On Occultism

[Rev. Rye]

I suppose it helped reading in a guitar magazine (I think it was Guitar One) about how the guy from the Alkaline Trio is a card-carrying member of the Church of Satan purely for the shock value.

Also, looking at the CoS website, I found a list of recommended books and films. Might be a good source to look into, though what an old Mr. Belvedere movie has to do with Satanism is a mystery for the ages.

They provide an interesting book list. The film list... I'm not so into. LaVey was very much into cheesy horror flicks and "B" movies, from what I can gather. I love the horror genre, but I'm not into the cheesy, over the top, almost comedic horror movies. Just not my taste.

Weird, I actually found a lot more interesting things (at least among stuff that was available at my local library that I hadn't already read/seen) on the film list. Indeed, I went through the list and found I owned 26 of the films on the list:

1. Asphalt Jungle
   
2. Blade Runner
   
3. Blue Velvet
   
4. Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
   
5. Carnival of Souls
   
6. Citizen Kane
   
7. 5000 Fingers of Dr. T
   
8. Inherit the Wind
   
9. Key Largo
   
10. Kiss Me Deadly
    
11. Koyaanisqatsi
    
12. M
    
13. Metropolis
    
14. Night of the Hunter
    
15. Radio Days
    
16. Rosemary's Baby
    
17. Ruling Class
    
18. Simon of the Desert
    
19. Stardust Memories
    
20. Strangers on a Train
    
21. Stepford Wives
    
22. Treasure of the Sierr Madre
    
23. Wicker Man
    
24. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
    
25. Wise Blood
    
26. Zelig.
    

And that's just the ones I own on DVD (except for Caligari, which I only own on Blu-Ray). Clearly not all cheesy horror movies. That said, there is a preponderance of B movies on the list, but by no means all. Kind of what you might expect when he performs music and latches onto this:



Odd note: somehow, Sons of the Desert didn't make the list. And also, despite The Circus of Dr. Lao making the book list, the movie adaptation The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao didn't. This may be because of the eminent domain plot Charles Beaumont invented for the movie.