SWEET SAVIOUR (1971)

In a dark room, a group of robed cultists watch a naked woman, laid out on an altar, go through an initiation ritual which climaxes in the bearded hippie cult leader, Moon (Troy Donahue, at left) climbing on top of her for sex as he says, "You are me and I am you," and the group chants, "We are all one." He later refers to the cult as a "family of true democracy," though we never see any democracy enacted. The next scene, shot in the style of an early Andy Warhol film, has the cult members hanging around in a small apartment, smoking and reading and chatting and making out. The purpose of the cult is a bit vague; they talk about God but they also want to make sure that the new member is "cleansed" of her middle-class morals. Two of the women offer a pretzel vendor (also their drug dealer) a blowjob for a discount on drugs. He takes them up on the offer, and he seems to enjoy himself, though one of the women takes a good, healthy spit afterwards. We get a little backstory about Troy who was an evangelist like his dad (one of his women is sure that Moon is Jesus) and had to endure beatings by his father. Now Moon gets his followers excited about having been invited by a famous actress to a swingers party where they'll provide some "unwashed" entertainment for the "straight pig animals," as Moon calls the upper-class partygoers who are anxious to engage in some kinkiness. At the party, after some awkward small talk, they get down to something of an orgy, with various sexual encounters accompanied by a sappy easy listening song called "It Looks Like Love." When all are sated, the cult members begin killing the swingers one by one. 

This is a grimy, junky B-movie, originally rated X, though both the sex and violence are tamer than they would be today. Somewhat surprisingly, Troy Donahue is not bad. Though he never comes off as terribly charismatic, he does take his role seriously, which is more than anyone else on screen does; to be fair, they mostly seem like amateurs, and none of them went on to have long film careers. Obviously based on the Charles Manson murders (the film was re-released as THE LOVE-THRILL MURDERS), even going so far as having the actress be pregnant as Sharon Tate was, it deviates a bit in the end with Moon and his cult getting away with the murders. The last shot is of Moon, riding his motorcycle the next day, flipping off the skyscrapers of Chicago. The movie seems to present two reasons why it should be taken seriously: 1) it shows that the rich "straight" people are hypocrites and just as messed up as the hippie cultists; 2) Moon's sociopathy comes from a deeply messed-up childhood. But neither theme is developed very much. One of the "straights" is an offensively stereotyped gay man named Fritzi who pretends to be a transsexual woman in order to bed one of the studly cultists. The apartment scene goes on far too long, as does the set-up to the would-be orgy. Ultimately, it was hard to sit through due to both tedium and its cheap sleazy look. In interviews at the time, Donahue was quoted as saying that the film would beat out Love Story at the box office. I don't think that prediction came true. [YouTube]