A review


I remember visiting a relative a few years ago and coming across a forty year old book called MICHELLE REMEMBERS. It was marked non-fiction, but it had a Stephen King sort of fiction feel to it.

The story was hard to believe. The story was over the top and had no secondary sources to back up many of the claims made in the book. The book made several serious allegations, yet there were no police reports referred to in the book. The Wikipedia article pointed out several inconsistencies with the book.

Satan Wants You picks up from there and gives a play by play account of the book and the subsequent events that followed. The movie gave more evidence that the book was a hoax, such as playing some of the original audio tapes and interviews with others related to the case.

The film seems to place the blame on the two authors who
un-intentionally caused a lot of harm to others, some who spent years in jail on false charges. While much of the blame does rest on those two, some also rests on the people who believed it too easily.

While the original Satanic Panic died down, the film points out several repercussions felt today in the form of things like Pizzagate and several alt-right conspiracy theories.

A great film overall.

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Was that your own review from IMDB or did you copy/paste it from Jack Brock?

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Who is Jack Brock?

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The fourth reviewer at the bottom:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26280511/reviews

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Looks like it.

Maybe Bucky is Jack Brock, though? I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt.

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Jack Brock is a buddy of mine from the old IMDB board.
I had permission from him to use it.

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That's fine, of course. No way to tell that when you only post the review, though.

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I remember those times. I grew up in a small city that was pretty conservative and religious, but it didn't hit there too hard. There were some parents who were suspicious of Dungeons and Dragons and heavy metal music, but I don't remember anyone talking about any satanic cults in our area or anything that out there.

Seemed like places that were really fundamentalist like the Bible Belt were where it was the most intense.

Sounds like they might be oversimplifying things a little bit, putting that much blame on a couple authors who had popular books about satanic cults. A few different things came together that lead to the Satanic Panic, which is usually the case when you have some kind of mass hysteria like that. You had mainstream media sources running with these stories without a lot of skepticism. I saw some documentaries about people actually sent to prison in some of these Satanic abuse cases. The police interrogations of the child witnesses was usually pretty manipulative and many ended up taking back their testimony years later.

I'll have to check it out, though. There might still be some interesting information in it.

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This is best review: Beyond a must see https://www.imdb.com/review/rw9019187/

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Maybe Satanic Panic was all due to that book, or maybe the actions of people like Ricky Kasso made it seem plausible.

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I read that book too.

How people thought it was about Satanism and not about a few druggie losers high as a kite who killed people was rather odd.

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But I think it’s safe to say the trappings of satanism did play a part in Ricky Kasso killing Gary lauwers. Drugs and mental illness played the biggest part though

The satanic panic is fascinating though

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I remember the McMartin PreSchool trial where teachers were accused of Satan worship and child molestation. They were all found innocent but it was all part of the continuing hysteria in the 80's. Lives were ruined.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial

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