Last month, Saturday 11th of August, Teen Ink Magazine and student workers of USC's Office of Religious Life (ORL) attended the film screening "Satanis: The Devil's Mass" hosted at the Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave, with Stanton Z. LaVey, the grandson of Anton Szandor LaVey founder of the Church of Satan.

Ray Laurent's gentle, optimistic, seemingly globe-spanning exploration of Satanism and is more pleasant than punchy.

An impressive yet local project yielded an ecumenically alluring, mild if rather diffuse film in “Satanis,” a deferential exploration by documentarian Ray Laurent (“Body Pyrexia,” Academy Award winning drama “Sappho Darling”) of Satanism. Designed as a marginally corrective to the negative connotations that the very concept of organized religion might engender in today’s world, whether among secular liberals or among adherents of one of the major faiths in regard to the others, it is entirely well intentioned. But the fair-mindedness of Laurent’s approach additionally contributes to a sense, ironically enough, of godlike detachment from the slivers of life and faith the film comprises.

Stanton LaVey sets the mood before the showing with a small presentation about growing up with his grandfather in San Francisco. The late Anton Szandor LaVey lives in a house which happens to be painted black. Stanton tells us why. In 1966, ex-carny/musician/paranormal brainiac Anton LaVey founded the Church of Satan (CoS) after discovering “…a large grey area between psychiatry and religion that was untapped”. Of course! Four years later, the organization has reached its zenith as a solace for lost souls to revel in hedonism, black mass theatrics, and sexual freedom. Director Ray Laurent’s cameras are there. And that’s all you need.

Infrequently the interviews are intriguing, describing their relationship to their faith, the succor it provides, and the sense of community, family and selfhood that it promotes. The reach of the film is remarkable: It took one filmmaker to scatter this gem across the continents and one year of shooting, assembling and editing to wrangle these slim 86 minutes. There’s no doubt that “Satanis” is a peculiar little specimen documenting the early days of Lavey and his church. The interviews are mostly confined to the members of LaVey’s congregation, his neighbors, and orthodox religious figures based in San Francisco.

Satanis is a no-nonsense documentary. You won’t find the captivating aesthetics of Michael Moore at work here. But, you will find gruff 16mm film-stock and mesmerizing interviews with everyone from LaVey’s neighbors (the ladies love him, the men do not), a priest, a couple of Mormons, Church of Satan members, LaVey himself, his wife, and most telling of all, his teenage daughter. Between interviews, we’re treated to several ceremonies, all of which are bathed in red and green spotlights, disrobement, dimestore props, and handheld pizzazz. Though the insubstantial interviews and neutral presentation lull towards the terminus, Anton LaVey's grandson Stanton compensates for it with personality. The good-humored Satanis film remains alluring for what it is: 86 minutes of Satanists speaking frankly about their principles. Most of them sexual.

That connective tissue is largely circumstantial rather than thematic. But then the film does not want to make any concretely controversial points or incitant sodalities. As a kind of National Geographic travelogue, with an accentuation on the beauty and specificity of Satanic practice as a subset of global cultural diversity, it holds anthropological value today then it did in the 70's. But skeptics may long for something with a little more kick: Philosophically, I can’t find much to argue with in LaVey, and his decision to create his church as a reaction to the "guilt-ridden, control enforcement processes of other religions," the film infrequently ventures near the politically or socially controversial aspects of the faith its subjects practice.

Intermission. *laughs*

A special night for a special screening can be so much more exhilarating and engaging than catching the latest blockbuster, and a good cocktail before the show and during intermission can make the night even more fun but the beer was just fine, at least there was a selection to choose from. Hell even marijuana is legal here and even saw Stanton get a few vape hits in before we continued on with the showing.

While Satanis clearly is designed more to celebrate than to critique, it’s perhaps a shame that the film is not a little more hard-hitting, especially as the more ambivalent segments are often the most memorable. The regalement is mostly the weirder stuff, like them keeping a lion as a pet, until they were made to dispense it. The proceedings depicted here make a Catholic mass in the original Latin seem homogeneous to The Wicker Man.

Rudimentally, they consist of LaVey reading from his Satanic bible, with all the enthusiasm of someone reciting train delay information, while his acolytes sway. The “music” is additionally by LaVey and with quotes used advisedly, because I kid you not, one track consists of nothing except a slow drum-beat, that marginally speeds up, ceases, and then commences gradually again. This film swings the doors to the early days of the Church of Satan wide open and was, for quite some time, the only interview footage of Anton Szandor LaVey available. (Scenes from this film are still in utilization today in news specials and documentaries, often times utilized as propaganda by some groups to turn people FROM Satanism. Most of the facetiousness in this film will not be seen by the audiences that these groups are trying to influence.) The film lets the query dangle but not without Stanton presenting a never-before-seen later in life interview of his grandfather. Then, under the soothing organs of LaVey’s fine score, it simply moves on, like a stone skimming prettily over deep and perfidious waters, to observe some incipient act of devotion half a world away. In the end, at what could be curtain call, Stanton unveiled a lifesize silicon sculpture of Anton LaVey, much to everyone's surprise. It was one Hell of a night!

Reviewed online, Los Angeles, September 5, 2018.