There’s a series on the Criterion Channel right now called “New York Love Stories” with a big chunk from the late-1970s and early-1980s, comedies like Annie Hall, Arthur, It’s My Turn, The Goodbye Girl, Moonstruck; the recurring comment I’ve seen on Twitter goes something like “Gosh, I can’t believe how smart and literate and well-read and thoughtful and active these adults were!” Despite the veil being lifted on the new (now old) political correctness last November, the tendency towards infantilism amongst millennials and members of Generation Z remains under-discussed—perhaps because it became a fact of life many, many years ago, long before brain-dead right-wingers openly yearned for the days of Urban Outfitters and… Mumford & Sons.
The teens of the late-1970s and early-1980s were privileged and felt oppressed in a similar way, at least enough to succumb to easy money, easy living, white robes, and Kool Aid. If Jim Jones’ temple lasted a bit longer, if there wasn’t any tragedy in Guyana, maybe the cult thing would’ve lasted well into the 1980s, just as serial killers continued their spree on the young. But cults dipped, as so many other things, with the onset of AIDS. Just as the tide was turning, Ted Kotcheff matched his own First Blood with Split Image (released weeks apart in October 1982), a get-my-kid-out-of-this-cult thriller starring Michael O’Keefe as the son, Karen Allen as his procurer/one true love, Elizabeth Ashley and Brian Dennehy as his parents, and James Woods as the private investigator-cum-cult-deprogrammer hired by the family once O’Keefe has had enough of Peter Fonda’s cult leader.
But what a trip it is: the camera spinning around a small stadium filled with young adults chanting “ROCK MY SOUL IN THE BOSOM OF ABRAHAM,” hints of forced sterilization that are never resolved in this movie full of bizarre choices, and a couple shots of Kool Aid on the community dining tables just to make sure you remember what you’re really watching: GUYANA TRAGEDY.
That’s the name of another Jim Jones exploitation movie, not that Split Image is particularly trashy; you can only get so low with Karen Allen as the female lead/love interest. Add to that a brief dustup between her and the formidable Ashley in the family’s living room, mid-attempted kidnapping. First Blood and Sylvester Stallone’s beloved Rambo outshone anything Kotcheff ever did before or after—did you know he directed Fun with Dick and Jane? Weekend at Bernie’s? Billy Two Hats? Wake in Fright? At a glance, a similar career to Richard Fleischer, a journeyman without the training and security of Old Hollywood. He’s still alive, but hasn’t made a movie since 1997’s Borrowed Heats, a made-for-TV Canadian production starring Eric McCormack and Rona Downey. He could’ve directed the Dick and Jane remake in 2007, but hey, life’s tough.
Split Image stars someone you think ended up a nobody but has been working steadily in the last four decades; O’Keefe appeared, but did not star, in Eye in the Sky, Michael Clayton, and The Hot Chick (as “Richard Spencer”), along with a ton of television. He did star in The Great Santini, which was successful in its time but is rarely brought up or regarded today—the only sign of its cultural impact is a brief parody in Little Nicky. He’s too off to be the boy next door, there’s something creepy about him, even before he gets drugged out by Fonda; you want to drag Karen Allen away from O’Keefe and put her back in Starman with Jeff Bridges.
Split Image is more than a curio, it’s a rare thriller that has surprises because its construction is so strange. You can never really get a grip on any one character’s motivations: you never know whether Woods is on the level, whether O’Keefe really buys the cult’s crap, how far gone Allen is, how powerful Fonda may be, how craven the parents may be (Ashley, as the mom, considers licensing footage of her son in full brainwash dead-eye mode to a 60 Minutes style program, because “it may help some people, you don’t know.”)
Today, in a healthy film industry, there would be similarly budgeted thrillers and dramas about school shooters, modern cults, and the dozens of lurid issues that make up the news. I hope they return.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @nickyotissmith