Satan Lives and what that means for society

Back on track, kind of, with my horror movie list. Last night's choice was the documentary Satan Lives. LET'S TALK ABOUT IT!

Satan Lives is the newest documentary from Banger Films who brought us documentaries like Metal: A Headbanger's Journey and Super Duper Alice Cooper. Now Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn are traveling from Texas to the Vatican meeting with satanists, exorcists, some believers, some non-believers, extremely educated individuals, and some pop culture icons.


Satan Lives is posing the questions, who is Satan? What is our fascination with him? And how did this get so out of control?

It features a tone of interviews with really fascinating people but let's talk about some of my favorites - first up is Linda Blair, who of course plays Regan in The Exorcist. It was a really eye opening interview for someone who was not around when the movie first came out. When The Exorcist dropped it changed the world in a strange way - all of a sudden everyone believed in demons and possession and a lot of them thought they themselves were possessed. Linda speaks about how even though she was a young girl, she could see that the reporters were asking her questions that no small child would know the answer to. Does the devil exist? How do we deal with him?
The Exorcist also brought around the rise of exorcists. Back in the day the Vatican had something like 30 exorcists and now they've got over 300. Is this because our society is using demonic possession as a scapegoat? Or is it because movies like The Exorcist opened the eyes of the public to the true demons out there?

The documentary also sits down with Fran and Dan Keller who were involved in the "Oak Hill Satanic Ritual Abuse" case. In 1991 Fran and her husband owned a small day care but were accused of sadistically abusing several children. They were sentenced to decades in prison despite lack of trustworthy evidence but were freed in 2013 based on the obvious misconduct by the prosecution and authorities. This happened during the "satanic panic" that spread throughout North America during the 80's and 90's. I'm sure you've all heard of that time, when cops went crazy thinking everyone was involved in some sort of cult and any kind of abuse to a child was absolutely the work of satanists. A lot of innocent people were either jailed, or had their reputation destroyed due to all the crazy allegations flying around during that time.

Fran and Dan were heartbreaking to watch. At one point they showed the two of them the interviews with the two very young children who accused them and it's just so extremely emotional.

Speaking of Satanic Panic, the documentary also talks about the book Michelle Remembers which I had never heard of before and is actually what started the satanic panic. And it happened right next to me in Victoria, BC! This was a book published in 1980 written by a Canadian psychiatrist named Lawrence Pazder and his future wife Michelle Smith, who at the time was his patient. Michelle Remembers was the first book written about satanic ritual abuse and became the template for satanic panic and how everyone saw what satanic rituals and abuse were. The book explains how during many therapy sessions Michelle discovered some repressed memories from her childhood where she was forced into rituals and witnessed murders of babies, animals, and just about every stereotypical satanic thing we know today. Obviously, this book is complete bullshit, investigators have looked into all of these accusations but have never found any evidence of anything like this happening. But it was too late, Michelle Remembers had captured the attention of the world.

The documentary also speaks with Zeena Schreck who is the daughter of Anton LaVey (the creator of the Church of Satan). I'm actually secretly obsessed with Zeena...full disclosure...I find her bizarre and beautiful and nuts and I love her. Zeena is famous for many reasons, but the documentary covers her childhood and how she was the first highly publicized Satanic baptism and also when she became the spokesperson for the Church of Satan during the satanic panic. She speaks openly about growing up in the Church and how it affected her.

Zeena watched as the world became obsessed with Satan and Satanists and felt the need to speak up for the Church of Satan during the 80's and show that these were normal people, not a bunch of psycho killers kidnapping children and murdering cats. Zeena was made the High Priestess and went out into the media to combat this hysteria. She worked alongside government sectors and law enforcement to educate them about the realities of Satanism and what really went on, helping the police to pulls themselves out of this hysteria and stop accusing every 17 year old with long black hair of killing babies.

Zeena has since renounced the Church of Satan and has her own religion which I keep trying to understand but have no idea where to start, and she also is a Tantric Buddhist.

Satan Lives is a fascinating roller coaster ride through the last few decades, taking an unbiased look at the world's obsession with the devil. I thoroughly enjoyed it and learned so many fun new facts. I would love to watch it again and I highly recommend it!

It caused me to take a long hard look at my own beliefs about the Devil and how we, as a society, perceive him to be. I don't believe in God, therefore I don't believe in the Devil. But I am big on ghosts and spirits. I struggle internally a bit because sometimes I believe that demons do exist, but how can I believe in demons if I strongly believe that the Devil doesn't? Usually I just end up thinking perhaps there are just very evil spirits out there that we have demonized? I'm not sure.

What I do know for sure is that society uses the Devil to blame everything on. Bad guys in the middle east? They're the Devil. Serial killers? They're the Devil. And we do this to balance what is good and bad, to help us understand what is evil and what is not. Perhaps society as a whole is not ready to accept that people are just evil, terrible things can happen, the world can fall apart. And it's no one's fault but our own. There is no holy force controlling these things.

/end of personal rant.....ooops.

Anyway,
I loved this documentary and give it a strong 10/10

Stay spooky!