The extreme, terrifying practices laid bare in this four-part documentary about an abusive sect lets victims tell their staggering tales – even if it does nothing new for the genre
It’s coming to something when the hellfire-preaching, daughter-beating, cancer-faking, longtime con artist and self-styled prophetess turns out to have been the restraining force in a relationship. But such, in essence, is the story of the four-part documentary Ministry of Evil: The Twisted Cult of Tony Alamo. His wife Susan – their meet-cute was in a bar in the 60s, when they both tried to scam each other – was a talented preacher who used her skills first to cheat churches (she would testify to her success converting heathens all over the US and Mexico, when, as her daughter Christhiaon says in the film, they barely left town, and live off the subsequent donation money until the family coffers needed filling again).
Her faith, however perverted its expression, seems to have been in some sense genuine, and she spearheaded the establishment of the Alamo Christian Foundation, which recruited from the streets large numbers of the many hippies, drifters and vulnerable souls who were flocking to California in search of a different life. But it was Tony who, after her death from – ironically – cancer in 1982, took all the opportunities offered by the effective possession of hundreds upon hundreds of brainwashed people, and the children born into what was by then a fully-fledged cult – and really ran with them all.
Ministry of Evil: The Twisted Cult of Tony Alamo aired on BBC Four and is available on BBC iPlayer
