At the outset of director George Ratliff's engaging 2001 documentary Hell House, Tim Ferguson, grand pooh-bah of the Pentecostal Trinity Church Assemblies of God's annual extravaganza by the same name, sternly delivers a succinct manifesto: "I wish you didn't have to see the things you're going to see. I wish our culture wasn't the way that it is. But what you're going to see is a reality check, where we interpret the images."
George Ratliff's documentary Hell House
shows how the Pentecostal Trinity Church in Cedar
Hill, Texas, saves its constituents' souls -- by scaring
the shit out of them.
Details
Screens Thursday through
Wednesday, Oct. 17-23, at 7:15
and 9:15 p.m. daily, with additional
shows Saturday and Sunday at 2
and 4 p.m. and Wednesday at 2
p.m.
Admission is $3-6.50
668-3994
www.redvicmoviehouse.com
The Red Vic Movie House, 1727
Haight (at Clayton), S.F.
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Each October since 1991, the Cedar Hill, Texas, church has mounted its own version of hell in suburban Dallas. Ferguson and team transmogrify the traditional haunted house into a series of tableaux that graphically depict those "dangers" -- the usual fundamentalist bugbears of abortion, suicide, homosexuality, drugs, alcohol, and the occult -- in an effort "to reach the lost," as one participant terms it. Hugely popular, the event (now with a budget of around $20,000) attracted more than 75,000 people in its first decade -- with 20 percent of the attendees "converting or recommitting" to God, according to the film's postscript.
Over the course of 85 minutes, Ratliff, given total access to Hell House 2000, deftly chronicles the staging process from its initial planning session through opening night, including an orientation meeting, auditions for roles ("Suicide Girl," "Abortion Girl," and "Drug Dealer" among them), the construction of elaborate sets, and an intense pre-opening pep rally during which the cast and crew of 300 pray, lay hands on each other, and speak in tongues. "We're competing against darkness for souls that are lost," youth pastor Ferguson preaches to his flock. "We plant seeds. We water seeds. We're gonna win."
Along the way Ratliff isolates several participants in talking-head segments to discuss sin, faith, and real-life events that relate to the grisly minidramas. Strikingly filmed against a luminous all-white background, these people appear to be speaking from heaven.
And yet Ratliff takes no discernible editorial stance, neither ridiculing nor celebrating the proceedings; instead, like cinéma vérité masters Frederick Wiseman and the Maysles brothers, he solemnly records what transpires, without identifying the principals. Gradually, the film builds to opening night, when guides lead giddy groups (at $7 a head) from one soap-operatic scene to the next: Drug-taking at a rave leads to date rape and, ultimately, suicide; a wailing and bloodied abortion-gone-wrong girl lies in a hospital bed next to a young man dying from AIDS; reprobates are turned away at the glittering gates of heaven, while their brethren roast in an infrared Styx.
"We can only portray so much with makeup and corny lines and soundtracks," the actor who plays Satan explains to a local TV reporter. "God does the difference for us. He speaks his message. We just show up, and he does the rest."
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