Split Image, l'envoûtement

This 1982 film is supported by a great cast and film score by Bill Conti (Rocky, FX.) Filmed largely in Dallas and Texas, this anti-cult film deals with basically the same subject as a Canadian film released the previous year. Ticket To Heaven (1981) also has a great cast and for me is a much more entertaining and realistic film. TTH deals with the true story of a depressed young man getting caught up in the cult of Sun-Yung Moon, while Split Image portrays the identity crisis of a young man who is seeking answers beyond the sometimes shallow lives of his family and friends. His confusion leads him to a new-age cult, where he finds the leader to be even more sinister and devoid of answers than those he runs away from. While many of life's questions can be answered by the Bible, proper spiritual guidance and direction is essential, particularly for those who are not mature enough to seek God on their own.

This film comes across more as a made for TV movie than an actual piece of Hollywood cinema. The biggest flaw takes place in the first act with the very lazy telling of the Olympic hopeful gymnast's conversion to a cult.

We are expected to believe a pampered spoiled upper middle class athlete training for the Olympics can be brainwashed to join a cult over a 3 day weekend. His home life is happy and comfortable until he hits on a cute cult groupie. It's clear he went to the commune only in the hopes of bedding down the cute chick with issues. After spending the first two days being appropriately appalled at the clear cult activity, somehow on the 3rd day he has drunk the kool-aide.

It's a bit silly to think after 3 days of singing Kumbaya around the campfire and abstaining from masturbation is enough to make even the most disenfranchised youth shave his head and change his name. Yet there was no back story to suggest he was even slightly unhappy with his normal life.

A bit of real mind control factors are briefly explored. The athlete being initially approached by an attractive girl takes a page from the real practice of "flirty fishing" from the Children of God child molester cult known as The Family. They also briefly touch upon sleep deprivation and starvation (proven mind control techniques) but only in the briefest sense.

Everything else that follows is as lazy. The deprogramming is just as over the top and poorly executed as the original conversion. Cults and mind control are a very real thing and this movie does not educate or inform. It's a very cartoonish depiction of a very real thing.

This movie was released in 1982. This was an era when the original flower children of the 1960s grew into young urban professionals. It is truly a representation of the boogeyman that the baby boomers (who had now become parents) thought would come in the night to steal the American dream. This movie is best enjoyed only as a cultural snapshot of what parents feared in the halcyon days of Ronald Regan.

A young man, Danny Stetson (Michael O'Keefe), is seduced by a pretty young woman (Karen Allen) into a cult called Homeland. It's run by Kirklander (Peter Fonda) and Danny slowly becomes brainwashed into them, rejecting his family and friends. He is kidnapped from the cult and deprogrammer Charles Pratt (James Woods) tries to save him...but is he too late?

This is a totally lost film which I caught in a theatre during its VERY short run in 1982. It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know (I've read some books on actual cults) and seemed kind of blandly directed--but it wasn't too bad. O'Keefe was very good in a difficult role and Woods matched him as the very tough deprogrammer. Allen unfortunately was given very little to work with. Best of all was Fonda who REALLY surprised me. He was cast against type and he was just great. The only letdown was the very end which seemed abrupt and not realistic. Aside from that, this is a good dramatic film that's just fallen between the cracks. Recommended.

I'm bloody surprised, if bloody dumbfounded, 5 people have only reviewed this film. First, there was Kotchef's First Blood. Then this. Both are fine movies. Split Image really offers something different, where by the end of the film, you feel drained or put through the ringer. This must be a very overlooked film, and that would be an understatement. Though SI, isn't without faults, unlike how the taut and tense, First Blood was handled. There's a bit of sloppiness to the film, as in the skipping part structure. The story revolves around a promising gymnast Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe). He has everything going for him, but his new love becomes his ruin, when he gets mixed up in a cult where young people are suckered into a new life on a plantation camp behind closed gates. It's run by a older guy, Kirklander in a surprisingly underestimated and somewhat creepy performance by Peter Fonda. Let me be honest, he's the best actor in the movie, where the other performances are bloody good too, especially from Keefe, and his new found love, Elizabeth (Karen Allen). On the other side of that coin is James Woods as the deprogrammer who has a hatred for Fonda, that's so immense, it's worrying, even slagging on black and white photo of his nemesis. Keefe's parents are played by Brian Dennehy and Elizabeth Ashley, Ashley the better performance of the two who enlists Wood's services, who not really won over, or even show a liking to this lowlife character, who likes to flash his tongue at college girls, while at work with his team, ready to snatch, save- de programme the next mind altered kid. His view on college is interesting too. What's great about Split Image, is we see the views of both sides, like really get inside the life of these cults and how they are run, and it's an interesting duration and insight, I must say. The other side is that of Keefe's family, offering some funny moments, before he's snatched, and then the helplessness, we so much feel for them. The duration of the deprogramming of Keefe, kept captive in an attic, is of course the strongest part/real heart of the movie, as we want so much for this character to be saved, and it's quite a grueling watch, where O'Keefe shows off his best acting in this part, sometimes too convincingly, it's hard to watch. What really didn't convince me, was how easily led Danny was into this cult, which is a sick business, but if this is all it takes, it's frighteningly alarming or sickening, kind of like these young kids being brainwashed into terrorism. The only other issue I had with the film, was the deprogramming bit in the attic, as I strongly feel it would of taken much more time and effort, to bring O'Keefe back to his original self, where to be frank, some kids would be that far gone, they wouldn't be able to be saved. Kotchef makes good films. Christ, he even made Weekend At Bernies, where Split Image, deservedly earns it's place beside them. Check it out. Don't overlook this one. Please.

Anyone who is unfavorably commenting about Peter Fonda's performance seems to forget just how much of a trippy hippie he himself was in the 60's. His role here was absolutely brilliant as the manipulative Neil Kirklander. James Woods; well, as usual, simply stellar! My favorite roles for him are exactly personified in this one: sleazy, unrefined, unkempt, easily angered and irritable, and doesn't care what the world thinks. He makes being disgusting look like such fun (when he spits on Kirklander's picture as a sort of de-programming method for Danny). O'Keefe and Dennehy are equally superb and convincing. Karen Allen is as we always expect; vulnerable and adorably sensitive. Fonda takes it all on this one for me, the man who gave John Lennon "I know what it's like to be dead." Excellent!