Guyana: Crime of the Century (1979)

Always start with a bang.

Everytime this came on cable I watched it. Though, I always remember it starting with Jim Jones…I mean James Johnson…giving a sermon and telling his flock about the promise of Guyana.

A title card at the beginning of the film informs us that the names were changed to protect the innocent, which seems foolish since there is no mistaking who this film is about. Guyana: Crime of the Century is a fictionaized retelling of the Jim Jones and the Jonestown Massacre. The title card says so much, but what I don’t get is how Jim Jones is innocent?

The title card is followed by a grizzly suicide, something I don’t recall from the many times I saw this on television. It’s a shocking start and makes the sermon that follows more tolerable. Actually, between the suicide and the sermon is another title.

Is this company for Re-Al? Is this Al's second attempt? And, Who is Al?

~ by Ryan Sarnowski on March 18, 2009.