Movie Details
| Title: | Dark Secrets: Inside the Bohemian Grove | |
| Director: | Alex Jones | |
| Year: | 2000 | |
| Genre: | Documentary | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 10.10.05 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (1)
- Terrorstorm: A History of Government-Sponsored Terrorism
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 10.10.05 | Alamo South Lamar | I went to see this because I'm pretty curious about the Bohemian Grove thing and Alex Jones was the first guy to sneak in there and get video evidence. Said video, shot with a hidden camera made up to look like a pager, showed some of the occult signage and symbology that's supposed to saturate the place along with the Cremation of Care ritual that goes on every year when the World's richest and most powerful men go there to drink and be merry. Although there's a message warding against talking shop while you're there "Weaving spiders come not here," it's Jones' contention that tons of policy and major geopolitical decisions do hatch there amid the Northern California Redwoods. Word has it that the Manhattan Project was dreamt up there, along with (depending on how much you believe) tons and tons of appointments, nominations, etc. etc., whathaveyou, and more. Every republican president of the last century has been members, and both Bushes go to this retreat every year and allegedly participate in paganistic luciferian rituals. The Cremation of Care ritual, which as far as I can figure is about the pagan owl god Moloch destroying the Cares of the world for a short time to enable everyone there to let loose and have a good time (sort of a haughty religious version of the Fraggle Rock theme), involves a ritual sacrifice of a fake dude. Secret societies, especially pagan ones, are always interesting to me... plus i had one of those coincidences where you go for 27 years not hearing about something then read about it twice in one week... so I got my ticket and headed down to the Alamo South Lamar to see Jones' documentary and hear him talk about it. The film, as a film, really sucks. It starts off decent enough with Alex working with a British film crew to plan the infiltration of the grove and talking about what they hope to see there, followed by interviews with locals that live around the area and some historical context of the Grove along with several of the spotlight rumors surrounding the place (a particularly juicy one involves a gay porn star who was in How The West was Hung being flown in to service all the rich fatcats for two weeks), but then the film dumps the captured footage of the Cremation of Care ceremony on you for like a half an hour. And this is crappy digital-zoomed video footage taken from a hidden camera the size of a pager circa 2000. Everything's on a 45 degree tilt, it's constantly moving back and forth whenever the guy walks, it's hard to make out anything, and goes on forever. People left and right of me were leaving due to motion sickness. The theater started off packed and by the time the film ended whole rows were emptied out. What's worse though is after he lets the ceremony play out in shaky-tilt cam, he plays it AGAIN in enhanced mode, where software's straightened out and tried its best to steady the subject of the shots. There's a cool effect here when the software has to zoom or pan to keep the subject centered and these black fields from where the edges of the captured video are shifts and moves to keep everything steady. Of course the video is still blown up to the point of complete blurriness and there's really only about a minute of clear video spread out across the 20 minutes. Showing the whole encounter, which really isn't that interesting to begin with - it's just a bunch of people in robes standing on a stage while a bad theatrical play is carried out over a loudspeaker, ending with some fireworks and a burning spot where I guess the effigy was - really takes some documentarian balls I guess. It's like when they mess up and play the same commercial twice in a row, except imagine the commercial being 20 minutes long. The film ends with Jones back in Austin, driving to the Governor's mansion saying "I'm going to see Bush. I got the proof and he's gonna answer!" He then stands on the sidewalk with a megaphone ranting across the street to the two cops on duty at the Governor's mansion while a guy walks around in a witch's robe and George W. mask. It's at this point that you realize that, no matter how true Jones might be and no matter how absurd and strange the footage he got inside the grove might be, Jones is still a soapbox loony bin case. Afterward, he applauded us for staying through it all. He called us veterans and explained how he made the film literally in 2 weeks while still doing his daily radio show. He also mentioned that he's going to cut it down even more. The good part of the evening actually came before the movie, when he played an early cut of a new documentary that he's making called The Order of Death or something like that. It's very much a sequel to Dark Secrets, covering the wake of his footage and the growing media attention that the Grove's received in the past five years. He also includes much better footage that a Grove employee shot and sent him, showing much more of the grounds, shrines, and general occult oddities present there. He even mentions Harry Shearer's mock-job movie The Teddy Bear's Picnic, which I thought Jones would have enjoyed but was surprised to hear him attach Shearer, calling him an apologist and his movie a triviality. I guess he's upset because the thrust of his worry behind the grove isn't that all these rich and powerful men are getting together to get drunk and pee on redwoods but to worship un-Christian gods and decide the world's fate, which admittedly Shearer's film does not touch at all. The doc was only 40 minutes long and Jones said he's going to expand it with more history on human sacrifice and how almost every major culture has history in it. Personally, I was interested in the information he presented but find Jones' message (he runs www.infowars.com) to be a bit too paranoid. Maybe I'm just one of the sheep but he seems really really upset that rich people would act this weird. I'm pretty sure I would act that weird if i had a billion dollars... I just can't afford to right now. |
