The real cult leader hidden in ‘Rosemary’s Baby’
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The film just drips malevolence from every frame – no character, save for Rosemary and a few of her friends, feels entirely trustworthy. Every smile pulls just a little too hard on the corners of the mouth and shows a few too many teeth, every word of reassurance feels a little too much like an attempt to get Rosemary’s guard down, every new friend she makes in this otherwise idyllic Manhattan brownstone eyes her up in a way no one can quite put their finger on until it’s far too late.
It’s easy to say that connects this forboding atmosphere with the reputation of its director. Both for what he created and what he did, but he wasn’t the only profoundly troubling figure involved in the production, one that was infamously cursed and led to the deaths of a few of its crew members.
However, you might not have noticed as he makes his bow in the infamously terrifying ending of the film, where you might be distracted from identifying individual members of the ensemble by the presence of the literal devil himself.
One of the cloaked Satanists urging on his dark master would go on to become a genuine figure of darkness later in life. For one of them was a trained ballet dancer called Jaime Gomez, and on the surface, Gomez seemed like just another of the countless thousands of young, attractive men in Hollywood who were convinced he was the next big thing – he saw getting a bit part in such a prestigious picture as a fast track to the top, which would prove not to be the case.
No, instead of fame, he gained infamy in the 1980s for an entirely different reason.
How did this extra from ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ become a cult leader?
After a decade and a half dining out on his bit part in the horror masterpiece, Gomez finally decided to change career paths. If he wouldn’t become the next Hollywood icon, he would make himself an icon to a select group of people.
He began reinventing himself as a guru, taking on the name Michel Rostan and recruiting the youngest, most attractive, charismatic and overall, desperate people he could find. Turns out, Hollywood has a lot of those kinds of people around. Who knew?
With this group not only hanging on his every word but also recruiting other young, nubile arrivals to Hollywood in need of direction, Gomez officially began referring to his new cult as the imaginatively named Buddhafield. The group didn’t really stand for much. The doctrine was pretty much that beauty is godliness, and since Gomez was the most beautiful person on Earth, this made him the incarnation of God. It also involved an awful lot of ballet lessons. Teach what you know, I guess.
In true cult fashion, it also involved an awful lot of alleged sexual abuse of his followers. Despite the fact that Gomez demanded that all his followers remain celibate. After the increased scrutiny of cults in America following the Waco massacre, Gomez upped sticks to Hawaii, where, horrifically enough, Buddhafield is still active to this day. At the very least, word has spread about them, with no less than two documentaries being made on their activities today.
Someone involved in the production of Rosemary’s Baby turned out to be a wrong ‘un. I’d never have guessed.
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Content retrieved from: https://dangerousminds.net/pop-culture/real-life-cult-leader-hidden-rosemary-baby/.
