10 Most Terrifying Horror Movie Cults

The good Nicolas Cage movie about cults (in that it doesn't involve him being covered in bees while repeatedly yelling "not the bees!"), Mandy is a sadly underseen gem which makes perfect use of the oddball star's manic bursts of feral energy and capacity for pairing genuine emotion and extraordinary violence.

Mandy's Children Of The New Dawn and their leader, Jeremiah Sand, are straight out of the Manson Family school of hippie cults, fuelled by acid trips, excrutiating psychedelic folk rock, and a misplaced confidence in Sand's sexual magnetism.

Given that Sand is the kind of egomaniacal cult leader who truly believes that God has granted him the right to have and to take anything that he wants, you can imagine that he's the kind of guy that won't take rejection well. Like "setting people on fire" levels of not well.

It must be said, though, that even if the Children Of The Dawn and their cannibalistic biker gang cohorts are scary, they're no match for an anguished, vengeful Nicolas Cage with a crossbow and chainsaw.

Had Mandy found more of an audience, director Panos Cosmatos envisioned a sequel with Cage's Red Miller "fighting Nazi punks in a bombed-out city", but maybe it was always destined to be a cult movie on every level.