Jim Jones was the quintessential Big Brother. You couldn't see his eyes, hidden behind the aviator shades even indoors, but he and his voice were everywhere, audiovisually haranguing and watching you. You could check out of his Hotel Jonestown, but you could never leave.

	Jim Jones' effect on his followers is detailed in the documentary "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple." Click photo for larger image. 'Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple' Rating: R in nature for language and images of graphic violence. Director: Stanley Nelson. Web site: www.firelightmedia.org

Few horror stories have the voyeuristic staying power of this one: The vats of poison, the bloated bodies under the tropical sun -- unerasable images of a "revolutionary suicide" -- remain, along with unanswered questions in director Stanley Nelson's riveting documentary, "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple."

Jones, after all, was a bona-fide civil rights pioneer, who practiced as well as preached integration as early as the '50s. A large majority (80 percent) of his followers were African-American. His was really a black church led by a white minister. He built a congregation that promised food, clothing, shelter and retirement homes to its people -- and delivered. Sure, folks had to give a 20-percent tithe (which evolved into giving all their money and possessions) to the church, but that wasn't so unusual and they did it voluntarily. In the utopian-community business, a deal's a deal.

Unknown to the rank-and-file utopians was that, as a child in Indiana, their color-blind leader had evidenced a morbid fascination with death and charismatic religion from age 5, stabbing and solemnly burying cats for his rituals.

This Indiana Jones needed no ministerial training to start his own offshoot of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in his early 20s. At 34, he moved it West to a commune-type locale in Ukiah, Calif. -- rechristened the Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church. In the early '70s, it relocated to San Francisco, where Jones ingratiated himself with local politicos and became an "activist." Newsreels show him prominently featured next to such candidates as George Moscone at rallies. For supporting Moscone's successful mayoral bid, Jones got an appointment to the city's housing commission. His following grew.

So much for Genesis.

Exodus came in 1977 to South America, when he bought a large tract of jungle land deep inside Guyana and rapidly built a settlement that housed 1,000 people. "The only way to sustain the operation," says one of Nelson's interviewees, "was to isolate his followers down there." People who wanted to leave Jonestown were allegedly prevented from doing so.

When the unraveling came, it came fast. An expose in New West magazine reported coercion, financial corruption and drug as well as sexual abuse. Jones had sex with any number of women and offered to sodomize anyone (female or male) who wanted him to -- which evidently many did.

"Jim said all of us were homosexuals," one survivor tells Nelson, "and he was the only heterosexual on the planet."

Huh?

This guy was more wacko than Waco. Enough constituents' complaints to that effect propelled California Congressman Leo Ryan to Jonestown with a camera crew to find out for himself what was going on. Thanks to the amazing record captured by that crew, we actually see notes ("I want to leave!") being passed to the Ryan party.

That was the worst form of betrayal to Jones, of course, and the reason why Ryan's visit was so shattering: It amounted to a nuclear invasion of his nuclear family. The next day, Nov. 18, 1978, Ryan was shot and killed on Jones' orders. But the heroic congressman's death was lost in the shuffle of what happened next: Over the PA system, Jones announced they were under attack and ordered everyone to escape the misery that would befall them by "going over" to the other side, where they would find peace.

Someone has a tape recorder running, and in the film's most chilling moments, we hear his exhortations -- "Quickly, quickly, people!" -- and children crying in the background as cyanide-laced strawberry Flav-R-Aid (not Kool-Aid, FYI) is distributed. Jones wants the kids to die first. A woman gets on the mike and says, "They aren't crying because they are in pain, they're just crying because the juice is bitter tasting, that's all."

More chilling is the final number: 911 -- the biggest mass suicide in history, or, more precisely, the biggest self-performed mass murder.

In this fifth of Nelson's documentaries (including the excellent "Death of Emmett Till" of 2003), Nelson intercuts archival footage and on-site audio and videotapes with survivor interviews (some 80 Peoples Temple members were away on a field trip at the time). Ryan's aide and a soundman who survived the attack that killed Ryan and his cameraman also provide commentary. Nelson employs no talking-head sociologists, cult experts or psychiatrists to "explain" things for us.

The most telling remark comes from a former PT member: "No one ever goes and joins a cult. They join a church."

Otherwise, Nelson wisely leaves us to our devices in determining the fine line between faith and fanaticism, charisma and insanity. Hitler and Huey Long come to mind -- the belief in someone who offers security, authority and "the answer" in times of tumult.

Watching footage of Jones' congregants building their church and homes and tilling the soil at their communal farm in Guyana, we see that most of them are clearly quite happy. The irony is that, in many ways, Jonestown was succeeding -- not failing -- and Jones had done an impressive job of carving out a self-sufficient collective community there.

What could turn such people into zombies who would kill themselves after first murdering their own children? If an evangelist told his huge TV audience to drink poison on the air today, how many would do it?

Depends on the evangelist -- whether the one that all the king's men, women and children put their faith in turns out to be a total lunatic.

Opens tomorrow at the Harris Theater, Downtown.