The Cult of Trump

True to its title, Stephen Hassan's 2019 book The Cult of Trump attempts to establish that Donald Trump has effectively conducted himself like a cult leader, especially during his presidential campaign and reign. While the hallmarks of cult behavior can be identified in many of Trump's methods (repetitive speaking, good vs. evil narratives, malignant narcissism) and among his followers (lack of critical thinking, trance-like states at rallies, etc.), it's hard to be completely convinced that Trump's political movement was and is tantamount to a cult like that of Scientology or the Unification Church (the latter of which Hassan defected from). At most, Trump's movement is cultish. That said, this book should not be considered a failure. In fact, its perspective is prescient. In the later stages of the book, Hassan makes reference to Jim Jones and the mass suicide at Jonestown. Very judiciously, he writes that "[i]t may seem to be a leap to mention Jonestown when writing about the cult of Trump." Perhaps it did in 2019, but since the publication of this book, we have seen the January 6th riots and the assault on the Capitol. Hassan basically predicts the final months of the Trump presidency in the second-last paragraph of the book: "If Trump runs again and is not reelected in 2020, he might claim that the election was rigged. Who knows what he might call on his followers to do in that case?" (233-234). So while Hassan may not have been entirely convincing in his argument for there being a “Cult of Trump,” he can at least be praised for his foresight.

Sorority Party Massacre (2012)

Sorority Party Massacre (2012) starts off very promisingly. There is legitimate frisson in the opening sequence, where a woman en route to a sorority meeting pulls over to a roadside scrapyard only to find that she's being stalked via her cellphone by an unseen man. Sure, it's more than a little reminiscent of Scream, but the sequence presents a capable homage. At the conclusion of this opening sequence, we're introduced to an intimidating and visually compelling villain with a distinctive, foreboding laugh. A raspy click that sounds looped, this laugh could have been iconic.

Kevin Sorbo appears briefly in this movie.
I didn't want to post a photo of Ron Jeremy. 

To this point, the viewer is geared for a serviceable horror flick, but what follows after the opening credits is a faltering horror comedy that tries harder to be funny than horrific. What we get are fart jokes, consciously hammy acting, dialogue punctuated with sound effects, shameless over-reliance on montages, superfluous nudity, a “mongoloid” character, and Ron Jeremy cameos. In short, Sorority Party Massacre becomes that kind of movie. The titular sorority girls are little more than T&A, which in all fairness should have been obvious to this reviewer going in, given the title. The film is neither funny nor horrific, and it looks and feels amateur all throughout—a far cry from the intro. It's as if the opening sequence and the movie proper were directed by different people. We never do see that cool killer from the opening sequence again, at least not as he originally appears, sounds, and behaves. This viewer does not recall hearing that raspy, clicking laugh again.

But in the end, there is a half-decent denouement. Here we have the privilege of seeing Ron Jeremy brutalized by the main-character cop. This part has aged well, given Jeremy's recently litigated sex crimes. The Jeremy beat-down may even be enough to justify checking out the movie. But if you do seek out Sorority Party Massacre, just watch the opening sequence and then skip to the ending. The "movie" sandwiched in between is unwatchable.

The Astro Zombies (1968)

The Astro Zombies sometimes gets heralded as a schlock sci-fi/horror classic, but this is a gross misconception. I doubt if anyone who has ever suffered through this film in full could earnestly put forward a positive evaluation of the experience. Some might defend the movie by saying it's "so bad that it's good", but The Astro Zombies is just bad. The "so bad that it's good" designation really only applies to well-paced crap. The Astro Zombies may actually be the worst-paced movie of all time. It's ostensibly about alien-looking "quasi-men" who have escaped a lab run by John Carradine to commit "mutilation murders", but there's very little action of that nature depicted on-screen. Director Ted V. Mikels chews up most of the runtime with interstitial shots of driving, parking, and sci-fi babble, all of which makes for excruciatingly boring viewing. The only redeeming aspect of this movie is that it inspired The Misfits' song "Astro Zombies", a recording that accomplishes a lot more in two minutes and eleven seconds than The Astro Zombies does in an hour and thirty-one minutes.

Wrong Turn (2003)

Wrong Turn tells the story of a group of college-educated youths who take a shortcut through the West Virginia mountains and run afoul of a family of Republicans. It all starts with some tire damage caused by traps set by the Republicans. A quartet from among the college kids peels off in search of help and locates a ramshackle hutment, but when they find human remains inside, they realize that Republicanism is none too far away. Soon enough, the Republicans arrive home with the freshly riven corpse of one of the college students who’d stayed with the vehicle. From their hiding places, the surviving college kids have no choice but to watch as the Republicans dismember and devour their friend. When the Republicans fall into a satiated sleep, the college kids attempt to escape, but the Republicans are jolted awake and chase them into the forest, picking them off one by one. The urbanized college youths hide in trees, lookout towers, and caves to evade their pursuers, but the Republicans doggedly sniff them out. Can young, college-educated Americans survive the relentless Republican onslaught?

Upon its release, critics were initially hard on Wrong Turn. Scott Foundas of Variety describes the film as “frightless torpor”; Rotten Tomatoes calls it an “unremarkable slasher flick.” But these reviews come from a much different point in history. For those of us who survived the Trump presidency, the film rings irrefutably true and even prescient. In both mood and manner, these inbred, cannibalistic Republicans remind us of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. As such, Wrong Turn is not a “slasher flick,” but rather a fictive, filmic ethnography of America. While it is not nearly as deranged as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the ne plus ultra of American ethnographic cinema, Wrong Turn is nonetheless an honest film in perfect fidelity with the base culture that spawned it. Even more than it entertains, Wrong Turn educates us about a subspecies of Republican that American civilization would do well to avoid.

All told, Wrong Turn comes highly recommended, as it's an unrelenting thrill-ride that doesn’t let up, not even after the Republicans have been neutralized and the plot has resolved itself (hence, a mild spoiler alert here). Stick around for the credits, and you’ll learn along with an unfortunate deputy sheriff a harsh lesson about American life—the truest Republicans are the hardest to kill.