If the electric current popularity of stuff like Hereditary, Netflix'southward Wild Wild Country and, now, The Endless teaches us anything, it'south this: sects sell.

Satanic cults take provided staple horror-movie nemeses since at least 1934'south The Black True cat, featuring Boris Karloff as a crazed occultist bent on homo sacrifice. Merely their number really began to multiply on screen in the late 60s and 70s, with the cultural turn towards witchiness and occult themes that characterised the hangover of the hippie era. Ii 1968 films, Rosemary'south Baby and The Devil Rides Out, pointed the mode.

Go the latest from the BFI

Sign up for BFI news, features, videos and podcasts.

Meanwhile, back in the existent world, things were getting fifty-fifty weirder. Peace, honey and the countercultural dream of communal living revealed their nightmare side with the Manson Family murders of 1969. And the communes of California had more horrors in shop: the fated millenarian cults Peoples Temple and Sky's Gate each swelled their churches with the seekers and strays of the 'Me' decade.

Brainwashing, doomsday prophecies, narcissistic leaders – cults provide a heady brew that filmmakers keep to dish upward by the ladleful, from The Master (2012) to Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011). Such films probe the limits of club mentality: nosotros all want to belong, merely how far would nosotros go?

The Seventh Victim (1943)

Director: Marker Robson

The Seventh Victim (1943)

Part of the unsurpassed string of atmospheric horrors made by Val Lewton for RKO during the early 1940s, The 7th Victim retains a real shock value to this solar day – though non only because of its scare tactics. Mary (Kim Hunter), a immature adult female at a Cosmic boarding school, is told her older sister, Jacqueline (Jean Brooks), has gone missing and stopped paying the schoolhouse fees. Unable to continue her schooling, Mary travels to NYC to track her downward, eventually encountering a circle of Palladists who have her sis in their influence.

The paradigm for all subsequent cult films, from Rosemary'southward Babe on, The Seventh Victim boasts plenty of the unnerving shadowplay that makes Lewton'due south films so special. But what makes it stand out – certainly in the context of 40s cinema, nevermind a moving picture fabricated in the midst of the war effort – is its doleful, death-haunted quality. The devil worshippers may go away with a light ticking off, but the moving picture's terminal suggestion that some souls are only driven by a decease impulse packs a profoundly disturbing punch.

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Director: Roman Polanski

Rosemary's Infant (1968)

Along with the aforementioned year's Dark of the Living Dead, Rosemary's Baby was a resounding wake-upwardly call for horror cinema and its audiences. The terrifying stuff didn't just take place in some gothic castle or haunted business firm. It could be out there on the streets likewise, in the modern 24-hour interval. Hell, your next-door neighbours might even be in league in Beelzebub himself.

Mia Farrow is the nervy New Yorker who begins to believe exactly that in Roman Polanski's supremely unsettling occult criterion. Her new neighbours ingratiate their manner into her life with good luck charms and insidious friendliness, and before she knows it she's being sized up every bit mother fabric for the son of Satan. Horror cinema at its twitchy, paranoid best, Rosemary'due south Baby gear up a tendency for diabolical terror that led to The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976).

The Devil Rides Out (1968)

Manager: Terence Fisher

The Devil Rides Out (1968)

The best horror moving-picture show Hammer ever made has Christopher Lee as a force for good (for once), contesting a sect of satanists led past the dastardly Mocata (Charles Gray). Based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley, The Devil Rides Out is set in 1920s England, where Lee'due south Duc de Richleau finds out an one-time friend has been dabbling with pentagrams and black magic – not to mention the odd spot of caprine animal sacrificing.

One-half a century on, at that place'south still something utterly os-chilling virtually moments of the ensuing tour between good and evil. Even the obviously dated quality of the special effects only adds to their spectral spookiness – from the bogeyman of the caprine animal-devil Baphomet at an orgiastic ritual on Salisbury Plain to the sustained onslaught of terror and temptation visited upon the Duc and his friends equally they stand guard within the safety of a magic circle. Information technology's a key moving-picture show in what'south been called the Black Aquarius, the occult wave in British culture in the 60s and 70s.

The Wicker Man (1973)

Director: Robin Hardy

The Wicker Man (1973)

The high priest of movies about cults, The Wicker Man sets us down in a Scottish island community where Christianity has been abased in favour of paganism, superstition and aboriginal rituals. A devout Cosmic police sergeant (Edward Woodward) arrives from the mainland to search for a missing schoolgirl, but gets no aid from the islanders – nor from the sinister local laird, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee). Meanwhile, in that location'southward next year's harvest to recollect almost…

It's difficult to believe that Robin Hardy's film was dumped into a B-picture show slot (accompanying Don't Wait At present) when it was first released, substantially chopped down, in 1973. In the 45 years since and then, The Wicker Man has bloomed into a cultural miracle – a prepare text for any discussion of folk horror or the onetime weird Britain, and a film that'south spawned not but a slew of imitators just (as of 2018) its own Alton Towers rollercoaster.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

In the second part of the Indiana Jones saga, movie theater's favourite archeologist took a break from battling Nazis to find himself up confronting the deadly Thuggee cult, a existent-life brotherhood that robbed and murdered its style through centuries of India's history, claiming allegiance to Kali, the goddess of devastation.

In an hugger-mugger temple beneath the opulent splendour of Pankot Palace, Indiana (Harrison Ford) finds the Thuggee zealots conducting ritual homo sacrifice in terrifyingly fiery ceremonies. The darkest moment of the franchise sees even our hero proving susceptible to the mania of the cult, brainwashed after drinking the 'claret of Kali' and making ready to send Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) to her end. For more Thuggee fighting, try the Cary Grant risk Gunga Din (1939) and Hammer'due south The Stranglers of Mumbai (1959).

Holy Smoke (1999)

Director: Jane Campion

Holy Smoke (1999)

An undervalued entry in the career of Jane Campion, Holy Fume side-steps the usual sinister treatment of cults on film in favour of something funnier and more than ambiguous. Kate Winslet plays Ruth, an Australian woman who has a guru-inspired spiritual enkindling while travelling around India, while Harvey Keitel is the professional person 'cult deprogrammer', P.J., employed past her parents to disengage the brainwashing. After conning her into travelling back to Australia, a battle of wits ensues, with the pair locking horns – and shortly loins too – in a remote outback dwelling.

Charlie Manson and other infamous cult leaders crop upward in a video P.J. shows as part of his exit counselling, just the influence of Ruth'south own guru comes to look somewhat benign next to the controlling beloved of a homo like P.J. The cult movie as feminist parable, Holy Smoke memorably climaxes with Keitel in a carmine dress, bruised across the desert.

Jonestown: The Life and Decease of Peoples Temple (2006)

Director: Stanley Nelson

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006)

The sub-strand of documentaries about real-life cults offers plenty of proof for the old platitude about truth existence stranger than fiction. A Tribeca festival award-winner, Stanley Nelson'southward Jonestown: The Life and Decease of Peoples Temple charts the rise of charismatic cult leader Jim Jones, who established a religious community in California and later the Guyana jungle before leading 900 of his followers in a mass suicide-murder in 1978.

Jones preached a foreign brew of Christianity and communism, operating a church that was notable for its racial inclusivity and social progressiveness. Only Nelson's picture show explores how easily utopian ideals can warp into something more dangerous. Survivors from Jonestown tell the story, aided by a wealth of archive footage from the encampments and disturbing audio extracts from the notorious 'death record', recorded as Jones compelled his customs to drinkable the spiked Kool Aid that killed so many of them.

The House of the Devil (2009)

Director: Ti West

The House of the Devil (2009)

"During the 1980s over 70% of American adults believed in the existence of abusive Satanic cults," goes the opening statistic in Ti Westward's retro shocker. It'due south a bit of a spoiler for a babysitter-in-peril story that takes the slowest of burns to get to its horrific finale. Jocelin Donahue plays the educatee whose efforts to earn some actress cash have her to a remote firm one nighttime, where she before long finds out it'due south non exactly child-minding she's wanted for.

Very effectively mimicking the visual style and techniques of 70s and 80s slasher movies, from its yellow-font credits to its grainy 16mm look, The Business firm of the Devil transcends mere nostalgia by being frigging terrifying in its own right. Without excessive use of jump scares or musical exclamations, West cranks maximum anxiety from long scenes of our heroine simply exploring the (apparently) empty house. Mind out for Lena Dunham as the vocalization of the 911 operator.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

Managing director: Sean Durkin

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

Debut writer-director Sean Durkin fabricated a splash with this creepily effective indie thriller in 2011, so information technology'due south a shame we haven't seen a follow-up feature from him as yet. Winning best director at Sundance and subsequently playing at Cannes, it's the understated yet common cold-sweat-inducing story of a immature woman (Elizabeth Olsen) who escapes from a cult in the Catskills, turning up at her sister'southward Connecticut home to tell her tale and begin a paranoid attempt to reintegrate into normie life.

Durkin'southward distinctive championship comes from cult leader Patrick'south (John Hawkes) habit of renaming his eager disciples, one of the many insidious methods of control that are revealed to us equally the narrative flashes back to life in the commune. This was the breakthrough office for Olsen, who was justly acclaimed as the jumpy, damaged woman grappling to put her mind back in order.

The Main (2012)

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

The Master (2012)

Having tackled pioneer-era spiritual fervour in There Will Be Claret (2007), Paul Thomas Anderson dropped this hypnotic origin story of one of the most debated of all new religious movements. The Church building of Scientology is never mentioned, only there are unavoidable echoes of its history and ideas in 'The Cause', and the magnetic Lancaster Dodd is a spit for 50. Ron Hubbard. In Philip Seymour Hoffman'south performance, Dodd is a fascinating report in the sheer force of personality – a snake-oil salesman who feeds off the devotion of the lost souls who flock to him.

In documentary grade, Alex Gibney and Louis Theroux have both lifted the lid on the declared cult-like power dynamics of the Church building of Scientology. Unanchored from the specifics (and perhaps the controversy) of tackling the Church head on, however, The Main plays equally a wider examination of the nature of cults and gurus – and what draws drifters similar war vet Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) to their flame.