Satan Wants You
Canada | English
2023 | 88 Minutes
Director: Steve J. Adams, Sean Horlor
Cast: Blanche Barton, Charles Ennis, Ken Lanning, Sarah Marshall, Charyl Proby-Austman
A new documentary filmed named Satan Wants You took center stage at the Fantasia film festival today, speaking about a topic that was all over the news decades ago – yet one that is seemingly coming around again, for another go under a new guise. One that wants to again disrupt social values and raise questionable ethics.
This is the Canadian premiere of Satan Wants You and it should leave its audience – and those it reaches when it hits theatres nationwide on August 11th, with a whole of questions. A whole lot of doubts and implant scrutiny into more than one sect or medical specialty. Satan Wants You may well follow the Satanic Panic from the late 70s, through to the 90s – but so much of this is still relevant in what is going on today. Frighteningly so.
See Also: Devils at Fantasia Festival 2023
In the ’80s and ’90s, an immediate fear swept North America. Satan was everywhere, sullying everything from music to movies and the daycare around the corner. Satanic ritual abuse was frequently reported — parents, clergy, and political officials rang the alarm every chance they could. But where did this Satanic Panic start? Award-winning directors Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams take us on a never-before-seen journey, launching from the 1980 book Michelle Remembers, a memoir written by Michelle Smith, a Canadian woman, and Dr. Larry Pazder, her psychiatrist.
Under the care of Pazder, she infamously recalled suffering childhood ritual abuse at the hands of her Satanist parents. Using archival footage of talk shows, new reports, and in-depth interviews with those closest to the controversy, Horlor and Adams break into the mystique of these reports of ritual abuse and the fervor it created.
First-hand accounts from Michelle’s sister Charyl, Pazder’s daughter Theresa, and his ex-wife Marylyn reveal their experiences with the phenomenon that rocked the nation, and experts from law enforcement, academia, and the Church of Satan itself give their perspectives on this unforgettable moment in recent history. And in an investigative coup, the directors received exclusive access to the original tapes of Michelle’s regression sessions.
Slight spoilers may possibly be found from this point on. Beware.
Together, Dr. Lawrence Pazder and his patient – that would later become his wife, convinced the world that Satanic cults were on the prowl, stealing babies from hospitals and clinics across the nation, to be used as sacrifices to the devil. Tales of sacrifice and cannibalism, torture, rape and sodomy all wrapped up into a neat package – the best-selling book named Michelle Remembers that would lead the duo on a world tour, and to the divorce of Dr. Pazder who soon after marries his patient. A book that was subsidized by the Catholic church, no less.
Suddenly, the world believes that this Satanic threat is so real, that security needs to be heightened in hospitals. Courts begin to use Satanism as a reason to extended prison sentences – and of course heavy metal musician Ozzy Osbourne gets his name fragged through the mud. And of course, it all starts to snowball, as more and more psychiatrists and therapists start dragging all sorts of adult survivors and victims out of the woodwork – a term is even coined for it all; Satanic Ritual Abuse.
Following a law suite filled by Anton Lavey and the Church Of Satan, for slander and liable for having used their recognized religious organization in their book, some of the victims began to sue their therapists for having planted ideas, ideologies and memories that have never even happened in the first place.
Satan Wants You is an intriguing look into more than just the bizarre Satanic Panic era, it also examines the role of the church and psychiatry in modern society while exposing how easy it is for something to go viral (to use a modern term) and how dangerous that can be. Lives were ruined by this book and the ensuing madness that followed it. As such, Satan Wants You is a very interesting look into culture as a whole and has a lot of lessons to be learned – at least for those that are willing to listen and think for themselves.
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In a time of rampant false news and misinformation, Satan Wants You is beacon shinning in the darkness. A warning. That things have a habit of repeating themselves if allowed to. Things such as QAnon and Pizzagate. Lets not forget another uncovering from Canada’s western coast, that also spread across the land and has since seemingly been silenced; the Catholic churches treatment and culling of Native American children. More than a thousand Indigenous children have been found in mass graves on the grounds residential schools that carried out cultural genocide in the name of Catholicism. Then, of course, there’s Epstein’s island and the mysteries that surround that.
The fact that Michelle Smith declined to participate, in any way, with the making of this film says more about this bizarre tale than her tell-all book, Michelle Remembers, ever could. Suddenly, the woman that toured the world in support of her book, staying in the fanciest hotels and traveling by limousine, goes silent.
