LaVey is a fascinating figure who really belongs more to the history of American pop culture than to the history of occultism. He claimed to have been a former circus lion tamer and to have had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, both claims being dubious. LaVey was a musician and released several albums.
LaVey was reasonably well read in esoteric literature but seems to have been more heavily influenced by weird fiction writers such as H.P. Lovecraft.
Overall LaVey comes across in the interviews in this film as a born showman and a rather genial charming man. He had charisma but it was the charisma of a show business impresario rather than of a cult leader.
His actual teachings come down to not a great deal more than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (as found in that notorious satanic text the United States Declaration of Independence).
At the time the film was made the Church of Satan’s headquarters was still the famous Black House in San Francisco.
There was at this time a media obsession (in the U.S. but especially in Britain) with witchcraft in suburbia. Journalists, being journalists, neither understood nor cared that satanism and witchcraft were not necessarily the same thing. The most scandalous thing about both satanists and witches was of course that they apparently had sex. And that the women took their clothes off.
LaVey may well have been both a showman and quite sincere in his religious beliefs. That’s the case with many cult leaders.
LaVey’s concept of satanism has little to do with evil. In fact he disapproved of many white magicians on ethical grounds. He intensely disliked the idea of sacrificing animals and this was never done in his Church of Satan. He saw Satan as an oppositional figure, a figure representing freedom as opposed to the rigid moral riles of Christianity, rather than a figure of evil. He was particularly keen on the idea of sexual freedom. His ideas were not wildly different from those held by many counter-culture figures of that period.
There are interviews with many of his closest aides and with his wife of the time and his daughter. His followers actually seem saner than most hippies of that era, and there is at least some coherence to their beliefs.
Of course Satanis: The Devil's Mass’s main selling point was the Black Mass, and the nudity (of which there’s quite a bit). It’s all rather theatrical but there’s common enough in plenty of religious sects.
The interviews with LaVey’s neighbours are amusing. One old guy reveals the true evils to which satanism leads - satanists don’t mow their lawns regularly. Another neighbour describes him as a very nice man. On the whole he appears to have been regarded as entirely harmless. Which of course he was.
This one was released on a Something Weird double-header DVD some years ago, paired with Ray Dennis Steckler’s Sinthia: The Devil's Doll. It has to be said that the transfer of Satanis: The Devil's Mass is pretty rough. One assumes that the surviving print was in poor shape. It was clearly shot on a very low budget so it probably never looked particularly great.
Satanis: The Devil's Mass is a fascinating look at both a religious and pop cultural phenomenon of a particular time period. For those reasons it’s well worth seeing. Recommended.
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