'Holy Hell' is a fascinating look at sociopathy, gullibility, the essential vacuity of modern bourgeois American life - and what it means to surrender one's existential freedom to a charismatic grifter. The conman in question is a guy named Michel Rostand (and various other aliases). Michel is a homosexual would-be actor/dancer from Venezuela who came to L.A. in the late 1960s to break into the movies. He ended up in hardcore gay porno. But, lo and behold, by the mid-1980s he had installed himself as the leader of a dippy New Age cult (which he evidently still is today, in Hawaii). Michel is also a dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying sociopath, utterly manipulative and without a shred of shame or conscience. A typical charlatan, he promises enlightenment to lost souls who follow him but delivers exploitation and emotional/sexual abuse. What is baffling, though, is Michel's appeal over his flock. He's effeminate, obviously self-absorbed, somewhat dimwitted, and speaks poor English - nothing prepossessing about him. Yet over the years he's been able to exert tremendous power over scores of acolytes. It just goes to show how poorly educated and poorly developed - emotionally and psychologically - lots of Americans really are. Anyone with a reasonably healthy ego and a scintilla of self-awareness would see through this simpering, malevolent flim-flam man in a New York minute.
