The Profit (2001)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Peter N. Alexander

Writer:

Peter N. Alexander (writer)

Release Date:

1 April 2001 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

A dark journey into an evil mind where the only good is... The Profit.

Plot:

This period piece is a fictional biography of a cult leader's rise to power and his subsequent descent into isolation and paranoia. |

Plot Keywords:

Cult

Cast

Cliff Roca	...	Mitchell Cabot
Tom Luce	...	The Doctor
Eric Rath	...	Leland Conrad Powers (as Eric F. Rath)
Christine Eads	...	Helen Hughes
Jeff Hughes	...	Zach Carson
Jeff Norton	...	Cop #1
Tad Brown	...	Cop #2
Al Reidel	...	Sheriff
Bob Minton	...	VA Doctor
Margaret Mary Bastick	...	Dr. Mary Kimbrough
Duncan Pierce	...	Mr. Simmons
Jeff Jacobsen	...	Mr. Williams
Jesse Prince	...	Mr. Johnson
Terry Maki	...	Maitre d'
Jack Amos	...	Sr. Naval Officer

Runtime:

128 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:(Banned) (legal injunction preventing exhibition: April 2002-)

Filming Locations:

Tampa, Florida, USA

Company:

Courage Productions

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "HBO First Look: '10,000 BC': The Making of an Epic World (#15.4)" (2008)

A Tale of Deceit

This fascinating legend of a man, Leeland Conrad Powers, mad with a want of freedom, who imprisons himself in a string of faulty lies; depleting his sense of stability and spiraling him, thoroughly, into madness and obsession is well worth watching. Intense, loosely edited, but nonetheless compelling, direct and honest tale of how Satanism mixed with psychotherapeutic hypotheses based in hypnosis can, theoretically, lead to a cult of Charles Manson Family proportions and eventually a religion like Judaism, or Scientology. No offense intended, just examples.

Powers' followers are hypnotized into believing that all physical phenomenae are just processes of the mind, and not actually occurring. They avoid psychology and hypnosis ideas, and those in-the-know about them, because they are the basis of SciMIND, Powers' name for his process, and would easily discredit him as a quack, brainwashing people. The main tenet of Scientific Spiritualism, the religion, is that followers give it money... though they are a nonprofit organization.

Ironically, Powers' madness leads him to believe his own ball of hooey, and he takes himself to be a true prophet of God, though he started it all to escape the fate of imprisonment.

This is well worth watching. And, because the movie's distributor is not allowed to profit from sales in the United States, I think that you can make as many copies as you want in that country and give them away for free.