PROPAGANDA REVIEW: Devil Worship — Exposing Satan’s Underground (1988)

In the late 1980s, Geraldo Rivera hosted a primetime special about the Satanic Panic. And yes, it’s every bit as awesome as you’d expect it to be. 

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo_American

People sometimes ask me what my favorite thing to write about is. And while I do love writing reviews of Pop-Tarts and Taco Bell products and recapping 20- and 30-year-old MMA and pro wrestling PPV spectaculars, if I had to pick one topic as my favorite here at TIIIA I’d probably have to go for the really obscure pop cultural ephemera of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In one part, I think that’s because my earliest conscious memories are from that timeframe, and even now I can’t help but think I remember little teeny-tiny slivers of Sally Jesse Rapheal and 20/20 segments from 1989, which have remained embedded in my hippocampus for 30 fuckin’ years for no discernible reason whatsoever. That kind of stuff just triggers something way, way, WAY deep in my subconscious, and if could, I’d do nothing but watch daytime talk shows and nightly newsmagazine broadcasts from 1990, preferably, with all of the Grey Poupon commercials left intact. It’s just that damn comfy for me, folks.

And oh boy, when you go on deep dives like the one for today’s special presentation, you REALLY hit the ephemeral motherlode. Simply put, this 32-year-old primetime special has it ALL. Geraldo Rivera and his stupid mustache, just hamming it up for the camera. A TV audience filled with a buncha’ really creeped out white people, probably with names like Edith and Barbara, who have no earthly clue how to process what they’re watching. We’ve got real life murder, we’ve got copious references to heavy metal music and we’ve got so much Michael Dukakis-era fearmongering going on that at certain points during the broadcast, I legitimately felt like Willie Horton was going to yank me out from underneath the sofa and rape and murder me on one of his weekend furloughs from prison. 

Oh, you know DAMN well what I’m getting at here: from 1988, I proudly and loudly give you Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground.

Now, I’ve already written quite a bit about Satanic Panic agitprop from the late 1980s and early 1990s, but this one is quite a bit different. Whereas stuff like Saturday Morning Mind Control and The Games Children Play were niche products built with the lunatic evangelical Christian fringe contingent in mind as the base audience, this shit right here aired on national television in prime time. While incredibly tame by today’s standards, the broadcast caused quite a controversy back in the day, with network execs coming *this* close to yanking the show just hours before it hit the airwaves. Indeed, with topics running the gamut from Ozzy Osbourne to child molestation to demonic baby sacrifices, it was certainly a tad more risque than anything you were seeing in the opposite time slot on ALF, and I suppose it’s not at all surprising that that special did boffo overnight ratings. As in, it pulled in an astounding 21.9 share for NBC the night of its airing, which is the kind of numbers prime time NFL football games aren’t even garnering these days. 

There is a LOT of content to trudge through in this one, so I reckon we might as well get the video cassette popped in the trusty Sanyo VCR and get this sucker rolling, shouldn’t we? Grab you some Shasta and a light snack — the next two hours are going to blow your fuckin’ socks off, folks.

Holy shit, a devil-worshipping version of Taylor Swift. Guys, I think I'm literally in love here.

Right off the bat, you know this thing is going to be outstanding, ‘cause Geraldo is already linking Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez to massive Satanic underground cults while black people get “demons” exorcised out of him by guys holding giant wooden crucifixes over their faces BEFORE THE OPENING CREDITS EVEN ROLL.

As expected, the studio audience for Geraldo’s special has a LOT of really old white people who are gravely concerned by the rise of Lucifer-related felonies. “This is not a Halloween fable,” Geraldo warns the TV-viewing throngs. “This is a real-life horror story, and it will give small children bad dreams.”

We quickly cut to a whole bunch’ fat sweaty dudes rocking out at metal concerts while guys shows off their shitty upside down cross tattoos and Iron Maiden plays in the background. Then this probable retard from Louisiana talks about cutting his arm and drinking his own blood, and then King Diamond gets a little bit of screentime, talking about how he’s a “real” Satanist, but he’s not trying to convert the kids or anything. To which Geraldo LITERALLY replies “bull” on camera, citing all those Mercyful Fate lyrics about, and I quote, “death,” “graves,” and “evil.” 

After getting a nice long grader at some sweaty mullet-heads in Iced Earth shirts, we cut to Louisiana, where this one guy keeps blaming a rash of grave robbings on, you guessed it, DEVIL WORSHIPPING TEENS. Some guy with a mustache even greasier than Geraldo says something about kids stealing the “little fingers” of corpses and making necklaces out of them or something, then Geraldo shows off some graffiti reading “death chamber, point of no return,” like we’re even supposed to know what that’s referencing, if anything.

Then we get to hear about this group of teenage Wiccans or something that killed a 15-year-old and allegedly drank her blood and “danced around her still warm body.” By the way, this crime actually happened — it all came out as part of a trial that took place in Douglasville, Ga. back in 1988,  and an appeal made it all the way to the Supreme Court of Georgia, if you want to read the gory details for yourself.

Then there’s a brief news clip on the bizarre case of Maine killer Scott Waterhouse, whose big claim to fame is strangling a 12-year-old to death and then purportedly beating off on her corpse. Again, this one made it to the state Supreme Court level, so feel free to give it a quick gander whenever you’re in the mood for some light and frothy reading. 

Then there’s a quick tidbit on Ricky Kasso, a 17-year-old on Long Island who got high on LSD and stabbed Gary Lauwers 17-36 times while screaming at him “Say you love Satan” … allegedly.

Then we get a quick segment on 14-year-old Tommy Sullivan, who purportedly signed a pact with Old Scratch himself before killing his own mama with a Boy Scout knife and attempting to saw his own head off. Man, kids were a whole lot more creative before the internet came along, that’s for sure. Interestingly enough, they show a couple of photos of his bedroom afterwards, and the thing is pretty much covered wall-to-wall with Motley Crue posters. Well, shit — if I had to listen to nothing but Dr. Feelgood over and over again, I’d probably be trying to carve my neck off, too.

This leads to Geraldo asking the greatest question I have ever heard a news reporter ask in the history of television — “You’re not a theologian, you’re a cop, do you think that Tommy was possessed?” (And in case you were wondering, the cop just looked at him with a glare that LITERALLY said “Are you fucking retarded, you greaseball wop?” before actually saying, with a shrug, “well, possession is a state of mind, Mr. Rivera.”)

Then Geraldo cuts it to Rev. James Lebar, a member of the New York Archdiocese who says demonic possession ain’t entirely out of the question here. Good to see he took time out of his busy schedule of playing with altar boys’ buttholes to remind America about what the real social problem is here.

And just when you think this thing can’t get any better, we go live via satellite to London for an interview with OZZY OSBOURNE, and since this is the late 1980s, you just KNOW he’s going to be coked out of his mind something fierce. In true Ozzy fashion, not a single word the guy says in intelligible, which is a perfect segue to a chit-chat with Sean Sellers, this guy in Oklahoma on death row for killing three people back in 1986.

With a haircut like that, I think it's safe to say he could be his own covenant's virgin sacrifice.

Beside him is this guy who is really, REALLY fat, even for the modern day, so in 1988 girth, he’s like 800 pounds, adjusted for inflation. So Fatty McFatass claims to be a Satanism expert, who says Sellers had to kill people to prove to the devil that he broke all Ten Commandments, which apparently is something Satan is really keen on or something.

We return from commercial break and Geraldo throws us to a vignette about these three kids in Missouri who beat one of their classmates to death and got life sentences as a result. Naturally, ringleader Theron Reed “Pete” Roland II blamed his tomfoolery on the trifecta of heavy metal music, drugs and that dang old devil. Oddly enough, they actually SHOW images of the murder victim, although they’re filtered through this weird grey and white, quasi-monochrome mosaic. “The devil double-crossed you,” Geraldo says at one point in the interview, proving once and for all that there is no better possible job than tabloid TV talk show bullshit con-artist person-man.

Time for more commentary from Ozzy. Although he admits to writing a couple of songs about the devil, he also tells Geraldo that he doesn’t want any of his listeners to harm themselves as a result. “I don’t feel guilty, I feel kinda’ persecuted by everybody,” he responds. “It seems to me a lot of people judge the book by its cover, more.”

We return from commercial break and then we’re introduced to Zeena LaVey, who, obviously, is the daughter of Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey. And although I’m sure you’ve seen the memes by now, the empirical reality before us that Zeena does indeed look so much like Taylor Swift that it’s kinda’ eerie. I mean, even outside of the blonde hair and crimson lipstick, they have the same forehead structure, cheekbones and eyebrows — and as I’ve said many, many times before, goth Taylor Swift is pretty much my dream woman, so consider Zeena, circa 1988, anyway, to be my absolute ideal woman of the ever.

She says the Church of Satan has thousands of followers, easy. From there, we get to hear from Dr. Michael Aquino of the Temple of SET, who has what is easily the WORST haircut in the history of humanity. I mean, even if he was going for self-aware, ironic-bad, it’s still absolutely hideous. Anyway, he goes down the flowchart about modern Satanism being an atheistic riff on rational self-interest, and that’s our cue for Geraldo to start making references to The Exorcist.

Up next, Geraldo goes to a Haitian voodoo shop in New York, where people dressed up like Aunt Jemima throw chickens at one another and try to scream-sing demons outta’ each other. Then we take a look at this one preacher in California who likes to stick a wooden cross on people so it makes evil spirits try to jump out of ‘em, even though it really just looks like they’re constipated and also quite angry about being constipated at that time. 

Then there’s a quick vignette about Anton LaVey and The Satanic Bible and Sammy Davis. Jr. being a secret devil worshipper. Then Geraldo looks at this ancient cow corpse and the farmers are convinced its corpse was used for some kind of devil worship ritual, and this one old broad says she’s going to carry a gun with her, because apparently you can shoot the devil or something.

Then this one guy says there are Satanic rituals going on at military bases because somebody spray painted an upside-down cross next to some World War II-era barracks. Then Geraldo kinda glosses over sexual abuse allegations at the Presidio Army base child care center — yeah, you HAVE to read up on this one, folks — which Rivera claims to be the work of, and I quote, “soldiers of Satan.”

Then Geraldo asks Aquino how he can believe “Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong” and still uphold the Constitution, to which point Aquino replies The Satanic Bible is meant to be a polemic and not intended to be taken literally. And here I was, thinking he was going to cop to the fact that the whole thing ripped off Might is Right in front of Anton LaVey’s daughter!

Then Geraldo tells the TV viewing audience to get the kinds outta’ the room, ‘cause it’s time to talk about the infamous McMartin preschool scandal next.

So this one kid from Mississippi shows off a buncha’ pictures he drew of Pac-Man ghosts and talks about how his dad put things up his pooper FOR THE DEVIL. Then these kids in Nebraska tell Geraldo their devil-worshipping parents made them engage in the ‘cest and LITERALLY murder other children for them. Then this one mama with a giant beehive hairdo talks about her kid allegedly being shown a skeleton, and then we hop right into the McMartin tomfoolery — which, of course, turned out to be one of the most horrifying hoaxes in the history of the American legal system.

So anyway, this one guy who is TOTALLY convinced of his neighbor’s non-existent guilt says he believes the children were legit tortured because one of them said their made-up attacker wore a robe in an Episcopal church. He also says that Satanists literally drink blood and pee-pee mixed together and that Manhattan Beach, Calif. is the chi-mo capital of the world, but also takes the time to gently throw some shade at day cares in Detroit while he’s at it.

Then Geraldo rolls out this guy named Maury Terry, who wrote a book called “The Ultimate Evil,” which, yeah, looks every bit as amazing as you’d imagine. He says some stuff about alleged pagan cults in Long Island, which he claims has something to do with the murder of six-year-old Lisa Steinberg. Unfortunately, in reality, she was killed not by a devil worship sect, but her adoptive father — who, for the record, just so happened to be a crack-cocaine smoking Jew who was released from prison in 2004.

We return from commercials — and man, what I wouldn’t give to have seen this WITH all of the original ads for New Coke and Wendy’s sprinkled in the mix — and now it’s time for a whole segment about the man, the myth and the legend, one Charles Whatever His Middle Name Is Manson.

So we meet this one guy named Nick Shreck, who meets his hero Charlie at San Quentin (apparently, they just LET people go and visit Death Row inmates anytime they wanted to back in the day.) “A bloodbath would be a cleansing and a purification of a planet that has been dirtied and degraded for too long,” he says. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, “Hey, isn’t that the same guy who was in Radio Werewolf and made that one album with Christopher Lee?,” you would be correctamundo. Oh, and instead of mass murdering the entire planet as Geraldo implied, he instead married Zeena (that lucky bastard) and is now teaching Tantric Buddhism in Germany, because of course he would.

Then Geraldo says “The Son of Sam” was a devil worshipper and so was Henry Lee Lucas and The Night Stalker.  Then he accuses Boyd Rice (of NON fame) of promoting “racial purity,” despite a staggering amount of evidence demonstrating that he actually believes that. Then these fat black dudes start talking about San Fran cult leader Clifford St. Josephs, then this fat 40-year-old dude with a mustache ADMITS to having sex with a 17-year-old chained to a radiator, telling Geraldo that “Rick preferred it that way.”

Hey, look everybody, the people that cost taxpayers $15 million for a seven-year trial that resulted in ZERO convictions!

At this point in the show, Geraldo addresses the detractors of the program, and apparently, there were quite a few advertisers back in the day who weren’t too happy about the special taking the air. Rivera says the show isn’t exploitative sleaze because he’s shining a spotlight on crimes that often go “underreported,” and are things that American society, as a whole, “needs to know about.” 

Up next, it’s time for a video interview with convicted killer Charles Gervais, whose big claim to fame is beating this one dude to death with a hammer in Louisiana. He tells Geraldo he can’t talk about his case, and it’s pretty obvious he’s mildly retarded, and Geraldo keeps pushing him about the devil worship stuff and then Geraldo asks him if he’s sick because he believes he’ll get 10,000 souls in hell. To which Gervais replies, very gingerly, “no.”

That’s our cue for “cult investigator” Ted Gunderson to say that “confidential sources” have told him there is a LEGIT national network of devil-worship murderers throughout the U.S. “who are very active and have their own rest and relaxation forms.” He also said that it ties into “drug operations, motorcycle gangs and assassination,” but of course, he can’t divulge too many details for us. 

Up next, there’s a segment about alleged Satanic crimes going on in Kansas City. This one guys says he had his testicles electrified by a fat guy with a mustache who looks a lot like Ron Jeremy who also had a human skeleton in his wall for no reason whatsoever. Oh by the way, that guy’s actual name is Robert Berdella — a.k.a., The Kansas City Butcher.

So Geraldo is all butt-hurt that the K.C. police didn’t do enough to go after more devil worshippers in Missouri in the wake of the case, including allegations of orgies with “Satanic overtones,” which sounds like something I’d definitely like to experience firsthand at some point … YOLO.

Then this one detective from Kansas City talks about finding one of those dreaded “ceremonial robes” in Berdella’s bedrooms, which is just as good as evidence to him as all those fuckin’ skeletons buried in his backyard that devil worship is afoot. The best part of the whole segment, though, is the OTHER detective from Kansas City standing beside Geraldo while he takes mad shit about their police work, and you can just tell he’d love to grab a chair and go Masato Tanaka all over his gourd.

We return from commercial break, and Geraldo URGES parents at home to send the kids out of the room or change the channel, ‘cause now it’s time to get into literal baby murder rituals. This woman named “Cheryl Horton” claims to be a Satanic “breeder,” who was knocked up only so she could produce a baby for devil sacrifices. Then we met this woman named “Donna” who claims that she helped SKIN a baby, and it’s obvious that she has some sort of neurological disability. Man, weren’t the late 1980s great, when we didn’t care who was retarded and just believed whatever nonsense they were asked to say on camera?

Anyhoo, Zeena said all of that sacrifice stuff is a bunch of hooey, then Geraldo goes to Denver to talk to this guy who runs a mental health clinic SOLELY for Satanic abuse victims. Yep, that sounds legit AF right there, and I’m sure whoever gives them accreditation is TOTALLY reliable and on the up and up.

Yep, I've got my new touchdown celebration, kids ...

Geraldo asks Zeena if he thinks the “breeders” are lying, and she asks them if the bodies have ever been found. Not having any immediate response, Rivera then throw it back to Horton who says there’s no proof because — of course! — the devil worshippers burn the bodies before anybody can find them. That, or they chop them up and throw them in the ocean. Or eat them. “Or make bones out of the tools” — not the other way around, I must note, which really seems to make a lot more sense.

Then Gunderson he believes the accusations are 100 percent true based on — you guessed it! — his “confidential sources.” At that point, Aquino asks Gunderson if he knows who these people are, why hasn’t he gotten them arrested by now. Then Gunderson said he can’t, because to gather the evidence the police would have to go undercover and LITERALLY kill babies, too, and that’s bad.

Despite the lack of ANY evidence indicating any of the stuff actually happened, Geraldo still DEMANDS that a national task force be set up to address devil worship crimes, calling the impasse with law enforcement officials “unacceptable” — which, really, doesn’t even crack the top 20 stupidest things Geraldo’s ever said on national television. Maybe even top 50, if we’re counting his appearances on 20/20.

We wrap up the show in the most ironic way possible. After two solid hours of accusations and allegations of heinous crimes against children, who does Geraldo turn to as the voice of moralistic reason? Why, the Catholic Church, of course! “It’s that thing that disrupts ordinary human life,” says Rev. Lebar, who wouldn’t you know it, was posthumously accused of sexually abusing children himself. Then Sellers goes on this LONG tangent about accepting Jesus as one’s personal Lord and savior and how that’s the only way outta’ devil worship.

Then Geraldo asks Aquino if he thinks there should be LITERAL Surgeon General warnings on Satanic churches (you can’t make this shit up, folks) and Aquino just looks at him like he’s … well, Geraldo. 

Then Sellers asks Geraldo one more time if he’s just using the Satanism stuff as a cover for his murder rap, and then he talks about all of the social ills that come about from people taking The Satanic Bible literally. Oddly enough, nobody’s brought up all of the social ills that came about from people taking the regular Bible literally, but hey, this was Reagan’s America, after all.

And then Geraldo thanks all of the people he didn’t get a chance to talk to, and yep, that’s the show.

A warning that's applicable, really, to just about EVERYTHING involving Geraldo in the 1980s, when you think about it.

Man, was that a spectacle or was that a spectacle? You just don’t get stuff like that on TV nowadays, which is a shame, because I’m sure all of these networks are burning money by NOT doing regularly weekly broadcasts about devil worshippers eating babies and presenting it as fact despite a lack of any physical evidence whatsoever.

Of course, there’s a lot of exaggerated hooey in the special, and quite a bit of straight-up, unrepentant bullshit, too. I’d like to think that I nailed the bulk of them in the text above, but if you’ve got anything else to add about the cases and incidents referenced in the special, by all means, feel free to send us a line and we’ll see if we can include it as an addendum.

The term “it speaks for itself” is used WAY too often these days, but in the case of Devil Worship, there’s really NOTHING more I can add to the discussion. The whole thing is just a smorgasbord of psychotic crime and Christian paranoia and brass-balled sensationalism, and I loved every stupid second of it. This is the kind of thing that embodies everything wrong with American culture, but at the same time, kinda’ indirectly highlights everything great about U.S. society. I mean, is there anything even remotely as American as turning subjects like ritualistic homosexual murders and false allegations of pedo crimes into made-for-TV entertainment, complete with a brazen disregard for the factuality of the cases therein? Honestly, this is the kind of shit that makes me wish Reagan was still president and everybody in Hollywood was still zonked out of their gourds on cocaine. Sure, you get a lot of insane fundamentalist bullshit in the mix, but frankly, I’d rather live in a world where the great legislators of morality are the likes of Donald Wildmon instead of whoever’s running the SPLC or ADL nowadays, anyways.

By all means, if you’ve never seen this thing before, you ought to. The whole special is uploaded on the YouTubes, and really, the only thing I lament is the fact that all of the copies of the broadcast I could find are without the original corresponding commercials. 

Because, as we all know by now, there’s only ONE thing in this world more entertaining than watching Geraldo talk about fictitious witchcraft crimes — and that’s watching Gerlado talk about fictitious witchcraft crimes, while buttressed by McDonald’s spots showcasing Mac Tonight and ads touting Wendy’s SuperBar like it was a goddamn WCW PPV.