first-hand interviews with people who were actually there, and who knew the key players. A must-see for anyone who was alive and aware went these events took place.