Circle of Power
1981 film by Bobby Roth
Circle of Power, also known as Mystique, Brainwash and The Naked Weekend, is a 1981 drama thriller film, co-produced by Gary Mehlman, Anthony Quinn and Jeffrey White, and based on the nonfiction book The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled. It stars Yvette Mimieux in one of her final film performances.
Plot
The hard-driven Bianca Ray is the chief executive of an international advertising corporation called "Mystique" who feels the gathered executive leadership is in decline. The organization is known for its effective and successful "Executive Development Training", or EDT. They are offered to take the training or face possible termination. The story highlights Jack and Lyn Nilsson, who are a decent all-American couple. As an aspiring young junior executive who is up for a promotion to vice-president, Jack concludes he and Lyn must take the training or he won’t be considered for advancement.
These executives (all men) and their wives are required to spend a weekend with Bianca and her training staff at a luxury resort where they are put under increasing psychological pressure. As a prerequisite to the training they all sign a waiver giving the company permission to physically and psychologically debase them for the duration of the course. The trainees are split into two groups by gender and are brutally forced to face their perceived shortcomings, such as obesity, alcoholism, closeted homosexuality, and cross-dressing. The mostly black hotel staff, familiar with the training, watch from the sidelines providing social commentary to each other.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Circle of Power” as 1981 film by Bobby Roth. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1981 film by Bobby Roth. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5121484. 6 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 6 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Circle of Power” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.