In yet another fine weekend for protest groups, the anti-scientology group FactNet has warned that "lawsuits may soon be flying" over John Travolta's upcoming Battlefield Earth. FactNet accuses the movie - adapted from a sci-fi novel by cult founder L Ron Hubbard and starring celebrity scientologist Travolta - of accommodating "subliminal messages to surreptitiously recruit new members from the movie audience". FactNet goes on to allege that the would-be religion - beloved of Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and other film stars ...

Scientology's biggest star comes to Canada to make a movie that will bring church's values and villains to a theatre near you Members of the Church of Scientology were in Yorkville this past holiday weekend, questionnaires in hand, to collect opinions about the church from passersby. It's been a difficult couple of years for Scientology, which is trying to polish its fringe image as it awaits word from Revenue Canada about its application for charitable status. But positive PR may be ...

THE MOST MAIL Daily Variety has received this year about a single article has come in response to a story that the newspaper will never run. The subject was Scientology and its influence on Hollywood. The story was in the process of being researched by our film editor, Dan Cox, who recently left the paper to accept a job as a literary agent without finishing the article. In approaching his story, Cox was impressed by the fact that the Scientologists, who've ...

outside Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles; magazine “Bay Guardian” with cover story “Scientology secrets revealed in 2 million dollar consumer fraud case”; outside AOLA building in Los Angeles; news footage from Julie Christofferson Titchbourne trial in Portland, with Scienos picketing VO: The ’80s saw a series of lawsuits brought against the Church of Scientology. Ex-members united, claiming they had been lied to and bilked out of millions of dollars. In 1985, an ex-Scientologist was awarded $39 million after she claimed the ...

The star of Phenomenon claims the movie is close to real life and says he can cure people with his bare hands — but is it just cult fiction? In John Travolta's latest movie, Phenomenon, the once disco-dancing star plays an ordinary man who is miraculously given supernatural abilities. It sounds like fantasy — but in real life John believes he, too, has weird powers. Behind that famous smile, the 42-year-old gentle family man is an obsessive cult follower who claims ...

There's one thing worse than an over-hyped author, and that's a self-over-hyped author. The late L Ron Hubbard falls into the latter class, thanks to the efforts of the Scientology industry to promote his fiction alongside his non-fiction works. Hubbard (who once declared that the best way to get rich would be to start your own religion, and who later proceeded to do exactly that) continues to attract devotion and hatred in about equal measures. Nevertheless, his services to science fiction ...

Scientologists emerge as creators of mystery-shrouded movie firm Is it just a movie company, this one owned and run by members of a controversial church? Or is it a front? Future Films, the mysterious movie company that arrived in Burbank and in Garland, Texas, last month with ambitious goals and a huge marketing splash, is financed and managed by a small group of high-level members of the Church of Scientology. Critics of the church, who label the religion a cult and ...

In 1981, St. Martin's Press was offered a sure thing. L. Ron Hubbard, the pulp writer turned religious leader, had written his first science-fiction novel in more than 30 years. If St. Martin's published it, Hubbard aides promised the firm, subsidiary organizations of Hubbard's Church of Scientology would buy at least 15,000 copies. "Battlefield Earth," priced at $24.95, was released the next year in hardcover, rare for a science-fiction title. Despite mixed reviews, the book quickly sold 120,000 copies — enough ...

[This is a reprint of an article published on Dec. 22, 1988 in the St. Petersburg Times.]

Operating under auspices of the Church of Scientology are dozens of groups, many of them separate legal entities. Untangling Scientology's lines of organizations can be difficult; even the sect's own charts that have been used in court cases are complex. Here are some of Scientology's organizations. Flag Service Organization — The legal name of Scientology's Clearwater operation, which serves as the sect's spiritual headquarters. Before 1981 the organization was part of the Church of Scientology of California, and Pinellas County officials ...

The late L. Ron Hubbard was a respectable science fiction writer in the 1940s and '50s. He published a number of stories in Astounding Stories, the magazine in which some of SF's leading lights, such as Frank Herbert, Issac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, published their early works. In the mid-1950s, however, Hubbard turned his mind in on itself and developed the self-help doctrine of Dianetics, which later developed into the cult religion Scientology. After more than two decades out of science ...

The writings of L. Ron Hubbard are a mystery. Not the writings on Dianetics and Scientology, topics on which the late Hubbard wrote dozens of books and manuals. No, the mystery is Hubbard’s science-fiction writing — specifically, why it’s selling so well. Before his death last year, Hubbard celebrated his 50 years in writing by producing “Battlefield Earth,” an 800-page tome that critics suggested was a better doorstop than book. That was followed, because of what Hubbard called “enthusiastic response,” by ...

In the '30s and '40s, before founding the Church of Scientology, the late Lafayette Ron Hubbard was a popular and prolific science-fiction writer. His 1948 novel "Final Blackout" among other works is considered by many a classic of the genre. Recently, Hubbard returned to the field with "Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000," a lengthy epic of heroic Earthmen's resistance to alien invaders. Alien invasion is once again on the agenda in "The Invaders Plan," Volume 1 of a ...

THE son of a wealthy landowner has been rescued by his family from a cult with whom he spent more than £100,000. Andrew Dobie, 22, was held a virtual prisoner by his family in a remote cottage where the windows had been nailed shut and the keys hidden. There he was rigorously deprogrammed to reverse the teachings of the cult, the Church of Scientology — an organisation branded immoral in a High Court judgment last year. 'It wasn't the money they ...

"Corrupt, sinister and dangerous" were the words used to describe the Church of Scientology in a judgment given by Mr Justice Latey this summer. He also referred to it as "immoral and socially obnoxious". But who controls the Church now? A major Sunday Times Magazine investigation into the activities of the cult in America and Britain has uncovered a disturbing and extraordinary story — the takeover of the organisation by a small band of youthful fanatics following the disappearance of the ...

As I read the article about the Church of Scientology in your paper I was reminded of all the earlier, similar claims and allegations I've read in various publications over the years — and I've never seen any hard proof. It seems to me that if even a small part of these tales were true we'd see a decline in the activities of the church. It seems to be prospering more than ever! I have seen literally hundreds of proclamations signed ...

A judges' panel of motion picture professionals has been chosen to select the winners of a nation-wide "Battlefield Earth" logo design contest for student and amateur artists. The contest offers a grand prize of $1,000 and possible screen credit on two upcoming movies from Hollywood - Salem Productions' back-to-back theatrical film versions of L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction bestseller of alien invasion and conquest, "Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000." The judges' panel for the logo competition - open ...

Those who like to imagine a great city might be pleased to learn that, some time after the year 3000 AD, Denver is destined to become the capital of the world. But the next millenium truly looks a mess, what with ecological devastation and the demise of most of us humans as we fall under the brutal domination of the evil Psychlos, intergalactic warlords. Take heart, for this is the stuff of Hollywood dreams. The pop seller, Battlefield Earth, by L. ...

There's a good chance that local actors will play at least one of the lead roles in two $20 million science-fiction movies based on L. Ron Hubbard's best-selling novel "Battlefield Earth." At least that's the word from press agent Ed Margulies, who said first-round auditions for the roles of Jonnie and Chrissy have been narrowed from 350 actors and actresses to five — four from the Denver area and one from Dallas. Marque Gritta, 25, and Dan Shadwell, 22, both of ...

[Picture / Caption: Big Actor: Ted, a three-story high balloon, has been appearing around Hollywood heralding the production of two films based on L. Ron Hubbard's novel, "Battlefield Earth." Producer William Immerman, left, and director Ken Annakin, right, join in the stunt making.] When independent producer William Immerman announced months ago he would be filming L. Ron Hubbard's best selling science-fiction saga, "Battlefield Earth," as two back-to-back productions (each costing $20 million), he immediately notified all the science-fiction conventions to start ...