Mysterious Two Reviews

Made in 1979 but not aired until 1982, writer-director Gary Sherman's made-for-TV movie was inspired by stories about a cult that revolved around a couple, Ti and Do, who convinced their followers that they would one day be whisked away from earth by extraterrestrials. He (John Forsythe) and She (Priscilla Pointer) appear in an abandoned missile silo, their arrival heralded by an unusual configuration of stars. A diverse cross section of people heed an inner call, abandoning their homes, leaving behind family members and divesting themselves of most of their possessions and striking out to find He and She. Tim Armstrong (James Stephens) also follows the stars, looking for his girlfriend, Natalie (Karen Werner), who's enthralled with the couple. Tim teams up with Randall (Vic Tayback), a magazine reporter who wants to write an expose about He and She, who've surfaced, gathered followers and then vanished several times; they join the believers who follow He and She out into the desert only to find themselves alone, tired, thirsty, hungry and dirty. Have they been cruelly abandoned to die, or is this a final test of their faith? Sherman's film, which was intended as a pilot but never went to series, resurfaced on video in 1997, after 39 members the Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide at behest of their leader, Marshall Applewhite; they believed a space ship cruising in the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet was coming for them and they had no more need of their earthly bodies. Applewhite and his late wife, Bonnie Lu Nettles, were the couple about whom Sherman had heard nearly 20 years earlier.