Satanic Panic Phenomenon Explored In Documentary 'Satan Wants You'

In the 1990s, “Satanic Panic” swept North America and other parts of the world, a false belief that Devil worshipers were engaging in ritual abuse of children on a mass scale – drinking their blood, forcing them into prostitution and other lurid crimes.

The hysteria, which saw numerous innocent people accused of committing heinous acts to please their evil master, can be traced back to two people: a Canadian woman named Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist (and future husband), Dr. Larry Pazder. They wrote a 1980 book together, Michelle Remembers, built around therapy sessions in which Smith “recovered memories” of participating in a Satanic cult and becoming “the Devil’s bride.”

The award-winning documentary Satan Wants You, directed by Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams, explores how Smith and Dr. Pazder touched off such a widespread and damaging cultural phenomenon. The film played as part of Deadline’s virtual event series For the Love of Docs.

“Recovered memory therapy” has been discredited. But back in the mid-1970s, when Smith and Dr. Pazder were doing it, the psychiatric technique carried a certain authority.

Michelle Smith, whose book 'Michelle Remembers' became a phenomenon. — Michelle Smith, whose book ‘Michelle Remembers’ became a phenomenon. Game Theory

The process involved “hypnosis or suggestion or putting people into a form of trance,” Horlor explained during a panel discussion after the For the Love of Docs screening. “And [patients] recover these memories that they have no memory of. And as [you] see in the film, those are probably memories you shouldn’t trust.”

The filmmakers obtained actual recordings of some of Smith’s therapy sessions with Dr. Pazder. It was sent to them anonymously through the mail.

“When we got it, we were able to listen to it… I mean, it was chilling,” Adams recalled. “The majority of the tape is her, Michelle, screaming. But then when you actually begin to get into it and hear what’s being said, we realized that it’s exact passages from the book [Michelle Remembers]. So, we could tell that what we were listening to was actually happening in the therapy office.”

Michelle Remembers became a huge bestseller and Smith and Dr. Pazder traveled the world talking about her purported experiences in a Satanic cult. Horlor grew up in Victoria, B.C., near the couple and recalls how terrified the town became after Smith’s frightening tale spread like wildfire.

“They lived 10 minutes down the road from my family… So, this is like ‘the Satan woman’ and her doctor in your town,” Horlor said. The director described a “black cloud of fear” that settled over Victoria as the community confronted the realization (false, as it turned out) that the Devil’s disciples were lurking everywhere.

“I couldn’t go to downtown because they [Satanists] had altars set up in the back and murdered kids and drank babies’ blood and killed animals,” Horlor said. “The local graveyard — where a huge portion of Michelle Remembers is set – [I] could not go there during Halloween because the Satanists were going to come out and steal you as a kid. People wearing black clothes in town were Satanists. You had to avoid them. They were going to abduct you, kill you.”

Directors Sean Horlor (L) and Steve J. Adams. Courtesy of Grady Mitchell

Horlor added, “I knew about this in my city. What I did not realize is how far that it spread. This was, as it says in the film, the patient zero of the Satanic Panic, which if you lived in Canada and the U.S. or Great Britain and a dozen other countries in the world in the ’80s and ’90s, you knew what that meant because you could be locked up for crimes you never committed, accused of horrible things that aren’t even real. And people took it so, so seriously.”

And it’s not like it can’t happen again. Satan Wants You draws a direct parallel between the Satanic Panic of the 1990s and the far more recent Pizzagate uproar, a wild conspiracy theory that claimed Democratic Party officials were involved in a secret human trafficking and child sex ring.

Watch the full conversation in the video above.

For the Love of Docs is a virtual Deadline event series sponsored by National Geographic in partnership with the International Documentary Association (IDA). The series continues with a new film screening each Tuesday through December 12. Next up, on October 31, is Richland, directed by Irene Lusztig.