Halloween VI, Texas Chainsaw Massacre IV and the Meaning of Horror Part III

Welcome to the third and final installment in my examination of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (the sixth Halloween film in the original series) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Over the years I've come to see these two films as companion pieces for a combination of reasons: The timeframe in which they were both filmed (both in 1994 while they were ultimately released in 1995 and 1997 respectively), the ample use of conspiracy theories made by both films, and especially their linkage of serial killers to cults. In the case of Halloween 6, which I examined in great length in the first and second installment of this series, a cult originating from Smith's Grove Sanitarium (the mental hospital where Michael Myers escaped from in the original Halloween film) is revealed to have been guiding Michael over the years and through the course of his numerous killing sprees.

While there are some startling instances of conspiracy culture, twilight language and outright synchronicities in Halloween 6 it ultimately pales in comparison to Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Almost totally unknown to general audiences beyond the fact that it featured Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey in early starring roles, The Next Generation is a truly strange film on several levels. Unlike Halloween 6, which has a dedicated group of supporters, Next Generation is almost universally panned and not without reason: First time director Kim Henkel, who cowrote the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Tobe Hooper (as well as the classic Eaten Alive) and has remained closely involved with the series for years, seems generally out of his element in the director's chair.

a young Henkel

On the flip side of the coin, Next Generation was somewhat ahead of its time. In an interview with the Austin Chronicle Henkel described the film as "a black comedy about dysfunctional families" and that ultimately seems only partly correct. If anything the film seems as though it is meant as a total satire of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even reducing Leatherface to a bumbling, shrieking transsexual obsessed with acquiring a new face. Several classic scenes and sequences from the original film (such as the meat hook sequence and the family dinner scene) are almost totally re-created in mocking fashion.

the saw as lipstick is as apt a metaphor for this film as any

In those pre-Scream days both audiences and studios alike were confused by the film's comical self-awareness. Even after Kevin Williamson's Tarantino-lite shtick became all the rage in horror the film's sheer cartoonishness left audiences cold. As noted above, this is partly due to Henkel's lack of chops behind the camera -- maybe it was simply the lack of funding, but the entire film has an amateurish air about it and as a result what was probably meant to be funny appears to be incompetence on screen.

Like Halloween 6, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation was littered with chaos behind the scenes. The film was originally shot in 1994 and did a very limited theatrical run in the same year as well as appearing in the South by South-west Film and Media Conference in 1995 under the title of The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

From there the film was supposed to receive a wider release, but the studio behind it (Columbia/Tri-Star) began re-editing the film and pushing back its release date. Initially they claimed that they were waiting for the release of Next Generation star Renée Zellweger's 1996 film, Jerry Maguire, which proved to be her star making turn as many industry insiders predicted.

By 1996's end Next Generation costar Matthew McConaughey was also well on his way to Hollywood's A-list. And yet Next Generation, which featured these two rising stars in the lead roles, remained on the shelves. The film's producer, Robert Kuhn, told the Austin Chronicle that it was McConaughey's agent who was putting pressure on the studio not to release Next Generation theatrically, stating:

"Then they started telling us that, off the record, CAA [Creative Artists Agency], which is Matthew's agent, was putting pressure on them not to release the film theatrically. In any event, we sued Columbia/TriStar, and then ultimately decided that we were not going to be successful because the arbitration provisions in the contract were so strong. We dismissed our cases and are now preparing to file another lawsuit against CAA, for interference with our contract. That will probably be filed this week."

Ultimately the film received a very limited theatrical run (less than 20 US cities) in an edited version: The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre version clocked in at 95 minutes while The Next Generation version only ran a total of 86. Unlike Halloween 6, these cuts do not seem to have dramatically altered the plot line of the film though they did potentially add to the amateurish feel of it.

Plot wise, there really isn't much to report until the third act of the film. Up until that point the movie is a generic slasher scenario in which four 30-something high school students (including Zellweger) depart from the prom and become lost on a back road in Texas. From there the inevitable happens: Their car breaks down, they become separated, and are ultimately terrorized by various members of the Slaughter family (seriously), which includes: Vilmer (McConaughey), his girlfriend Darla (Tonie Perensky), and his two brothers, W.E. (Joe Stevens) and Leatherface (Robert Jacks).

three of our four unfortunate youths with Darla, who moonlights as a real estate agent

As noted above, Next Generation lifts liberally from the original Texas Chainsaw film in a seeming attempt to parody it as well as the slasher genre in general. Thus the audience is treated to a performance by McConaughey that borders on high camp (was he trying to out do Viggo Mortensen's turn from the third Texas Chainsaw movie?) and an interpretation of Leatherface that would make many drag queens blush, among other things. Still, there are hints throughout the film that something far more ominous is being depicted in it than a conventional slasher blood bath, most notably in the character of Vilmer with his bizarre robotic leg and his wrecker truck that happens to have "Illuminati" written on the door.

Then there's the appearance of a five pointed star on the screen door of the Slaughter home that is displayed prominently in several scenes. In Freemasonry the five pointed star is symbolic of Sirius, the Dog Star.

"To find in the BLAZING STAR of five points an allusion to the Divine Providence, is also fanciful; and to make it commemorative of the Star that is said to have guided the Magi, is to give it a meaning comparatively modern. Originally it represented SIRIUS, or the Dog-star, the forerunner of the inundation of the Nile; the God ANUBIS, companion of Isis in her search for the body of OSIRIS, her brother and husband. Then it became the image of HORUS, the son of OSIRIS, himself symbolized also by the Sun, the author of the Seasons, and the God of Time; Son of Isis, who was the universal nature, himself the primitive matter, inexhaustible source of Life, spark of uncreated fire, universal seed of all beings. It was HERMES also, the Master of Learning, whose name in Greek is that of the God Mercury. It became the sacred and potent sign or character of the Magi, the PENTALPHA, and the significant emblem of Liberty and Freedom, blazing with a steady radiance amid the weltering elements of good and evil of Revolutions, and promising serene skies and fertile seasons to the nations, after the storms of change and tumult."
(Morals and Dogmas, Albert Pike, pg. 15)

Sirius, the Blazing Star of Masonry

Sirius has long been suspected of being highly important to ancient pagan practices, especially those concerning the Mystery schools. Much more on Sirius and the festivities and rituals surrounding it can be found here and here.

But back to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. It's not to nearly an hour into the film (specifically, around the 55 minute mark) that it becomes truly mind blowing. It all begins with a strange conversation between Jenny (Zellweger) and Darla while the latter is helping the former prepare for one of the Slaughter family's infamous dinners. Darla blames Vilmer's new job on his psychotic behavior, which spurs Jenny to ask what type of job involves killing random people. Darla's explanation doesn't disappoint:

Darla

Well, I really shouldn't be telling you this, but you know how you always hear these stories about these people who run everything but nobody knows who they are, right? Well, its true. I mean, I never would have believed it, but its all true. I mean, who do you think killed Kennedy?

 

Jenny

The government?

 

Darla

No, that government stuff is bullcrap. It's these people and they've been doing this type of thing for like a thousand or two thousand years... I forget which. And nobody, and I mean nobody, knows their names. And that's who Vilmer works for.

 

Apparently this scene was one of the ones edited down by Columbia/TriStar. It's easy to suspect foul play but later bits of dialogue are even more revealing than this sequence. Next Generation really goes into overdrive a few minutes later when the character of Rothman (James Gale) makes the scene. His entrance is set up by a re-creation of the notorious dinner sequence from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with Jenny begging Darla to help her and Darla declining to do so because Vilmer has implanted a device in her head that will blow it up if he presses a trigger. Just as Jenny is beginning to call Darla's story BS Rothman appears.

 

Coming off like a figure that has wandered out of a David Lynch film, Rothman arrives at the Slaughter residence in a limousine and clad in a black suit, vaguely echoing a MIB (Man in Black). It is soon revealed that beneath the suit he sports a series of elaborate tattoos and piercings upon his chest. The Rothman character clearly seems to be a play off of the numerous conspiracy theories concerning the Rothschild banking dynasty.

"Like the German Hanoverian kings, the Rothschild banking empire was British only in the sense that it had been in England for a long time. It's roots were actually in Germany. the House of Rothschild was founded in Frankfurt in the mid-eighteenth century, when a moneylender named Mayer Amschel Bauer changed his name to Amschel Rothschild and fathered ten children. His five sons were sent to the major capitals of Europe to open branches of the family banking business. Nathan, the most astute of the sons, went to London, where he opened the family branch called N. M. Rothschild & Sons. Nathan's brothers managed N. M. Rothschild's branches in Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Naples.

"The family fortunes got a major boost in 1815, when Nathan pulled off the mother of all insider trades. He led British investors to believe that the Duke of Wellington had lost to Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. In a matter of hours, British government bond prices plummeted. Nathan, who had advance information, then swiftly bought up the entire market in government bonds, acquiring a dominant holding in England's debt for pennies on the pound. Over the course of the nineteenth century, N. M. Rothschild would become the biggest bank in the world, and the five brothers would come to control most of the foreign-loan business of Europe. 'Let me issue and control any nations money,' Amschel Rothschild boasted in 1790, ' and I care not who writes its laws.'"

(Web of Debt, Ellen H. Brown, pg. 75) 

good ole N.M...

But back to Rothman. He is apparently Vilmer's employer and their exchanges are priceless. It begins with Vilmer leaving the dining room to answer the door for Rothman, greeting him with: "Well, what the hell do you want?"

Rothman

 

Rothman, who is accompanied by his limo driver, stares down Vilmer as he removes his coat and states: "I assume that that is a rhetorical question." Vilmer responds in kind: "You assume whatever you goddamn well please, it ain't no skin off my ass." Rothman, who had been walking into the house, pauses to turn around and stare once again at Vilmer. "Is that what you want me to think? That you're a silly boy?" Rothman asks Vilmer enigmatically before heading into the dining room.

 

There he is greeted by a frantic Jenny, whom he appears to comfort for a moment while easing her back into her chair at the table.  After he has calmed Jenny down, Rothman turns to face the rest of the Slaughter family and asks: "What is this?" while looking at Vilmer. After a beat he continues: "No? Can anybody else tell? Then, to Jenny: "Things are going to change, I can promise you that."

 

With that Rothman rises to his feet, much to Jenny's dismay, and takes Vilmer aside where one of the great monologues of modern horror is delivered by the man in black:

 

Rothman

Fuck! This is appalling. You are here for one reason, and one reason only. Do you understand that? I want to here you say you understand that. No? It's very simple. I want these people to know the meaning of horror... horror... is that clear? You don't want to be a silly boy. Is... that... clear?

 

Vilmer

Fuckin'-A it is!

 

With that Rothman begins undoing his shirt, revealing the bizarre body manipulations upon his chest and stomach. He takes a few more swipes at Vilmer before turning his attention back to a terrified Jenny, who he hungrily licks on the face with his tongue for a few moments before departing.

 

From this point the movie turns truly surreal. Jenny is able to escape from the Slaughter residence shortly thereafter by grabbing one of the remotes for Vilmer's electronic leg, which she uses to make him fall down a lot while she flees on foot. Vilmer and Leatherface give chase.

 

Jenny makes it to the road where she comes upon an elderly couple in a RV. They are driving so slowly that she is able to catch up with the vehicle on foot and force her way aboard. Leatherface is in hot pursuit of Jenny, spurring the immortal line "There is a monster chasing her with a chainsaw! Step on it Mr. Spodish!" from the old woman in the RV. Soon Vilmer joins the fray in his truck, picking up Leatherface, who is then able to slash at the RV with his chainsaw from the passenger side of the wrecker.

Vilmer is able to force the RV off the road, which Jenny emerges from seemingly unharmed. Leatherface and Vilmer prepare to give chase after her on foot, but then a remote controlled airplane appears and kills Vilmer with the propeller blades. Leatherface, in full drag, begins to scream and spin around in a circle frantically as a limousine comes upon the scene. Jenny takes refuge in the back and naturally finds Rothman there waiting for her. The limousine takes off, with Leatherface giving it ample distance while Rothman gazes upon the horror icon in disgust. He then returns to Jenny and delivers another peculiar monologue:

 

Rothman

All this, it's been an abomination. You really must accept my sincere apologies. It was supposed to be a spiritual experience. I can't tell you how disappointed I am. I suppose it's something we all live with. People like us strive for something, a sense of harmony. Perhaps its disappointment that keeps us going... Unfortunately, it's never been easy for me. One of my many failings.

 

Jenny

Fuck you.

 

Rothman

Would you like to go to the local hospital? Or to a police station?

 

Apparently Jenny chose the former as that is where the movie picks up in the next scene. There she is seen sitting in a waiting room and talking to a police officer (played by John Dugan who appeared as Grandpa in the original Chainsaw Massacre) who is saying "You know, this isn't the first time something like this has happened." Suddenly a wild-eyed woman is wheeled by on a gurney who makes eye contact with Jenny. The woman is played by Marilyn Burns, who was the protagonist in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the insinuation seems to be that it is the same character. After exchanging terrified stares with the woman Jenny watches her being wheeled away by an orderly (Paul A. Partain, who appeared as the wheelchair-bound Franklin in the 'Saw '74) while the cop askes in the background: "Miss, do you know who that is? Miss? What the hell is going on here?" With that the film briefly turns back to Leatherface, who is still screaming and spinning in circles with his chainsaw at the spot where Vilmer was killed before fading to black.

 

Clearly there is much more to Next Generation's third act than your standard slasher fare and the viewer is left with a few compelling allusions, most notably Rothman's description of the Slaughter clan's reign of terror as a "spiritual experience" and his fixation with "the meaning of horror." How then ultimately are we to take Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation on a symbolic level?

 

As I see it, the film can be interpreted in at least three distinct ways. On the most superficial level it can be seen as a metaphor for how the movie industry used to treat filmmakers who got their start in, or became associated with, the horror genre. Nowadays horror has become a fashionable steppingstone for young filmmakers on their way to bigger and better things but it didn't used to be like this.

 

Frequently once a filmmaker became tagged as a horror director one would in turn face an uphill struggle trying to find financing for anything that was outside the genre, even in the case of directors such as John Carpenter who had proven themselves to be adept in numerous other styles. In some cases it became difficult for them to even find funding for a film outside the framework of the franchise for which they were chiefly known if they even had offers to operate out of said franchise in the first place. This was especially true of Tobe Hooper (the director and cowriter of the original and second Texas Chainsaw Massacre who has remained closely involved with the series ever since) and his frequent collaborator Henkel.

Hooper

 

After achieving a certain degree of success with the original Chainsaw Hooper would go on to direct two films very much like it, 1977's Eaten Alive (which Henkel also cowrote) and 1981's Funhouse. At this point Hooper got a shot at the big time when Steven Spielberg tapped him to direct his big-budget supernatural horror film Poltergeist. The film proved to be a major hit and Hooper would go on to helm to more big-budget films, 1985's Lifeforce and 1986's remake of Invaders from Mars. Unfortunately for Hooper both films tanked and he soon found himself helming another Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the second film in the series, which did not fare much better.

the downward spiral of Hooper's career

 

And that was effectively the end of Hooper's career as far as theatrical films were concerned for nearly two decades. He did manage a few low-budget releases such as the underrated Stephen King adaptation of The Mangler and the softcore porn otherwise known as Night Terrors (which nonetheless helped me through a few nights as a teenager) but Hooper has presumably earned his bread for years now working as a "consultant" for the endless array of Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake/re-imaginings.

 

Hooper at least fared better than his frequent Chainsaw collaborator Henkel, who has only managed to be involved in a handful of films outside of the franchise he and Hooper spawned over the years. To his credit, Henkel did manage to write the scripts for two films outside of the horror genre -- 1983's Last Night at the Alamo and 1994's Doc's Full Service (both films directed by Eagle Pennell) -- but neither film change the horror label his career was branded with long ago.

 

With this in mind it is unsurprising that Henkel seems bored with the horror aspects of Next Generation, putting the bulk of his energies into the comedic/satirical aspects. Throughout Next Generation one can't help but feel that Henkel envisioned a much different film but had to force the most compelling aspects of his script into the framework of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre film in order to have any hope of securing funding.

 

In this context Vilmer can be seen as a stand-in for Henkel himself while Rothman embodies the studio system as a whole. Neither Vilmer or Henkel seem to have their hearts fully invested in their respective jobs, both possessed with a desire to be a "silly boy." Rothman/studio system will have none of this in turn, having no need of a social satire penned by Henkel. Vilmer ultimately loses his life for his silliness while Henkel would not be involved in another film for nearly a decade and his return was likely only due to the studio system wanting to slap his name as a producer on the new Chainsaw films to entice the fan boys.

 

On a secondary level the film can be read as an allegory of the long rumored underground cult network with ties to various notorious serial killers such as Charles Manson and David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz. Granted such theories had only begun to receive serious attention within conspiracy circles in the late 1980s thanks to the publication of The Ultimate Evil but Henkel is also a resident of Texas, a state that would become especially relevant to this lore around the same time frame.

 

In 1983 Henry Lee Lucas was arrested and shortly thereafter began making allegations that would make him one of the most notorious serial killers in modern US history. Lucas claimed (or was coerced into claiming by the police) to have been involved in hundreds of murders during his time as a drifter in the American South and Southwest, sometimes collaborating with his "partner" Ottis Toole. As fantastical as these allegations were, they were nothing compared to his claims of working for an organization/cult known as the Hand of Death.

"Henry, as it turns out, has some interesting tales to tell. Just a couple of years into his incarceration, he told his story in a book written for him by a sympathetic author. The book, entitled The Hand of Death: The Henry Lee Lucas Story, tells of Henry's indoctrination into a nationwide satanic cult. Lucas claimed that he was trained by the cult in a mobile paramilitary training camp in the Florida Everglades. His training, he said, included instruction in abduction and arson techniques, as well as in the fine art of killing, up close and personal. Henry further claimed that leaders of the camp were so impressed with his handling of a knife that he was allowed to serve as an instructor. Following his training, Henry claimed that he served the cult in various ways, including as a contract killer and as an abductor of children, whom he delivered to a ranch in Mexico near Juarez. Once there, they were used in the production of child photography and for ritual sacrifices. Henry has said that this cult's operations were based in Texas, and including trafficking in children and drugs, among other illegal pursuits."

(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pgs. 73-74)

Henry

Needless to say, virtually every aspect of Henry's story is highly controversial, his innocence being proclaimed by no less an organization than Amnesty International while Henry himself later alleged that he had been induced into making such claims after being tortured by the police. Indeed, it would be most easy to dismiss Henry's Hand of Death were it not for the Matamoros cult.

I've already discussed Adolfo Constanzo's outfit at great length before here, here, and here so I shall only give a brief rundown for our purposes now: Constanzo, born on November 1, 1962 (the Celtic New Year, Samhain, was traditionally celebrated from sundown on October 31 till dawn on November 1), was a Cuban-American who spent part of his youth in Miami. During his childhood he was schooled in the arts of Santeria and Palo Mayombe by both his own mother as well as a Haitian padrino. He began to establish himself in Mexico City around 1983, where he first supported himself as a tarot card reader. By 1984 he moved to Mexico City permanently and began setting up a cult based upon the Santeria and Palo Mayombe practices he had learned as a child. Constanzo also began forging ties with drug dealers, Mexican celebrities, and high-ranking law enforcement officials (several of whom allegedly had CIA links).

Constanzo

By 1989 Constanzo had set himself up in Matamoros where he and his cult trafficked drugs for the Gulf Cartel (which I documented before here) while also performing human sacrifices upon victims who ranged from rival drug dealers, random individuals taken off the streets of Matamoros and at least one American college student visiting there for Spring Break. The latter would prove to be Constanzo's downfall as the college kid, one Mark Kilroy, came from a politically connected family in Texas that was able to bring pressure on US and Mexican authorities to find their son's murderer.

Authorities eventually traced Constanzo's cult to a ranch located in the countryside between Matamoros and the US border. There they found well over a dozen bodies killed in a variety of ways, including beheadings and machete blows to the head. In many cases brains, heart, lungs, and other internal organs had been torn from the bodies, some of which were found stewing in a cauldron at the ranch. Some victims had been raped by Constanzo (who was bisexual) before being killed and ritualistic cannibalism reportedly took place at times involving the body parts.

images from Constanzo's ranch

The revelation of the Matamoros cult, which came in April of 1989, added much validity to the accusations made by Maury Terry in his 1988 work The Ultimate Evil and the longstanding rumors of an underground cult network with ties to organized crime as well as serial killers. Stranger still was a map drawn by Henry Lee Lucas for Texas authorities outlining various locations his Hand of Death cult operated out of, one of them being near Brownsville, Texas, which is just across the border from Matamoros.

"One of the more compelling aspects of Henry's story was his contention that he had ties to cult-run ranches just south of the U.S. border. In 1989, just such a ranch was excavated in Matamoros, Mexico --just south of Brownsville, Texas --yielding the remains of fifteen ritual sacrifice victims. The Matamoros case so closely paralleled the stories told years earlier by Lucas that some law enforcement personnel in Texas chose to take a closer look at Henry's professed cult connections. In fact, Jim Boutwell --the sheriff of Williamson County, Texas --later told a reporter that investigators had verified that Lucas was indeed involved in cult activities.

"Following the discovery in Matamoros, Clemmie Schroeder -identified as Henry's spiritual adviser -sent to the state attorney general a map Lucas had drawn for her in 1985 that identified locations where murder, kidnapping and drug-running operations were conducted. She told a reporter for the Brownsville Herald: 'Henry told me there were a lot of different cults in Mexico who were involved in satanic worship and everything. I found the map and realized he had marked this cult and drug ring near Brownsville.' The attorney general's office chose not to take action."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pg. 88)

Whether Kim Henkel was aware of these things at the time is difficult to say but it would hardly be surprising if Henry Lee Lucas's stories of the Hand of Death cult and the actual Matamoros cult at least partly inspired the bizarre plot line of Next Generation. In general, Next Generation seems ahead of its time in terms of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy culture had just begun to go mainstream in the early 1990s, in no small part due to the massive success of the X-Files, but strands such as the Illuminati and especially the whole serial killer cult notion did not begin to gain much traction until the late 90s/early 00s. What's more, there's a possibility that Henkel had been toying with such a plot line well before Next Generation actually began filming. Fearnet.com remarks:

"Rumor has it that Henkel had submitted this script to be Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and New Line rejected it. In fact, when Leatherface director Jeff Burr initially met for that movie, his recollection was that the original treatment involved a group of kids going to a prom. So once the rights expired at New Line, it seems Henkel made the sequel he had always wanted to make."

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III was released in January 1990 so Henkel's pitch could have been no later than 1989. I've been unable to verify whether or not Henkel's treatment for Leatherface included the Illuminati/serial killer cult subplots, but it would be quite incredible if it did. Indeed, it could almost be insinuated that Henkel was trying to make a veiled statement about something.

Especially striking is the final scene involving Jenny and Rothman. Rothman refers to Jenny's encounter with the Slaughter clan as a "spiritual experience" and compares himself to Jenny in at least one instance. The insinuation seems to be that the Slaughter clan was some type of test which Jenny passed despite the failings of her instructors and that Rothman is offering her a position in whatever organization he works for.

Jenny of course refuses and ends up at a local hospital where she seemingly witnesses a former participant in Rothman's test who wasn't so fortunate (or who attempted to expose it). The implication seems to be that the Slaughter clan (and similar such setups) have been administering their unique form of "spiritual experiences" for a long time and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future . But so much for the conspiracy angles.

On a third and more abstract level Next Generation and its allusions to the "meaning of horror" can be seen as symbolic of the purpose of horror movies as a whole in our society. For any number of pre-teens they are a kind of modern day rite of passage in which the viewer overcomes their childhood fears. In a way this is not unlike the rituals of terror, rooted in the ancient fear of the dark, that any number of religions have practiced as part of their initiation ceremonies involving the young. Frequently such rituals were performed in caves.

"The fear of the dark, which is so strong in children, has been said to be a function of their fear of returning to the womb: the fear that their recently achieved daylight consciousness and not yet secure individuality should be reabsorbed... A terrific sense of claustrophobia, and simultaneously of release from every context of the world above, assails the mind impounded in those more than absolutely dark abysses, where darkness no longer is an absence of light but an experienced force. And when a light is flashed to reveal the beautifully painted bulls and mammoths, flocks of reindeer, trotting ponies, woolly rhinos, and dancing shamans of those caves, the images smite the mind as indelible imprints. It is obvious that the idea of death-and-rebirth, rebirth through ritual and with a fresh organization of profoundly impressed sign stimuli, is an extremely ancient one in the history of culture, and that everything was done, even in the period of the paleolithic caves, to inspire in the youngster being symbolically killed a reactivation of their childhood fear of the dark. The psychological value of such a 'shock treatment' for the shattering of a no longer wanted personality structure appears to have been methodically utilized in time-tested pedagogical crisis of brainwashing and simultaneously reconditioning of the IRMs, for the conversion of babes to men, dependable hunters, and courageous defenders of the tribe."

(Masks of God: Volume I, Joseph Campbell, pgs. 65-66)

The similarities between the paleolithic caves in which these rituals were performed and modern day movie theater should be obvious. In this way virtually all movies are a type of initiation, but horror films with their emphasis on terror seem especially close to their prehistoric predecessors. In our modern society they are a way of overcoming our fears of the dark and the monsters which reside within. They also have the added benefit of desensitizing us to violence and death via their "shock treatment," though whether this is for good or ill is highly debatable. Perhaps then in this interpretation we find the "meaning of horror" that Rothman spoke of.

Taken on this level Henkel's take on horror in Next Generation seems to be either a rejection or mockery of this form of initiation. Or perhaps Henkel himself failed his initiation into the studio system because of insistence upon being a "silly boy." Either way, it certainly makes for far more profound thinking than one would imagine a film of this nature would inspire.

And it is at this point that I shall wrap things up. over the course of this series we have seen some quite remarkable instances of synchronicity and zeitgeist and some most unexpected places. But then again, as we've seen over the course of this series, horror films (much like other much-maligned genres such as science fiction and fantasy) into something very primitive in the human experience, especially in a spiritual sense. It is not then surprising that so many horror films have achieved an iconic status that more "serious" films could ever hope for.

Latin American High Weirdness: The Cults VI

In parts four and five of this series we examined the life and times of notorious cultist, drug dealer and serial killer Adolfo Constanzo, especially the parts that don't jive with mainstream accounts. Of course, virtually everything about Constanzo is curious and seemingly awash in occult undertones. He is officially credited with 23 murders, though no one is really certain just how many deaths his cult was responsible for. Twenty-three is a rather ironic total given the number's own curious nature. The great Robert Anton Wilson called it the 23 enigma. Of it, he wrote:

"I first heard of the 23 enigma from William S Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark’s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23.

"Burroughs began collecting odd 23s after this gruesome synchronicity, and after 1965 I also began collecting them. Many of my weird 23s were incorporated into the trilogy Illuminatus! which I wrote in collaboration with Robert J Shea in 1969–1971. I will mention only a few of them here, to give a flavour to those benighted souls who haven’t read Illuminatus! yet:

"In conception, Mom and Dad each contribute 23 chromosomes to the fœtus. DNA, the carrier of the genetic information, has bonding irregularities every 23rd Angstrom. Aleister Crowley, in his Cabalistic Dictionary, defines 23 as the number of 'life' or 'a thread', hauntingly suggestive of the DNA life-script. On the other hand, 23 has many links with termination: in telegraphers’ code, 23 means 'bust' or 'break the line', and Hexagram 23 in I Ching means 'breaking apart'. Sidney Carton is the 23rd man guillotined in the old stage productions of A Tale of Two Cities. (A few lexicographers believe this is the origin of the mysterious slang expression '23 Skiddoo!'.)

"Some people are clusters of bloody synchronicities in 23. Burroughs discovered that the bootlegger 'Dutch Schultz' (real name: Arthur Flegenheimer) had Vincent 'Mad Dog' Coll assassinated on 23rd Street in New York when Coll was 23 years old. Schultz himself was assassinated on 23 October. Looking further into the Dutch Schultz case, I found that Charlie Workman, the man convicted of shooting Schultz, served 23 years of a life sentence and was then paroled."

Robert Anton Wilson posing with the number 23

Certainly a 23 association with Constanzo will only add to the curious legacy of the number. Whether authorities legitimately thought 23 was the actual total of Constanzo's killings, whether it was randomly selected, or whether is was picked for its occult significance, is one of those things we shall never know. We will also likely never know whether or not the Constanzo cult in fact died off with its leader, or whether some version continued to flourish in Mexico and the U.S. after Constanzo's death. Several members of the Constanzo cult would claim that the sect was still active.

"The first hint that the cult might not have died with Constanzo came from Martin Quintana's sister, Teresa, as she babbled to the Mexican police three weeks before the shootout.

"She told them that Mara, Constanzo's first madrina, was not dead after all, but had moved to Guadalajara. Martin had said Mara ran boutiques for Constanzo there, but Mara confided to Teresa that she really was a witch, in the same religion as Constanzo.

"According to Teresa Quintana, Mara originally came from Veracruz, Mexico's center for witchcraft, with magical roots as deep as those in Salem, Massachusetts. Every year, a witch convention is held in Veracruz, where spells are traded and magic is compared in dark and private ceremonies...

"Mara is not accused of any crimes, but police wanted to question her. They could not find her. Nor could police locate Damian the transvestite or Francisco the real estate speculator.

"Weeks later, when Omar was arrested, he too would speak of others who practiced black magic and sacrifice -sister groups of Constanzo's. He knew no details, though. Then Sara said something very similar at one of the big press conferences. 'I don't think that the religion will end with us, because it has a lot of people in it,' she said. 'They have found a temple in Monterrey that isn't even related to us. It will continue."
(Buried Secrets, Edward Humes, pgs. 404-405)

Even more notorious members of Constanzo's cult remain at large.

"Charged in both countries, Ovidio Hernandez, leader of the Hernandez drug operation once Elio was imprisoned, remains free, assisted by a network of contrabandistas and concunios. He had been seen in Chicago in early 1990, but eluded arrest. His father, Brigido Hernandez, wanted on drug and weapons charges, and the former ranch foreman, Aurelio Chavez, also are fugitives.

"Most bitter for the U.S. investigators has been Malio Fabio Ponce Torres's elusiveness. The alleged kidnapper of Mark Kilroy, released by mistake by the Cameron County Sheriff's Department, remained free, even though informants twice led DEA agents to him in Monterrey, Mexico, and later in the Yucatan Peninsula. Each time, El Gato managed to elude capture. Well-versed in the religion of Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, Mexican investigators believe he retrieved the nganga found to be missing from the room of the dead in Mexico City, then put it to use as a means of magically preserving his freedom."
(ibid, 398-399)

Here we bump into a major reoccurring theme in the saga of Constanzo: Police incompetence. The American authorities blew a chance to arrest Constanzo in Miami by announcing a tip they had received that he was heading there to the press. They failed in many other instances to apprehend members of the Constanzo cult when opportunities presented themselves. The Mexican authorities did not fair much better, stumbling upon the Constanzo cult initially via a routine road block that a member ran, and then later stumbling upon Constanzo himself when he began shooting at police in Mexico City with an Uzi when they weren't even looking for him. What's more, the Mexican authorities deliberately burned mounds of evidence at the Rancho Santa Elena in the name of performing a 'cleansing' of the place.



Rancho Santa Elena, and whatever evidence it stil lheld, being burned down

 One is left with the impression that police were almost intentionally trying to cover up the scope of Constanzo's crimes. Hell, if not for Serafin Hernandez running a police roadblock and leading them back to Rancho Santa Elena where weapons and narcotics were barely hidden, its hard to tell how long Constanzo's cult would have continued killing unfettered. As it stands, no one is really certain just how many people were killed by the cult, how many members were active in it, and if the cult was even ended with Constanzo's death.

Again I am reminded of Charles Manson. As I noted before in two prior blogs on Manson (which can be found here and here) local police had wanted to take Charlie down months before the Tate/La Bianca killing spree began. Certainly there were no lack of crimes to charge Manson with, especially statuary rape and drug possession. Yet authorities were prevented from doing their jobs until the Manson situation reached the point of no return.

Charlie

I've already noted some other overlaps between Manson and Constanzo in parts four and five of this series, especially in their use of sex as a means of control and conditioning in regards to their followers. Both men were the heads of cults that were structured like extended families. Manson's cult was literally called the Family and he was referred to as father in the cult. Constanzo was el padrino -the godfather, in his cult. Both cults used drugs as a means of financial support. Manson's drug dealings are not generally reported upon in most mainstream sources, but by all accounts he was at least a mid-level dealer in the L.A. scene, possibly higher. Like Constanzo, he had connections to celebrities and various upper crust types.

A major difference between Manson and Constanzo were their views on drug use. Manson actively encouraged drug use in his cult as a means of controlling his followers. Constanzo was quite the opposite. While he had no problems selling drugs to the non-believers (who were no better than animals in his eyes) he instigated a strict zero tolerance penalty within his cult.

"...Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo wasn't an abuser of drugs. Neither were his followers. So rigid was Constanzo on this point that he killed one of his loyal minions for snorting a few lines of cocaine. Once they were arrested, neither Sara, nor Duby, nor any of the other suspects showed the slightest medical or psychological evidence of drug abuse or addiction. There were no needle marks on Constanzo's cadaver, no ravages of addiction on Martin's body. They killed sober and fully aware of what they were doing. And Constanzo and Martin died the same way -eyes open and unflinching, a bullet piercing Martin's left eye, but not his eyelid."
(ibid, pgs. 402-403)

On the other hand, Constanzo's cult was much more violent than Manson's from the get go. Beginning with animal sacrifices and soon working their way up to humans, blood and killing were regular fixtures of Constanzo's cult from the beginning. The Family would take longer to make it to that point. It seems these rituals of terror that Constanzo subjected his followers to, especially the the human sacrifices, were his primary means of breaking their will and tying them to Constanzo and the cult. Seemingly this was a much more effective method than pumping them full of LSD, as Manson did.

Jim Jones is another figure Constanzo compares well too. Both men were Americans that would lead cults in Latin America to bloody ends. Both men were bisexual and would use sex as a means of control over their followers. Both men attempted to invoke a sense of family within their cults. Like Manson, Jones was referred to as 'father' while Constanzo was 'godfather.' Jones, like both Manson and Constanzo, would strive for contacts amongst the upper crust and law enforcement. There were warning signs that Jones was seriously unhinged before Jonestown, yet American authorities did little to nothing to stop him, not unlike Manson and Constanzo. There is no evidence that Jones ever ordered his followers to kill anyone before the Ryan ambush, but several Peoples Temple members died under mysterious circumstances over the years before the Kool-Aid was handed out in Jonestown.

Jim Jones

Finally, there is ample evidence all three men adopted radical religious systems as a means of controlling their followers. In the case of both Manson and Jones, this system seems to have been based upon Nazi-tinged Gnosticism.

"...Jones began to speak of revolution, and of Jesus as a socialist. He began to gradually mock and vilify the God of the Jews, the 'Sky God' as he called him, and to identify Jehovah with satanic forces bent on the destruction of humanity. It was pure neo-Nazism, except it was so convoluted that most of his followers would never have recognized it for what it was... the Nazi ideologists of the Third Reich had reinterpreted the bible in such a way that the God of the Israelites was Satan. This has become standard theology in such racist organizations in America as the Christian Identity movement.

"Lucifer was the 'light-bringer,' and intent on delivering humanity from the clutches of the evil Jehovah. This is also a Gnostic belief, as demonstrated in the scriptures uncovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. In this system, the Serpent in the Garden of Eden was the true God, who wanted to deliver the human race from the blind Creator God, the Demiurge who wanted Adam and Eve as his personal slaves...

"This multiplicity of gods with Biblical genealogy is what gave rise to the theology of the Process Church of the Final Judgement... This form of Gnosticism also influenced Charles Manson, and he began to identify himself with Abraxas, a famous Gnostic deity whose numerological equivalent is 365, the same as the number of days in the year and thus representative of time itself. With the Nazis, the neo-Nazis, and the Christian Identity movement in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, we are experiencing a strange resurrection of first and second century Gnosticism: Gnosticism with a vengeance."
(Sinister Forces Book II, Peter Levenda, pg. 175)

Abraxas

Crowley disciple Kenneth Grant associated the Gnostics with the Sirius tradition.

"The withdrawal of the genuine Magical Tradition occurred when the Gnostics, the true pre-Christian Christians, were stifled by the forgers of 'historic' Christianity. A certain amount of the original Gnosis is preserved in Talmudic and Rabbinical lore but, generally speaking, the Jews, like the Greeks and Christians, did all in their power to distort and destroy all traces of the original Current."
(The Magical Revival, Kenneth Grant, pg. 70)

The references to Nazism are especially interesting in relation to another cult, the one based out of Chile's infamous Colonia Dignidad (Colony of Dignity), that I covered in part one of this series. This cult was headed by the ex-Nazi Paul Schafer, and consisted almost entirely of German citizens. Many of the rank and file were kept at the Colony against their will and were used essentially as slave labor. Elaborate techniques of torture were used and the Colony even featured interrogation cells. Some of the Colony members had been abducted from Germany as children and were molested by Schafer. Author Peter Levenda, who traveled to the Colony in the late 1970s, strongly believed that Nazi occultism was practiced by the cult and that it was seemingly based off of the Gnostic 'Current' that was spreading across the world at the time.

Colonia Dignidad

Whether Constanzo was aware of this 'Current' or not is impossible to determine. But Manson and Jones, individuals with objectives and followings similar to Constanzo, did seemingly embrace a kind of Gnosticism in their cults.

There is one final connection I would now like to address in regards to the Constanzo cult and those of Manson and Jones. And that is a possible connection all three men had to the CIA. I will once again refer the reader back to my prior blogs on Manson, which can be found here and here; as well as those on Jones, located here and here. The CIA connections of both men are discussed in great length in those pieces. Here I will only briefly discuss their handlers.

Manson's seems to have been the enigmatic Ronald Stark, an individual whom an Italian court ruled had been in the employee of the American secret services since 1960. Stark was also a major drug trafficker who took over supplying the legendary Brotherhood of Eternal Love in the late 1960s and continued trafficking all over the world long after that organization was defunct. As noted previously, the Manson Family were drug dealers in the L.A. area. Several sources have placed Stark as Manson's supplier. Some have even speculated that the Tate/La Bianca killings were drug related and that Stark may have factored into the decision process behind the murders. For more on Stark, check here. Needless to say, the relationship between Manson and Stark is highly contested by mainstream sources.

Ronad Stark

The same cannot be said of Jones and the man commonly suspected of being his handler, Dan Mitrione. Mitrione was a police officer, FBI agent, and eventual 'advisor' to the CIA in Latin America. Mitrione has been described as a kind of interrogation 'specialist' who was himself eventually tortured to death in Uruguay. While its rarely mentioned in mainstream sources, Jones and Mitrione had known each other since Jones was a teenager and remained in contact until the latter's death.

Mitrione

Constanzo had his own curious CIA link. In part four of this series I told the reader to remember the name of Florentino Ventura Gutierrez, a Federal Judicial Police agent who became a member of Constanzo's cult in the mid-1980s and helped him break into the drug racket. It was Gutierrez who introduced Constanzo to the Calzada cartel, the leadership of which would eventually be sacrificed by Constanzo on Walpurgis Night. Gutierrez was an interesting individual.

"Constanzo's biggest coup, however, involved no such extravaganzas, just straight fortune telling and cleansing. And it came from an entirely different sector than the show-business clients, in the form of a crusty veteran Mexican policeman named Florentino Ventura Gutierrez.

"Ventura had been primer comandante of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police -the equivalent of FBI director in the United States. In 1985, he had become director of the Mexican branch of Interpol, the European-based international criminal investigation organization, making him one of the most powerful lawmen in Mexico. Respected by many U.S. drug enforcement agents for his tough stance against smugglers, he also had extensive contacts with the CIA. He was a natural cold-war asset for the U.S. intelligence community in Mexico City, where there were more KGB agents than an city outside the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet agents found the Mexican capital a perfect base of operations, a city close to the United States where the government imposed no restrictions on communist agents. Consequently, the CIA vies constantly with the KGB for the loyalties of certain influential Mexicans."
(Buried Secrets, Edward Humes, pg. 115)

Bottom right is apparently the real life Ventura

Gutierrez would shepherd Constanzo's rise in the drug smuggling world while simultaneously protecting him from Mexican police. Their relationship would last all the way up to Gutierrez's death in September 1988. Gutierrez allegedly killed himself in addition to his wife and a friend in the same burst of gunfire. Less than nine months after Gutierrez's death Constanzo would be dead and his cult in ruins. Is it possible that Gutierrez was Constanzo's handler? If Mexico City was truly as riddled with KGB agents as Humes claims then a man with Constanzo's 'talents' may have come in handy. If this sounds outlandish, keep in mind that this is the same agency that recruited men such as Klaus Barbie, Otto Skorzeny, and Lucky Luciano. In the company of such men, Constanzo would have simply been one of the boys.

Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, yet another tool in the CIA's Cold War arsenal

Thus, we have three prominent cult leaders, all of whom with ties to the CIA. Were the Manson and Constanzo cults and the Peoples Temple part of some broader organization or experiment? A most unlikely source alluded to this very possibility: the notorious serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who was indicted in 189 cases of murder at one point. In actuality Lucas, a former drifter, has only been linked with eleven killings, though law enforcement have often speculated that that total could be much higher. After being arrested Henry claimed that he and his partner Ottis Toole were contract killers for a nation wide satanic cult known as the Hand of Death. Though Lucas's claims were widely dismissed when initially made, authorities were forced to reevaluate them (if only briefly) when news of the Constanzo cult broke.

"One of the more compelling aspects of Henry's story was his contention that he had ties to cult-run ranches just south of the U.S. border. In 1989, just such a ranch was excavated in Matamoros, Mexico -just south of Brownsville, Texas -yielding the remains of fifteen ritual sacrifice victims. The Matamoros case so closely paralleled the stories told years earlier by Lucas that some law enforcement personnel in Texas chose to take a closer look at Henry's professed cult connections. In fact, Jim Boutwell -the sheriff of Williamson County, Texas -later told a reporter that investigators had verified that Lucas was indeed involved in cult activities.

"Following the discovery in Matamoros, Clemmie Schroeder -identified as Henry's spiritual adviser -sent to the state attorney general a map Lucas had drawn for her in 1985 that identified locations where murder, kidnapping and drug-running operations were conducted. She told a reporter for the Brownsville Herald: 'Henry told me there were a lot of different cults in Mexico who were involved in satanic worship and everything. I found the map and realized he had marked this cult and drug ring near Brownsville.' The attorney general's office chose not to take action."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pg. 88)

Henry Lee Lucas (left) and his partner, Ottis Toole

Of course the Matamoros area was not the only region Lucas claimed the Hand of Death was active. He placed another killing ranch just outside of the notorious city of Juarez where hundreds (if not thousands) of women have been murdered since 1993, some with ritualistic overtones. A decade after Constanzo's reign of terror ended another ranch with mass graves was discovered at Juarez precisely where Henry's map had indicated a cult center.

"After a decade had passed... yet another excavation was begun, at a ranch near Juarez, Mexico. That property was, strangely enough, located precisely where Henry Lee Lucas had claimed that the 'Hand of Death' cult maintained a ranch. The first reports on the Juarez ranch surfaced on December 1, 1999... a Los Angeles Times report noted that the 'clanestine burial grounds [were] practically within sight of the U.S. border.'

"Early reports indicated that authorities anticipated exhuming between 100 and 300 bodies from mass graves on the ranch, including twenty-two missing U.S. citizens and a number of former FBI and DEA informants. The investigation was quickly expanded to include at least three more possible burial grounds in the area..."
(ibid, pgs. 91-92)

Memorials to the dead women of Juarez

Once U.S. authorities took over the 1999 investigation of the Juarez ranch the body total dropped from at least 100 to only nine victims. Truly, the inter-agency work of the Mexican and U.S. authorities must be a thing to behold. Needless to say, if there is any truth to Henry's map, then we are left with many troubling questions.

Was Constanzo's cult part of a nation wide order? Was it linked to the Manson Family and the Peoples Temple? Are the murders now happening in Juarez also tied in with the Constanzo, Manson and Jones cults in some way? And if so, were all these organizations being controlled by the CIA? And if so, to what purpose? As a sociological or mind control experiment? As an act of terrorism? To corner the drug trade and escalate the Cold War? Any of these explanations are of course possible and there are even more scenarios I haven't covered. All we can be sure of is that there is much in the Constanzo saga that does not jive with mainstream accounts, as per usual. One thing that is certain is that there's more to Constanzo and his cult than what we were told.

Latin American High Weirdness: The Cults V

In part four of this series I began examining the life and times of the serial killer, drug smuggler, and some times psychic, Adolfo Constanzo. The Cuban-American Constanzo founded a cult in Mexico in the mid-1980s that quickly attracted Mexican celebrities, drug smugglers and even police officers. By the late 1980s Constanzo had thrown in with the Hernandez drug cartel of Matamoros, where human sacrifice became a regular feature of Constanzo's cult. Interestingly, one of Constanzo's chief recruiting tools for his blood cult was apparently the 1987 horror film The Believers, starring Martin Sheen.

"...gang members told police that they were initiated into the religious ways of the cult through repeated viewings of the movie, The Believers.

"Young Serafin Hernandez Garcia told authorities it was his favorite film.

"There were startling similarities between Constanzo's gang and the evil cult portrayed in The Believers. Most significantly, both groups practiced human sacrifice to attain protection and power from the gods...

"Many video stores along the border said they could barely keep the film in stock once its cult connection was announced. 'You'd think it was a new release, but it came out three years ago,' said one dismayed video store employee...

"Not all video stores joined in the bonanza, however. Once word was out, a leading Texas chain store removed The Believers from the shelves of their video section. Officials said the move was made because the company felt it wasn't right to profit from the nauseating slaughter in Matamoros..."
(Hell Ranch, Clifford L. Linedecker, pgs. 95-96)

The obsession Constanzo's cult had with The Believers is very interesting. While not immensely popular during its initial release it is now considered something of a forgotten classic. The film concerns a police psychiatrist (Sheen) who becomes involved in a series of child murders occurring in New York City. The children are killed in a highly ritualistic fashion and it is soon revealed that a cult with high society connections (including ties to the police) is behind the killings.

More and more I can't help but feel that this film is significant on several levels beyond its connection to the Constanzo cult. In a truly creepy synch, one of the cult leaders is also the head of a prominent children's charity which seemingly is used to recruit victims for the cult's sacrifices. I couldn't help but being reminded of Jerry Sandusky and the whole Penn State sex scandal upon rewatching this film recently. The film's star, Martin Sheen, was in another film, Apocolypse Now, which I attach great esoteric significance too. I've written on it before here.

Sheen in Apocalypse Now

Even more significantly, The Believers was written my Mark Frost, who would go on to create the legendary TV series Twin Peaks with maverick filmmaker David Lynch. Regular readers of this blog know that I consider Twin Peaks one of the finest accounts of magick to ever be released. I've written heavily on the TV series here, the viewing of which I compared to an initiation into an occult society. Previously I had credited Lynch with much of the esoterica that made its way into Peaks but in light of Frost's work on The Believers I may have to revise my opinion a bit. Frost's script demonstrates both an accurate depiction of occult rites in addition to compelling links between the occult and high society.

Mark Frost

Were these VIP links part of the appeal the film had amongst Constanzo's followers? And what of the occult sacrifices of children which have darkly dogged the Constanzo cult since their saga began to break in the newspapers? Perhaps the highly realistic depictions of Afro-Carribean religious practices were the sole appeal, as mainstream sources have contended. Whatever the case, there is clearly more to the Constanzo cult than even the tabloids would acknowledge. For the rest of this piece I shall examine some of the more curious aspects the Constanzo cult.

We will start with Constanzo's religion. He is in many instances in the blogosphere (and even by researchers such as David McGowan and Michael Newton) described as a Satanists. His mother and other family members have sworn up and down that Constanzo was nothing but a good Catholic boy. Many have claimed that he practiced Santeria.

"Santeria in its present form was first practiced around 2500 B.C. in what is now known as Nigeria, on the banks of expansive Niger River. It was then that Yoruba tribesmen first developed the nature religion that allowed mortals to approach the gods through worship of natural objects such as shells, feathers, and herbs.

"Santeria -Spanish for 'worship of saints' -spread to the New World in the 1500s when slaves brought captured black Africans to the Southern United States, and the Caribbean as an inexpensive source of manual labor.

"The Africans had no choice but to work for their new masters, but they didn't really abandon their old gods. Ordered to adopt the white man's religion, many of them outwardly complied and, to their masters, seemed to have adopted Catholicism and its saints. But among themselves, the slaves learned to identify each of the saints with one of their own African gods. So when they were seen by owners apparently praying to a small clay image of Saint Lazarus, for instance, they may instead have been petitioning the ancient Yoruba god and patron of the sick, Babalu-'Aye'. Or is they were kneeling before an image of Christ on the cross, they may have been seeking communion with Oloru'n-Orofi, the Creator Himself.

"The clandestine Santeria ceremonies helped homesick and frightened slaves maintain a strong bond with an Africa thousands of miles away. Gradually, the religion based on old Yoruba beliefs, with a strong meld of Catholicism, spread through the islands, Central and South America. The religion flourished in the New World, and although it maintained many of its secret ways, it gradually moved into the open; today it is widely practiced alongside Catholicism in the islands and in Latin America. Santeria established an especially strong foothold in Cuba and in Brazil, where, in slightly different form, it is known as Macumba, or Umbanda. And increasingly, worship of the old Yoruba gods has moved onto mainland North America and is growing in popularity among Hispanics, blacks, and Anglos.

"Practitioners of Santeria, called Santeros, worship a bewildering array of deities, called Orishas, who are represented in their dual role as Catholic saints and ancient African gods. They can be summoned for help during times of need or crisis. Santeros maintain that the orishas are extremely powerful, and each control specific aspects of life, such as purity,  employment, health -and death."

(Hell Ranch, Clifford L. Linedecker, pgs. 91-92)

Palo Mayombe is the other chief religion Constanzo is thought to have practiced. It is generally described as the dark side of Santeria.

"Described by experts as an evil black-magic flip side of Santeria, Palo Mayombe is a religion who disciples call for help from Catholic saints, ancient African spirit gods and the tortured souls of the enslaved dead. It has its roots in the impenetrable jungles of the African Congo, and like Santeria, its practice was melded with Catholicism by slaves after reaching the New World.

"Some santeros keep two altars in their house -one for Santeria and one for Palo Mayombe. Their approach to natural magic is similar, but there are vast differences between the two beliefs. Santeria reputedly offers its gods the blood of animal sacrifices killed quickly and humanely, while the animal and human sacrifices offered during some Palo Mayombe rituals are deliberately tortured and horribly mutilated, Pain and fear are powerful elements of the rites.

"Sometimes the blood of the sacrificial victim is consumed by participants in ceremonies, acts occasionally followed by other vile forms of necrophilia and cannibalism. Parts of victims are boiled in black n'gangas -similar to the crimson-tinged cauldrons found in the ceremonial hut on the Santa Elena Ranch. Palo Mayombe cultists believe that the spirits of the victims will become trapped in the cauldrons and enslaved, to be called on for protection or to carry out evil. Some Palo Mayombe practitioners prefer that brain tissue be left in skulls used in the obscene acts of necromancy so that the agonized spirits they have summoned can think and act more intelligently."
(ibid, pgs. 96-97)

Constanzo also seemingly added aspects of Mexican folk magic and rituals of the Aztecs to his belief system. Many of his victims were found with their hearts ritualistically removed in a fashion similar to how the Aztecs were thought to remove them, for instance. Is it also possible that the Sirius/Sothis religion that I've chronicled before here and here also influenced Constanzo's belief system?

Probably the two chief advocates of the so-called Sirius tradition are Robert K.G. Temple, an Oriental Studies and Sanskrit major from the University of Pennsylvania and fellow the Royal Astronomical Society, and Kenneth Grant, the former head of the Typhonian Order and Aleister Crowley disciple. Unlikely bedfellows indeed, yet both presented compelling theories of a cult whose belief system revolved around the star Sirius and that has existed in some form or other since at least ancient Sumeria. Temple built his theory off of the traditions of the Dogon people while Grant's was based upon the occult traditions Crowley taught him. Both theories held Africa to be a kind of repository of occult traditions.

Sirius

I'll allow the great Robert Anton Wilson to sum up Temple's theory:

"Temple claimed  that Earth had been visited by an advanced race from a planet in the system of the double star, Sirius, around 4500 B.C. Temple based this assertion on the fact that definite and specific knowledge of the Sirius system can be found in the mythology of the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and some surviving African tribes -knowledge which modern astronomy  has only rediscovered with the fantastically delicate instruments of the last two decades...

"...Temple's evidence... could be interpreted to indicate the arrival of people from Sirius who had come here in a physical space ship around 4500 B.C. According to Temple, information about this had been passed on through various initiatory orders in the ancient Mediterranean and in Africa to the present time..."
(The Cosmic Trigger, pg. 9-10)

Much of Crowley's occult system revolved around his encounter with a being he dubbed Aiwaz, a being he closely associated with Sirius. He believed that others had been contacted by Aiwaz over the centuries and thus the traditions of Sirius had spread through out the world via the worship of Aiwaz.

"In ancient Egypt, the first anthropomorphic representation to succeed the long procession of zoomorphic deities, was that of Besz, or Vesz, the dwarf god. Albert Churchward notes that 'up to the time of Ptah, or Besz, the human likeness was not given to any god or goddess, and Atum-Horus, or Amen, the son of Ptah, is the earliest divinity in perfect human form.'

"The representation of Besz, based upon the anatomical peculiarities of a pygmy race of Nilotic origin, is the first effort ever made by man to mould his god in his own image, thus supporting the overwhelming evidence that the human race emerged from lower forms of life in the equatorial regions of Africa. Upon later fanning out, the race gradually swarmed northward along the Nile valley and thence to Mesopotamia where the first colony was founded. This was Sumer, and the dwarf god, Besz, Vesz, or Vass, was probably the original for of Ai-wass; Besz, or Betch, equates with Bitch. Bast, Bastard and Beast."
(The Magical Revival, Kenneth Grant, pg. 57)

Besz

I've speculated that the ancient goddess cults revolved around Sirius worship before here. Santeria and Palo Mayombe, the two belief systems of which the bulk of Constanzo's magical practices were based around, both derived from Africa and both were very ancient belief systems. Is it possible that parts of the Sirius tradition were incorporated into these belief systems long ago? I do not know enough about either religion to answer definitively either way to that question. However, I have chronicled the overlap between Freemasonry and Haitian Vodou before here, so perhaps there are ties between Santeria and Palo Mayombe and even more ancient occult traditions. It may even be that Santeria and Palo Mayombe represent the Sirius tradition in its rawest incarnation.

As I noted in part IV of this series, the first major ritual slaying attributed to the Constanzo cult was the killing of the Calzada family, one of the prime drug cartels in Mexico at the time. Constanzo sacrificed several prominent members on Walpurgis Night, one of the chief holidays in northern and central European paganism. Is this further evidence that a more ancient occult tradition, possibly one tied to Sirius, influenced Constanzo's cult? This is the only overt evidence that I've found linking Constanzo's practices to European occultism, but I can't help but feel there are much deeper connections.

Walpurgis Night

As to the Constanzo cult itself, it was a strikingly American institution, especially in the higher levels. Of course there was the Miami-born Constanzo himself, as well as several other key followers that hailed from the U.S.

"Though downplayed in most press reports, the Matamoros cult was largely an American entity. Its leader was Adolfo Constanzo, a Cuban-American born in Miami, Florida and raised in Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Its 'high priestess' was Sara Aldrete, an honor student at Southmost, Texas College in Brownsville. One of the cult's top lieutenants, Serafin Hernandez Garcia, also lived in Brownsville and attended Southmost -as a law enforcement major. Serafin's grandfather was the owner of Rancho Santa Elena, where the cult performed its ritual sacrifices and buried many of its victims. Another cult member, drug baron Elio Hernandez Riveria, also hailed from Brownsville. Yet another lived in Weslaco, Texas."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pgs. 88-89)

I can't help but be reminded of the Peoples Temple and Jonestown when considering the perception of Constanzo's cult. While they are generally regarded as an Mexican entity in many accounts of the cult, their genesis and leadership was clearly from north of the border. The Peoples Temple was dominated by African-Americans yet the hierarchy was predominately white. The tragedy that was Jonestown unfolded in Guyana, South America, yet it was a tragedy largely involving Americans.

Many of the cult members displayed bizarre, detached behavior. In many cases they were described as emotionless -robotic, even. This was especially true of Elio Hernandez and other cult members who were arrested in the initial wave around Rancho Santa Elena.

"...None of the gang members seemed the least bit concerned. It was the damnedest thing, as if they had been arrested for a traffic ticket. Elio had actually laughed at his interrogators. 'You can't keep me here,' he had declared with complete conviction. 'Soon, I'll be gone.'

" 'They weren't worried at all,' Benitez recalled later. 'They thought we couldn't hurt them. They though they were protected.'

"It took a while to convince them otherwise."
(Buried Secrets, pgs. 30-31)

One of the most vicious of the Matamoros cultists, 'Little' Serafin Hernandez Garcia, was especially unnerving to the police.

"The interrogation of Little Serafin took five hours. As they listened, the agents sometimes crossed themselves. Some of them had wondered why their superstitious commandante kept strings of garlic, religious candles, amulets, and other charms of good luck in his office. Now they were glad to have them as they listened to young Hernandez's tale unfold.

"They had heard of black magic all their lives. Now they were seeing it work:

"A man with no soul.

"And Little Serafin did seem cold, without feeling, without any idea that what he had done was morally monstrous."
(ibid, pgs. 34-35)

In the case of Sara Aldrete, there was even evidence of a split personality.

"But investigators with the Mexico City attorney's office were unsure how to take Sara's confession because the accused 'godmother' of the cult had begun to show disturbing signs of a split personality. As the days wore on, three separate personas became evident -one for the police, one for the television cameras and a third that emerged when she talked to herself.

"U.S. Customs Service Agent Oran Neck told a reporter with the Houston Chronicle just days after Sara's arrest that she had lost touch with reality. He said that she was demonstrating a dual personality..."
(Hell Ranch, Clifford L. Linedecker, pg. 142)

Sara Aldrete

Like both Charles Manson and Jim Jones before him, Constanzo used sex as a key tool in controlling members. As I noted in part four of this series, Constanzo's primary objective in seducing Sara Aldrete was seemingly to gain control over Elio Hernandez, who had been obsessed over Aldrete for some time before either met Constanzo. Later on he forced Aldrete to have sexual relations with Hernandez to ensure the latter's loyalty to the cult. In general, Constanzo seems to have only sought out sexual relations with women when there was some benefit to his cult to be had. Control was also a big factor in his relations with men.

"He flew First Class, drove Lincoln continentals, gold Mercedes and sports cars, and wore diamond, sapphire, and ruby rings on every finger of both hands and gold necklaces around his neck. He purchased expensive jewelry and clothes for his lovers from the best stores, and twice in Brownsville he bought the same boyfriend $10,000 worth of elegant clothing in shopping sprees. He took them on trips to famous vacation resorts at Acapulco and Las Hadas. He wrote them poetry and love letters, filled with passionate promises of unending fidelity, then in a few months discarded them for new lovers. He was a social butterfly, and he was always the dominate member in his romantic relationships just as he was in business matters. Even after breakups, his cast off lovers remained mesmerized by his charm and charisma. And gradually he put together a following of lovers, ex-lovers and other privileged middle or upper-class young men who were personally devoted to him as they were to acquiring riches from the lucrative drug trade."
(ibid, pg. 28)

Its interesting that Constanzo, like both Manson and Jones, always assumed the dominate position in intercourse with men. All three seemed to have used sex with other men as a means of humiliating them and cementing control over them. Constanzo was also found of sodomizing his male victims before sacrificing them. Dominance and manipulation were the driving factors in virtually all of his sexual relations.

I've found no evidence that Constanzo was engaged in pedophilia, but it would not be out of character. Constanzo became sexually active in Miami's gay community when still a teenager and may have engaged in sex relations with much older men then. Later on, in Mexico, he seems to have primarily have sought very young men for lovers. Omar Orea, Constanzo's 'wife,' was barely 18 when he was seduced by Constanzo.

Omar (left) and Constanzo

In general, Constanzo's ties to children (or lack therefore of) have drawn much speculation. Perhaps most disturbing of all the accusations against the cult were those of child sacrifice.

"As the investigation proceeded, reports on the case grew more disturbing. Police reported finding blood-spattered altars in the homes of many of the suspected cultists, and Mexico City newspapers openly speculated that human infants had been ritually sacrificed by the group. Some reporters opined that babies might even have been bred specifically for that purpose. Michael Newton has reported that from 1987-1989, there were seventy-four unsolved ritual homicides in Mexico City; fourteen of those victims were infants."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pg. 91)

I'll remind the reader that various members of Constanzo's cult were obsessed with The Believers, a horror film revolving around a blood cult active in New York City. The plot revolves around a series of child sacrifices that the cult engages in to secure prosperity. Did Constanzo's followers possibly engage in similar rites to secure their lucrative drug trade? We shall likely never no.

And here I shall wrap things up for now. In next week's installment I shall finish up on Constanzo with several more mysterious ties between the Godfather of Matamoros and Charles Manson and Jim Jones. Stay tuned.