IN THE NAME OF SATAN 1990
“In The Name of Satan” is another piece of Satanic Panic Christian propaganda, hosted by none other than Bob Larson. I wonder if Glen Benton from Deicide ever watched this. A random picture of Eddie from Iron Maiden is seen at the start, and never even mentioned.
From the very start of the film, we see mutilated bodies, no censoring at all. It’s shocking that this was such a prevalent thing with these Christian broadcasts; it’s disgusting how actual mutilation and gore photos were used for views.
The beginning scene with Bob Larson zooms out with alleged Satanic Symbols that were being graffiti’d in public. There is no explanation as to what the symbols mean, the viewer is just supposed to believe that the symbols are bad. One of these is simply just ‘Satan’ backwards. It’s clear how little effort went into making this.
After, we get the usual round of ex-Satanists/cult members that managed to break free. Three women recount their stories of being in Satanic cults, with keywords you hear in other similar films. They all talk about feces, urine, rape, and snakes. The stories make little sense, and aren’t believable. One woman claimed that she would be suspended in a closet while snakes would be left on the floor slithering around her. This doesn’t even make sense from a gravity perspective. How can you be suspended in the air from a closet? How small are you? How big was the closet?
Another woman conveniently grew up thousands of miles away from where the film was being made (we assume), and she recounts a fake story that is filled with lots of ums and uhs. There isn’t any emotion expressed other than someone looking like they’re trying to remember their lines. None of the women cry or frown while recounting their stories, in fact, one of them even smiles while telling about how a blond haired, blue eyed boy was sacrificed at the age of 5.
Eleven minutes into the video, and I had the realization: This is Christian Torture Porn. It’s Softcore Torture Porn. Christian Snuff. They can’t actually kill people or show people being disembodied, so they make up fake stories and fake videos about it. It’s really just a Christian Horror Film, posing as a documentary!
Once you start seeing things that way, it really changes the way that these types of videos are perceived. Instead of being something that is supposed to inform the audience, who we are to assume is the average, likely white Christian; the audience for films like these are the fundamentalists, who seem to believe that anything that’s wrong with the world is due to Satan. To Fundamentalists, Satan = Evil, and Evil is Satan.
In comparison to the older Satanic Panic films from the 80’s, more of the early 90’s ones seem to have a shift in thought, almost trying to become philosophical about it. It’s almost like in some way, some people sent backlash to the ones originally creating films like these. I’d like to imagine that the Fundamentalists started to realize that legally, you can’t do much somebody actually worshiping something different from you; Satan or not.
Of course, there is still the claim that many of the brutal murder cases from that time period were due to Satan worship. One of the common examples is brought up again, with Richard Ramirez. The strange thing is that, while Ramirez did have an interest in Satan, and what may have been Diabolist worship, there does’t seem to be much information on what his true experiences with it were. Not even wikipedia talks much about the Satan part with him. My point here with the video is that, Ramirez is brought up, but they ironically focus more on the fact that he killed people, than him telling his victims to “Swear on Satan”. In fact, none of the Satanic Panic videos I’ve watched have ever mentioned the fact that Richard Ramirez told his victims to “Swear on Satan”.
Ironic, because if they mentioned that statement, it could have made their argument stronger. Even still, anyone that commits crime “In The Name of Satan” has a strong mental illness, and there seems to be something even called “Religious Delusion”.
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Another murderer is mentioned, a man named Clifford St. Joseph. I hadn’t known about this case, and strangely enough, this was the first film of it’s type, to actually name where some of the common photos came from. In some of the other Satanic Panic films, they’d use the photo of a pentagram cut into a body, but they never mentioned where it came from. I didn’t even realize what the photo even was, because most of the other films didn’t show it clearly.
I looked up the St. Joseph case, and was surprised that it wasn’t talked about more. To quickly sum up, Clifford St. Joseph raped and killed a man, carved a pentagram into his skin, under the idea of being part of a Satanic ritual. This much is mentioned in the film. What wasn’t mentioned, was that St. Joseph went on to tie up, drug, and rape another person, with 3 other friends of his. This was also mentioned as being part of an initiation to a Satanic group. St. Joseph was convicted, and sentenced to 34 years.
I found it strange that this wasn’t mentioned, as it once again would have actually supported the Christian argument of crime being done “In the name of Satan”. It’s just odd to me that, they didn’t put in even just a bit more effort. But then again, I don’t think the creators of this film really believed in what they were saying to begin with.
It’s well known that many of the pieces of Satanic Panic media were based on completely false reports. But I suppose it overlooked the actual criminals who would talk about occult topics. Perhaps that was too scary for even the Christians.
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Once again, the McMartin Preschool case is mentioned, the most famous case of all time; in a Satanic sense. By the time the film came out, the case had been dismissed, but what was interesting is how it mentioned that many of the jurors believed that the children were actually abused! Looking this up, this is true! And I think that’s a very important thing to note.
The McMartin case was so huge and expensive, that it changed the way law carried on after this. I think that it opened the eyes to more religious people being cognizant of actual sexual abuse, while showing others that we cannot persecute on religious fears alone. Without proper evidence, true justice cannot be seen.
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The movie goes back to the women recounting their stories, where one admits on camera to having killed someone? You know that this has to be fake, because if you actually killed someone, accident or not, then admit to it on camera, you would have to be reported to the police. If this murder was true, why didn’t Bob Larson’s team report this woman? Why wasn’t that woman in prison?
Even when recalling the murder, this woman doesn’t cry. Then, she claims that she had to have oral sex with at least 12 dogs?! But then the red rockets would be cut off too. She doesn’t show any signs of disgust, fear, depression, or anything.
The woman that claimed she saw a 5 year old sacrificed, went on to say that she saw her twin brother killed at the age of 4.
There are various pieces of art shown, that are supposed to convince the viewer that everything talked about in the film is “totally real”. We don’t know who created the art. We don’t know if the people that drew the art were even children. We’re just supposed to assume.
The film moves over to adults getting therapy who were subjected to Satanic Ritual Abuse. It’s interesting how these individuals were actually listened to, and I wonder if there were people who went to such therapy to try and help their religious trauma in general. I wonder how many people didn’t think that it was possible to even receive therapy for religious trauma, until this point.
Religious trauma is real, and people have experienced it with many religions in the world, Christianity included.
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The film goes on to their bread and butter, talking about how children are the biggest targets of Satanists. There is more fear mongering here, with other alleged stories of children being tortured by Satanists. Another preschool was mentioned here, but none of the names were ever presented on the screen, so I couldn’t find any more info on it.
More crimes are mentioned, such as the one with Pete Roland, who was seen in other Satanic Panic media. In this video, it was stated that the teens felt compelled to kill after listening to Metallica, of all bands.
Sean Sellers makes an appearance, of course, and tries to say that he committed his crimes because of Satanism. It’s clear that Sellers used this as an excuse, instead of taking any accountability that he was an antisocial psychopath. Sellers is always brought up in these films, how he killed his mother and step father, but it’s never mentioned how he killed his first victim. Sellers shot a gas station clerk for not selling him beer, before he ever killed his parents. Even on wikipedia, it states that he “wanted to know what it was like to kill someone”. This first murder is never brought up, nor does there seem to be any mention of Satan about this.
Sellers converted to Christianity while on death row, and it appears that none of his family members believed it was genuine, except one. What’s interesting, is that friends of Sellers tried to use his conversion as a way to try and get him out of prison. That makes me wonder if him appearing on these Satanic Panic videos was part of the ruse. Thankfully it didn’t work, and he was executed in 1999.
The film eventually ends, and we see Bob Larson in the room with all of the Satanic graffiti symbols again. I laughed when I realized that one of them was literally just “Amen” backwards. It’s so laughable how “spooky” all it looked. I can’t imagine anyone watching a film like this and seriously believing any of it. In many ways, it’s very disrespectful to the victims of all the crimes mentioned, that only died due to fake religious reasons.
Of course, I don’t recommend this film, as it’s terrible, and none of the claims are substantiated. In modern day, I can look up more info, yes, but when this came out in 1990, viewers were expected to believe everything in this at face value. I think that it’s sinister to mix in real crimes, with real crime scene photos, to promote a philosophical idea. It’s like going back to phrenology in some ways.
The music was laughable, most of the time it just seemed to be a low E key played on a keyboard. It sound very “brown note” ish, which makes sense, as much of this film is doo doo.
My final grade for this film is an F.
My video: https://youtu.be/y_cGXx87I4c
