TV REVIEWS : Uncanny Koresh Parallels in Ervil LeBaron, ‘Prophet of Evil’

If timing is everything, “Prophet of Evil: The Ervil LeBaron Story” should attract unusual attention tonight (at 9 p.m. on CBS, Channels 2 and 8).

There are indications that the air date might have been rushed, but that’s understandable given the uncanny parallels between Waco/David Koresh and this true story of another cult leader (Brian Dennehy), who said God told him to start killing people. Several of LeBaron’s estimated 25-30 victims, slain throughout the Western United States and Mexico in the 1970s and ‘80s, were his own kin.

Writer and co-producer Fred Mills’ gripping script charts LeBaron’s bloody trail in this Modern Western as veteran director Jud Taylor keeps the violence to a necessary minimum. The show also dramatizes many of LeBaron’s 13 wives and 50 kids, notably wife No. 13, the young Rena Chynoweth LeBaron (the luminous Tracey Needham), whom LeBaron has kill a rival minister in the movie’s most wrenching murder.

Dennehy, with that characteristic grin, works an insidious, chilling charm into his character, alternately hugging and terrifying his brood of children and assorted hangers-on.

In fact, the producers now scrambling to get the Waco story tied up and into production might as well relax. Ervil LeBaron, a disaffected Mormon who splintered from the central church in a blood feud with his brother and who died in a Utah prison in 1981 at age 56, is Charles Manson, the Rev. Jim Jones and Koresh rolled into one. Even LeBaron’s self-styled “Lamb of God” biblical signature was preempted by Koresh, whose very home, Texas, also plays a major role in this movie.

It’s a production that is impossible to disassociate from the myriad images captured in Waco and Jonestown. It’s all here, the whole cult of the redeemer and charismatic polygamist, the robot-like flock that follows orders “to kill false prophets for God,” the self-appointed avenging angel.