The Believers (1987)
MGM DVD (region 1)
d. John Schlesinger; pr. Beverly J. Camhe, John Schlesinger, Michael Childers; scr. Mark Frost; novel. Nicholas Conde; ph. Robby Muller; m. J. Peter Robinson; ed. Peter Honess; cast. Martin Sheen, Helen Shaver, Harris Yulin, Jimmy Smits, Robert Loggia, Harley Cross, Elizabeth Wilson, Richard Masur (114 mins)
Strange religious beliefs have long been an object of fascination and loathing because of what is often perceived as the threat they pose to established religion, particularly Christianity, and its associated moral order. It is precisely this balance of reactionary cultural paranoia and dramatic challenge to religious morality that forms the basis of the often potent and oddly downbeat thriller The Believers. The film was directed by veteran John Schlesinger at a time when his reputation was in decline and he segued towards lurid, rather bleak films (with this and Pacific Heights) which seemed intent to explore and even explode contemporary notions of moral and ethical propriety. In the case of The Believers, he was aided by a strong script by Mark Frost who would shortly refine his own sense of weirdness when he collaborated with David Lynch on Twin Peaks. What this meant for the eventual fate of The Believers was to virtually assure it of at best a footnote in the horror / thriller echelon as it had been practically dismissed as competent at best and risible at worst. Still, in the context of 1980s horror films, its bizarre and problematic religiosity makes it something of a theological curio. While it is unlikely ever to be rescued from this level it is unfair to dismiss it entirely as there is much in it which is purposefully unsettling: as an admittedly frightening vision of cultural and religious paranoia, The Believers is most intriguing.
Martin Sheen plays a police psychiatrist, happily married and with one son. In the opening sequence, his wife dies in an event which will continue to be a source of private guilt for him. With his son, he moves into a new apartment, tended to by a devoted Hispanic house-keeper. Slowly, Sheen develops a romantic interest in his new landlady (Helen Shaver), though this puts an emotional strain on his son, who has not adjusted to his mother’s death. Meanwhile, on the site of a ritual cult murder of a child, a distraught policeman (Jimmy Smits) goes into a religious frenzy and is confined before he can kill himself. Sheen is called in to talk to Smits, who believes that his life is in danger. Sheen is disbelieving but supportive and indeed soon proves to be the one person Smits contacts when he escapes custody, hoping to relay to Sheen some information. When an unusual fate besets Smits, Sheen begins to look into the supposedly benign religious sub-culture of Santeria, popular in Latin American segments of the city and even practiced by his own housekeeper. As Sheen investigates, he uncovers a bizarre cult in the middle of New York high society that seems to believe in a more malevolent form of the religion. At one such encounter, Shaver is touched by a mysterious holy man in a trance and slowly develops a sickness. In the midst of this mounting tumult, Sheen sends his son to stay with his relatives. read more