{"id":193186,"date":"2025-09-30T21:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T21:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/193186\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T21:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T21:30:08","slug":"the-awful-disney-movie-that-starred-two-cult-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/193186\/","title":{"rendered":"The awful Disney movie that starred two cult leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"'Camp<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ \tBuena Vista Pictures Distribution)<\/p>\n

Tue 30 September 2025 20:15, UK <\/p>\n

Hollywood history is littered with unusual coincidences, and they don\u2019t come much stranger than two stars of a family-friendly Disney<\/a> movie ending up holding positions in organisations that were later alleged to be cults, although one is admittedly much clearer cut than the other.<\/p>\n

Directed by Jonathan Prince, 1994\u2019s Camp Nowhere isn\u2019t even good (or bad) enough to become a cult favourite (pun possibly intended) among the audience who grew up watching it, ironically or not. It was one of the countless turgid kids\u2019 films the \u2018Mouse House\u2019 has been churning out for decades, and its unusual legacy might well be the only interesting thing about it.<\/p>\n

The by-the-numbers narrative is derivative of a thousand other children\u2019s flicks, with a youngster and his friends thoroughly miserable after being dispatched to a summer computer camp. To try and make the best of a bad situation, they blackmail Christopher Lloyd\u2019s teacher to pose as a counsellor for an entirely fictitious camp of their own, opening the doors for a fun-filled time, until their parents turn up to visit.<\/p>\n

So far, so formulaic, if it wasn\u2019t for the fact that Camp Nowhere featured early roles for 10 Things I Hate About You\u2018s Andrew Keegan and Smallville\u2018s Allison Mack. The latter served 21 months behind bars<\/a> for being a high-ranking associate and confidant of Keith Raniere, who co-founded the NXIVM group, and was sentenced to 120 years in prison for being at the forefront of the organisation.<\/p>\n

NXIVM\u2019s cult credentials are pretty cut and dried, but Keegan\u2019s situation is different. He was most certainly accused of being a cult leader, which he denied, naturally. \u201cI don\u2019t know anybody else that\u2019s being called a cult leader, so it\u2019s kind of like a badge of honour,\u201d he said on the Pod Meets World<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\n

What is true is that Keegan founded Full Circle in 2014, which he described as \u201ca non-denominational spiritual community centre where people of all beliefs and backgrounds come together to meditate, practice yoga, and engage artistically,\u201d so take from that what you will, although the organisation was shuttered in 2017, two years after it was raided for selling kombucha without a licence, but the actor wasn\u2019t there at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking back, it was insane,\u201d he added. \u201cI was putting down tens of thousands of dollars, but we opened it up and spent three years and really did build an amazing friend group,\u201d with Full Circle\u2019s headquarters located in an \u201cold Hare Krishna\u201d temple. Again, not necessarily a cult, even if a 2014 deep dive by Shyam Dodge and Shanrah Wakefield sought to paint a slightly different story.<\/p>\n

While visiting Full Circle HQ, they were met by a man who called himself \u2018Third Eye\u2019, who introduced the group\u2019s communal talking parrot, Krishna, and revealed that he was one of the eight \u201ccore members\u201d who were \u201cenlightened\u201d under the leadership of Keegan, who, it was noted, had \u201cthe ultimate say on all things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other members referred to Full Circle as \u201cadvanced spiritualism\u201d or \u201cthe highest spiritualism founded on universal knowledge,\u201d so once more, take that as you will. Wherever it falls on the spectrum between \u2018a cult\u2019 and \u2018not a cult\u2019, it\u2019s still weird that two actors who became involved with so-called \u2018spiritual\u2019 organisations were both cast members in the same Disney flick.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Buena Vista Pictures Distribution) Tue 30 September 2025 20:15, UK Hollywood history is littered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[107012,3716,88,206],"class_list":{"0":"post-193186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-cult","9":"tag-disney","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}