To write about this as if it is a movie is a grave mistake. Produced at a time when many revival shows were still using magic lanterns, thinking of it as a movie produces a list of of its flaws. Its antiquated use of animated text, its poor camerawork, its ridiculous devil in a cloth costume repeatedly hopping up and down, rejoicing, the frequent cuts to hurtling trains as its sole Academician-style metaphor, make my agnostic 21st-Century brain go "Yeah, you've said this six times."
Of course, I am not the intended audience for this. I have no sense of faith, no belief in its primitive, dance-hating sense of morality. I believe in neither Heaven nor Hell, so it seems simply mean-spirited and bizarre to me, lumping gamblers with murderers, drunkards with cheaters, and so forth.
What is clear is that the audience for this .... well, let's call it a movie anyway, for want of a better word.... the audience for this movie is the sort of Christian revival meeting that once took place quite often in this nation. If we take the attitudes of the people who made this as typical, there is no hope of Heaven in this movie, just fear of Hell; no right way of living, just an endless list of wrong ways; no G*d of Love, just one looking to hand you over to the Devil to be tortured endlessly, once you slip and get on that Hellbound Train.
