The main impression I got from this movie was "Ho Hum". As if Anton LaVey was a naughty adolescent who kept coming up with stuff to annoy his parents and the other adults.
Was LaVey ever considered shocking or taken seriously? Other than having the full grown lion and jaguar in a residential neighborhood, that is.
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share
Back in the '60s, people did all sorts of things to shock the mainstream WASPs. It's hard to say how much of an impact they really made, but considering most people have never even heard of these people, I doubt it's worth mentioning at all. Whatever may be said about LaVey's philosophy, the film "Satanis" is incredibly boring and seems like the depiction of a depraved hedonistic group of friends that seeks to mix lust with shock in the fact of a WASP environment.
shareSome of LaVey's group seemed lost. You know, the type of people who don't know who the are. They don't know what they want out of life. The type of person who floats along until they run into the next strong personality, manipulative person to glom onto.
There were so many cultural changes in the 1960s/70s, so many charismatic leaders, Kennedys, King, Manson, Jones, etc., so many social causes, civil rights, religion, technology, drugs, music, etc. people could get into. Some people just spent their youth drifting from one to the other. Mixing and matching as they went.
No wonder a poor Satinist like LaVey couldn't get much attention.
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share
Some people are more easily shocked than others. As religious expression goes, this is a hell (pun not intended) of a lot more subtle than Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ.
shareI think it should also be mentioned that LaVeyan Satanism seems to be more of a philosophy/world view, then the ACTUAL worship of “the man downstairs,” and from all I’ve read, Levy was also a prankster of the highest order… So I can’t help but view this film as some kind of huge cosmic/comic art performance piece.
All that said, I find the subject matter fascinating, and it’s a fun look into the late 60’s/early 70’s… When the hippie flower child ideals of a Utopian Paradise that personified the late 60’s crashed & burned and the cynical 70’s kicked in.
Trust me,
Swan
My, you're nosey, aren't you?
Wow Devans, sounds like you really know what your talking about, did you live through the 60's/70's. I thought what you wrote was well put, nice sig too.
Anyway, agreed, bore fest, wanted to see this since I was a kid lurking on the net for messed up stuff, I can remember looking at the V.H.S on Amazon thinking I can't wait to get this and his bible, just for kicks, I never did, just watched it on YouTube, wow, it is bad, everyone here is right, very tame by today's standards, actually today these people would not even get 15 mins of fame, but in the 1960's they were like probably badass, scary, taboo subject people. Hence how they even became known. Still Levey seem like a character, an interesting one.
boywonder_4-1
Wow Devans, sounds like you really know what your talking about, did you live through the 60's/70's. I thought what you wrote was well put, nice sig too.
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share
Ahh those poor dirty hippy children, un-paid extra's in a sea of old Woodstock footage, anyway I just thought from the way you wrote that stuff that you really were there and experienced all that stuff first hand, one of those I lived through all the era's type guys, haha.
San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Raoul Duke, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
http://coolquotescollection.com/7672/san-francisco-in-the-middle-sixties-was-a-very-special-time-and-place-to-be-a
boywonder_4-1
Ahh those poor dirty hippy children, un-paid extra's in a sea of old Woodstock footage, anyway I just thought from the way you wrote that stuff that you really were there and experienced all that stuff first hand, one of those I lived through all the era's type guys, haha.
San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Raoul Duke, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
http://coolquotescollection.com/7672/san-francisco-in-the-middle-sixties-was-a-very-special-time-and-place-to-be-a
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share
Yup, real Satanism is quite boring to those expecting zombies to pop out of the ground.
"I had to rescue a burning baby. See, I got burning baby all over me."
- CHEECH