“Hell’s Bells?” More Like, “Hell’s BALLS”! Amirite?

by Marc Calderaro

I Luv employee Marc C. dissects the "documentary"

HELLS BELLS: THE DANGERS OF ROCK AND ROLL.

“Hell’s Bells?” More Like, “Hell’s BALLS”! Amirite?

by Marc Calderaro

It’s easy to make fun of the ultra-religious.  Pious, self-righteous, and overly literal, the evangelical and fundamental are often the subject of ridicule.  Whether they’re proselytizing themselves to get you to join, or condescending you because you’re not good enough, they seem to love being the butt of jokes.  Their ways seem oddly foreign to any stock, standard, middle-of-the-road type that makes up the vast majority of the populous.  And I guess it’s fun to watch people repeatedly fall on their face – especially on purpose.

Enter 1989’s “Hell’s Bells: The Dangers of Rock ‘n’ Roll” – a five-part series, produced, directed and starring Eric Holmberg, chronicling rock and roll through the eyes of the Christian Right.  The series has made the cult circuit as a hilarious piece of modern-day, scare-film propaganda, and understandably so.  The series is low-budget, cable-access themed, and Holmberg sports a ridiculous moustache and mullet throughout.  Not to mention, said mustachio is telling us why the music we enjoy will likely send us to hell.  Totes Hilarious.

Yup, it’s simple to watch “Hell’s Bells”, baked out of your mind, yelling “Ha Ha! Stupid Christian!”  But that expectation is what surprised me the most when I sat through the three-hour joy-a-thon.  Instead taking out sacrilegious artists in a line-‘em-up-and-knock-‘em-down style that would make Michael Moore blush, from the first minutes, the film veers in a vastly different direction.

Collected, cool, and logical, the would-be scare-piece uses a step-by-step process, researched and thorough, outlining why music never has been, and never will be, merely entertainment.  And how this generation, more so than any before it, is susceptible to the tacit manipulation involved in the visceral art form.  Even though the film teeters and topples, eventually concluding that you should listen to Jesus music instead (an ending I most assuredly disagree with), it’s hard to argue with their articulate data and their elegant thesis – music isn’t as passive as we’d like it to be.

Holmberg starts by telling us what this film is not.  “Hell’s Bells” is not trying to incite album burning and it’s not telling you to stop listening to the artists you like.  It’s merely interpreting the band’s art and actions through the lens of “truth” and asking the viewer to then look deeper into their own favorite artists.  Holmberg smartly states that their version of “truth” is defined by the Bible, and if yours differs, you might disagree with some of the statements herein; by qualifying the film’s own authority, it allows itself the freedom to liberally discuss “truth” and not come off totally absurd.  And shortly after that boring disclaimer, the truth hammer starts smacking, laying its pain train on the first genre that bumbles into its way – Metal.

With an overt hatred of religion (and specifically Christianity), showcasing sacrilege within metal’s hallowed halls isn’t difficult.  Inciting drugs, casual sex, rebellion, and blasphemy, all the while sporting a overt fascination with the occult, metal thrives on dressing like the bad boy, and the film gives the genre the attention it so desperately craves.   But our host easily discerns the theatrical from the spiritual.  Instead of focusing on silly things like pentagrams or on-stage antics, Holmberg asks what’s implied by the proliferation of those seemingly innocuous symbols and actions.  A repeated theme throughout the series is what’s referred to as “casual Satanism”; and rather than highlighting the artist, the film turns its gaze to the listener.  It asks what happens when everything in a musical genre is dependant on symbols (pentagrams, et al.) and actions (devil horns, “mano cornato” [sic], et. al) that most listeners don’t comprehend.  And what is the effect, if any, on the culture at large?

After highlighting a litany of metal album-art, lyrics and member interviews to prove their points, while quoting liberally from the Bible, the film switches gears to show more inoffensive bands, like Blue Oyster Cult and George Michael, comparing the similarity of symbols and temperament – while quoting liberally from the Bible.  The pervasive symbols and actions do seem to weave themselves into the strangest of places.  And it’s in those genre-shifting discussions and comparatives that the series shows its ballast.  It’s elementary to look at bands like Christian Death or Slayer and point out anti-religious sentiments, so when the film picks apart other artists and role models who don’t devote themselves to the dark arts, I was the most interested.  For example, a small section on a Huey Lewis and the News song was welcomed, hilarious and also relevant to the discussion.

Another group of bands discussed that piqued my interest, were a subset of acts Holmberg refers to as “smart occult”.  Including Bauhaus, Nick Cave, Thrill Kill Cult, the Cure and others, Holmberg offers that bands like these, together with the empty-headed pop like Mr. Lewis’ News, are more insidious than overt Satan-worshipping, make-up wearing, showboats.  Using the Aleister Crowley-penned Thelema doctrine as his guide, often quoting, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”, Holmberg argues that whenever it’s suggested that you, rather than God, are your redeemer, it’s Satanic in origin.

And sadly, here is where the “documentary” runs itself off the rails.  Using a grossly misunderstood and simplified version of the Crowley verse, Holmberg presents a straw man (a very dead straw man at that), and pummels him to the ground.  Holmberg interprets the above quote as “Do whatever you hedonistically desire,” whereas Crowley’s intent is much closer to, “Find your true calling (set apart from your ego’s desires), and will that into being.”  Crowley even used an archaic translation of “will” to differentiate usage – but alas, you can’t fool the Christians.  And it’s with this same fervor which the series attacks Universalism.  With such famous proponents as John Lennon, George Harrison and Jefferson Airplane, don’t think it wasn’t going to get a section.  Though the arguments presented are still as concise as in the rest of the series, the rigid interpretations of Biblical passages, and the seemingly jealous attitude toward other beliefs comes off very poorly.  When Universalism is reduced to a form of Satanism, that’s when I had to draw the line.

The film is smart and well-researched, but it overreaches when involving other faiths.  Soon after, it’s devolved into denouncing the relief effort of Feed the World.  I mean, maybe it’s a little egotistical, but evoking such ire seems a little overzealous (“Which is better?  Feed the world food?  Or Feed the World Jesus?”).  This action is the series’ largest mistake: interpreting others’ doctrines “correctly”, while professing to have “correctly” interpreted their own.  Assuming that God’s words were indeed the root of the Bible, humans have had their hands on it for thousands of years, garbling the message all up in myriad ways.  Sure the ideas are still there in wholesale, but to chauvinistically assert God’s will, confident your interpretation is the proper one, is just silly – especially while assuming you can properly interpret the message and beliefs of the others.  At the series’ end, “Hell’s Bells” begins to finally look like the ridiculous propaganda film we were all hoping for.

It’s kind of sad, really.  Christians so easily misrepresent themselves, it was nice to see an even-tempered, annotated, and reasonable account of why they feel the way they do.  Though the series flails at the end, and may not have been the same thrill I usually get from scare films, it was a different type of enjoyment, and one I rarely receive: listening to someone disagree with you and not call you stupid in the process.  It was a nice change of pace.