“Split Image” (1982)

“Split Image” (1982) is about a cult and how a kid with a promising future gets sucked into its creepy orbit. I saw this in the 80s on TV and it always stuck with me because of James Woods’ performance as the deprogrammer. I found out (on IMDB) it is free to stream on Tubi last week, so I had to watch it again.

Main Characters:
Danny / Joshua … Michael O’Keefe
Rebecca / Amy … Karen Allen
Diana (Danny’s mother) … Elizabeth Ashley
Kevin (Danny’s father) … Brian Dennehy
Neil Kirklander, cult leader … Peter Fonda
Pratt, cult deprogrammer … James Woods

Danny Stetson is an accomplished young athlete from a well-to-do family who could possibly go on to the Olympics. You see him perform, you see his proud father playing back the taped footage at home. Then Danny meets a young woman who introduces herself as Rebecca and he is smitten. Danny is blind to the fact that Rebecca is a recruiter from the Homeland cult, and she doesn’t have much trouble bringing him into the fold. Neil Kirklander is the cult leader.

When Danny succumbs to the Homeland indoctrination tactics, his parents, Kevin and Diana, try to get him out of Homeland but fail. They hire deprogrammer Charles Pratt to rescue their son.

Everybody see things differently but my take was that they wanted to show that even young people from stable homes, with everything going for them, can be susceptible to brainwashing. As a matter of fact, whenever scandals and crimes involved teens were reported in the newspapers in the last half of the 20th century, being “from a good home” was likely why the incident made the papers at all. (I wasn’t alive in the first half of the 20th century, so I don’t know about that.)

In any case, they didn’t have any minors at Homeland, which is why Danny’s parents can’t get any help from the police after Danny succumbs to the indoctrination tactics of the cult. These include no privacy– someone is watching you at all time, even while you’re sleeping; listening to a bunch of B.S. from cult leader, Neil (isn’t he great?); isolating you from outside attachments in the world of greed and lust, and more. To make the transformation complete, Danny must take on a new identity and Neil renames him Joshua.

To his parent, however, he is still Danny and they hire Charles Pratt, to kidnap and deprogram their son. This part of the movie is pretty intense with great performances by deprogrammer James Woods, and Brian Dennehy, as the suffering father who can’t stop himself from interfering in the deprogramming.

The film has had its share of negative reviews, but I didn’t overthink it too much. My main critical observation is that cult members who weren’t from “good homes” were probably on their own. Their parents wouldn’t be able to afford a deprogrammer.