Perverse Preachers, Fascist Fundamentalists and Kristian Kiddie Kooks (1991 Video) User Reviews

Remains timely decades later

[AlsExGal · 9/10 · 10 February 2023]

This is an incredible documentary compilation of clips from various televangelist programs, news stories, and religious children's shows recorded circa '85 through '90. From Captain Hook, the "pirate for Jesus", to Oral Roberts, Robert Tilton, Jack Vam Impe, and Pat Robertson, to the scandals involving Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, the clips are damning in their own right, and no additional commentary is needed.

But this isn't a hit-job on Christians, as there is also time devoted to New Age quackery, UFO cultists, and other sorts of fringe lunacy. It's disturbing, hilarious, cringe-worthy, and very entertaining. I'd read about this tape years ago in the Psychotronic Video Guide, but only recently tracked it down online. It's now nearly 33 years old, but one will notice how little things have changed in many respects, as many of the same cultural boogeymen are trotted out by the fearmongering crackpots and hucksters. Highly recommended.

Aside from the title, the video clips speak for themselves.

[TomReed · 10/10 · 16 May 2006]

This was compiled by a science fiction fan magazine called "Zontar" which has gone out of print, and whose publisher has dropped out of sight. (Is this paranoid proof of how dangerous this video is? Your call.) It is a pure documentary, showing the most ugly examples of Christian evangelical TV from the "Jim and Tammy" years.

With these videos played straight through, it is devastating, especially because there is no commentary within the film. The first segment is of "Captain Hook, the Christian Pirate," a paraplegic victim of a motorcycle accident whose kiddie show includes the "autopsy" of a sinner and him making sinning children "walk the plank." It continues with evangelical shows from the boring ("Christian Economics," anyone?) to the hellfire-inspired. Features include the many charges right-wing churches make against popular culture - how the Dungeons & Dragons game is a secret way to worship Satan, how rock music is Satanic, how abortion will lead to "secular humanist police" machine-gunning children, and worse.

As a kind of fairness, the middle of the tape includes videos from "new age" cults, including flying saucer cultists, pitches for "miracle liquid" (yes, tap water in a fancy bottle) and a "new age comedian" who's even more unfunny than his Christian counterparts. The same manipulation, just space aliens substituted for Jesus.

Eventually, there's coverage of the scandals of the Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggart, but that's not the end. The tape ends with post-scandal evangelicals continuing to pitch (the "Take It Back Telethon" that claims it was Satan, not the law, that wrecked the Bakkers) and we sail off into the night with Captain Hook once again.

I said there is no commentary on the tape. When I bought my original tape, it included a multi-page photocopied pimple that described these videos, along with some pungent commentary and back history of featured players. I lost it years ago. If someone has it, I'd like a copy. But without any printed supplement, the video is a harrowing look at the insanity of unquestioned, unthinking fundamentalism - which is still affecting our government's national and international policies.