Hell House

Really interesting stuff. I tried to watch this with no judgement, but that was basically impossible. Especially with the embarrassing 90s haircuts and fashion rolling around. I read an interview with a director and he commented that in Texas, the movie plays very serious. In New York, it plays like a comedy. I can definitely see that.

From the audition scene I really felt like I was watching a Christopher Guest spoof. Like...you guys have got to be kidding. The script writing scene sounded ridiculous. He was trying to explain what Magic: The Gathering was (ultimately they decided to just go with calling it Magic). She pronounced it o-EE-ja board with no idea how to spell that one. When they read back the entire scene, it just sounded absurd. And the Harry Potter book reference? Yikes. How very 90s. The dude actually used the phrase, "power of the dark side." At times, their obliviousness of their own ridiculousness made them seem kind of precious. Then you realized they were brainwashing young minds with their sick imagery.

I find it hard to understand how they think it's a good idea to scare people into embracing and believing in God. I wonder if that works for them. I feel like the people who would be interested in going through this Hell House this would already be believers, or not be and go to make fun of the whole thing. I would think that the people this would work on would be young impressionable minds, and that seems like a very sticky issue. This would make a fabulous companion to the doc Jesus Camp.

And overall, this seems like a really messed up thing for Christians to be doing. They have to write 666, draw a pentagram (even if hey accidentally drew a star if David, but whatever), they have to pretend to shoot people, kill people, slap women, stab people. All of this, no matter if it's fake or not, seem pretty un-Christian. They make a reference to role-playing being bad but...that's sort of what they're doing here.

They have a lot of money for this production. Building new sets every year. Getting new props every year. Recording news audio every year. It makes sense because they did say that there were 12,000 people who came through the Hell House and tickets are $7. That means they probably bring in at least 70grand a year for this.

I really like how they cut together the scenes of going through the Hell House. They showed different tours cut it up with footage of the tour guides, the volunteers going through the tour themselves and other goings on of opening night.

At least the tour ends on a good note. They try to get some people saved (is that how you say that?). This tour of Hell House makes me think of going to the Church Of Scientology in New York and after we watched the video, being hounded by the nice smiling Scientologist lady about it.

Funnily enough, literally, just now, in the middle of watching the scene where the Slipknot loving alternatives youths argue with one of the Christian dudes about Christianity, God, religion in general, and the fucked upness of their Hell House, I learned that The Insane Clown Posse are Evangelical Christians! That was a coincidental turn of events. I bet those 90s youths would be disappointed to hear that.

Deliver Us From Evil

I watched this one on the recommendation of Niousha after I complained at work about all the downer documentaries I was watching. This one was even worse! It's an example of, like Dear Zachary, two hours of something that completely wrecks you, but then they try to do what they can to not let the ending be too depressing. It didn't work though. Marggy was watching with me this time, though, so it felt like less of a punishment to get through this one.

Religion is a super touchy issue. I'm not really one for organized religion in general and it was interesting to go into this with that perspective. Marggy and I argued about what it means to continue to be a part of an institution with such corruption within itself. To, as a person, choose this group. It's a tricky situation, I guess. What part of you can say I can't be a part of that because of what is happening within the church and what part is able to say that this is just happening as a small percentage of isolated events from a small percentage of the priests? We didn't really come to any conclusion on that, but it's just interesting to think about. The idea of being a part of a religion like that is totally foreign to me, so I don't know if I would even have the necessary tools to even begin to come to a conclusion.

One thing that surprised me about the doc first off was that the documentaries filmmakers let that dude just roam around that park as he talked about the fact that he was not attracted to adults, but rather children in bathing suits, in underwear, etc. I don't know if they were going for a kind of disturbing tone to his scenes with the children's playing in the background as he spoke of his crimes, but that I think was almost too much for me. Like, maybe just a little over the line and not really necessary. To see a convicted child molester stare at children in a park and talk about his past abuse of them. Yuck.

It was an interesting tool when they slowly relived what this doc is about. There was no opening teaser to explain, but as we got into it, it became clear. You could find this on tv and go into it not knowing what was going on and we don't really get that messages fully until about 10 minutes in. While watching more and more, I don't know how many times I rolled my eyes at this bullshit excuses and backtracking from the priests and bishops who knew what was going on.

One thing that became completely clear to me as I got into it was that Oliver O'Grady was completely a naccist. In a different way than Billy MItchell or Troy Duffy...who are both to a comical degree. This psycho was basically the most honest person thought this entire thing. I asked my sister, the researcher of all things anti-social personality disorder related, to give me teh signs for narcissism. Unlike wit sociopathy, they recognize the difference between right and wrong but they do it anyway because they want to. But like sociopaths, they can't feel empathy, so they can't feel for their victims. The victims' feelings don't matter that only feelings that matter are theirs. And the dude was smiling and smirking and being flippant throughout the whole thing! The part where he wrote the letter to all his victims because he wanted them to come and air their grievances? That was completely fucked up. Sorry for the language. But that was insane. The whole idea that he would agree to do this documentary is unimaginable. And completely narcissistic.

Over all, I think it was really nicely done. I didn't really like the shots of O'Grady walking places and sitting around because it seems like they were telling him to do that stuff and it seemed forced, but it was cut together well and the interview footage meshed well with the action.