This tale of the Studio 54 stunner-turned-extraterrestrial who lured models to his Manhattan apartment for sex, money \u2013 or to give them mint face masks \u2013 is fascinating \u2026 yet fails to explain quite why so many believed his baloney<\/p>\n
Documentaries about cults all have the same task, at which they nearly all fail: explaining exactly how so many people fell under the spell of a man (it\u2019s always a man) who was, to outside observers, so obviously a damaged charlatan. None of it makes sense; it wouldn\u2019t count as a cult if it did.<\/p>\n
Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult does a messy job of telling the story of Frederick von Mierers, who spent the 1980s luring models into his spiritual enlightenment society, Eternal Values. Von Mierers\u2019 life was all lies, chaos and mystery and it would be hard to set it out coherently, however diligently you tried. But this is like trying to keep up with an erratic bar-room raconteur who keeps glossing over the important bits so they can skip on to the next bit of gossip. Admittedly, each new piece of info is wildly juicy.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/0bca6d749062a069fddc28f273ef27bc2c110b40\/194_129_1498_1198\/master\/1498.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=a0344cfa87671c63025751d4491ac106\" "\\"Bring")
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