Satan Wants You

Satan Wants You was well-received at its world premiere at SXSW Film Festival. Satan Wants You explores the story of how a book by Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist Lawrence Pazdur supposedly based on her recovered memories produced a worldwide panic about supposed Satanists torturing children. Much of this panic turned out to be utter nonsense that made millions for therapists and TV shows. The history of how this happened is absolutely fascinating. It appears as if it may have been initially well-intentioned, but the result destroyed many lives. It also shows how easy it is to manipulate human memory. It suggests the need for great skepticism about any recollection based on so-called recovered memories.

The film reconstructs the time and events through interviews with the participants and video from the period. It is an enjoyable and provocative historical examination. While the originally Satanic Panic finally died out, it has reappeared again in recent years in the more politicized version of the QAnon conspiracy. This film is recommended to those who are intrigued by history and the nature of human memory. It is truly a story of how the road to hell can be paved with good intentions.

A fantastic documentary deconstructing the fictional "Michelle Remembers" fabrication, which formally operated like a veritable contemporary Malleus Maleficarum, with the same basic medieval witch-hunt mentality since The Inquisition & witch accusations placed in modern society, which is even perpetuated by primitive xians to this day with current common parlance.

Much of the SRA hysteria took inspiration from Horror movies of the 60's & 70's, then pretenders created such facsimiles for themselves for the 80's & 90's. Protestant Churches funded such hack psychology to profit from the paranoia, creating a cottage industry of professional victims ill-gaining attention while quacks received ill-gained spoils. Mentally corrupting the impressionable and besmirching reputations of the accused.

A very telling dynamic is the fact that actual victims become retraumatized by repetitive relations, refraining from uncharacteristically volunteering themselves to public media scrutiny, preserving alleged experiences between doctor and patient.

This documentary introduces the scenario dealing with the albeit unprofessional relationship of the authors themselves. Pathological liar & sociopath "Michelle Smith" provided the victim role, allowing Pazder to fill in the blanks. Feeling envious, she pursued a relationship with the married Pazder, essentially becoming his mistress until she could fill that role herself. Whether brainwashed and/or a willing receptor of suggestions, memorized the sordid tales, automatically launching into a veritable script when needed for interviews and such.

Thus becoming a veritable template for christian psycho-the-rapists thereafter to subject their unfortunate patients and alleged perpetrators. At which point they decided to take the lucrative show on the road, on various talkshows with carnival atmospheres and gameshow-like styles, thus infecting society with lies, jumpstarting the fear trend, with likened posers.

The blame game included Heavy Metal, board games, horror movies and books, toys and cartoons! All of which are, unless otherwise specifically noted by the artists themselves, acknowledged entertainment for those intelligent enough to appreciate and differentiate. Of course, zealotry was then exploited in turn to generate notoriety and monetary accumulation! Censorship labels becoming beacons for some of the beast possessions!

The question should be posited, but who treats the doctors? A system of checks & balances has been enforced since the last panic, otherwise it would continue to be the virtual inmates running the asylum!

Featuring interviews with

* Author & Magistra Blanche Barton offers personal observations and experiences with the social hysteria, as well as relating LaVey's observations. The Black Pope successfully sued Pazder to omit references to The Church of Satan from the book, which had nothing at all to do with the lurid fiction therein.

* FBI Agent Ken Lanning, who provided the definitive report on the Satanic Panic hoax. {Recommended}

* Sociologist Jeffrey S. Victor, author of Satanic Panic: The Creation of A Contemporary Legend. {Recommended}

* Pazder's former wife, associates and friends. All of whom relate the marked change in Pazder's personality upon associating with Smith.

As an aside, the highly recommended book by the same name by Arthur Lyons, contains factual information, interviews, photography, philosophy, and rituals actually about and by LaVey and The Church of Satan.

An interesting documentary, the only complaint I would make about it is that it puts too much of the blame for the Satanic Panic on Michelle and her Doctor, when there was a huge cultural underpinning to the craziness that happened in the late 80s and Early 90s.

It wasn't just this book, it was panics about heavy metal music, Dungeons and Dragons, and horror movies that created the illusion that there were a bunch of Satan Worshippers out there. Heck, Geraldo did a whole special on it, and the other Daytime Shows followed suit. (This is when Daytime shows still tried to do serious subjects and not just people fighting and taking paternity tests and fighting over the results of paternitiy tests.)

Still, the story of Michelle and her doctor is horrifying, regardless of if they were scammers or good intentioned people practicing bad psychaitry. But really, where were the people who knew better. Law enforcement went along with this nonsense for years and treated these hucksters like they were real experts.

If you know anything about the Satanic Panic there are numerous child abuse allegations including a daycare in the United States in the early 1980s. Satan Wants You is the overly specific probe into the life of a woman named Michelle from Canada who has been blamed along with her psychiatrist for creating Satanic Panic. The documentary is ambivalent as to if any of the details in the lurid, violent biography the psychiatrist wrote actually happened to Michelle (her sisters have no recollection of it) but the stories she told are pretty disgusting and jarring. So the damage was done, everyone from the Catholic church to police stations were on the look out for cults of devil worshippers.

The problem is that too much is made of Michelle's subsequent marriage to her doctor, and bitter resentments are repeated ad nauseum by his adult children and elderly first ex-wife. Nothing new was really revealed by this documentary, it's not that enlightening and it's certainly not comprehensive. No background or context is given for the counter culture of the Sixties or numerous Satanic-themed horror films from the Seventies - this isn't a documentary for academics or intellectuals, its basically a bunch of gossip about Michelle.

The brief and absurd shallow defense of Anton LeVey adds nothing to the film, as LeVey was a disturbed and abusive man and none of that is explained, either. The entire point seems to be an attempt to convince people that the Church of Satan is harmless which isn't quite the whole story. Everyone wants things to be black and white, nice and clean, and that's not real life. While the shadowy horror movie ideas about Satanic cults were greatly exaggerated or even fabricated, people involved with LeVeyan Satanism aren't exactly a bunch of innocent scholars. To the contrary, LeVey himself was a low-life and a perfect example of the banality of realistic evil.

I got around 20% into it before realizing I wouldn't be able to read ANYTHING that was written. Either the tiny red words bled into the dark background or excerpts that were shown on screen for 3/4 of a second. I assume I am to watch with the pause button on standby? How does this get past editors? My God.

Plus the storytelling. Nausea inducing time jumps. Are we talking about your dad, your mom, the shrink? And when? Who is talking and in what point of view? I'm intrigued enough to fight through it, but confused enough to leave a review.

I guess there is no standard. We are all filmmakers and writers now.