April 6: Until You Call on the Dark — Pick a movie from the approved movies list of the Church of Satan. Here’s the list.

When Robert Altman left Hollywood, he directed a stage play and this movie version of Ed Graczyk’s play, which all takes place within a Woolworth’s five-and-dime store in McCarthy, Texas, as the Disciples of James Dean meet for the first time in twenty years. The store is close to Marfa, Texas, where Dean filmed Giant. The manager of the store, Juanita (Sudie Bond), welcomes Sissy (Cher in her first dramatic role), who has also been working at a truck stop, the first of the girls to arrive.

The others are Mona (Sandy Dennis), Stella Mae (Kathy Bates), Edna Louise (Marta Heflin) and Joanne (Karen Black), who — spoiler warning — used to be Joseph Qualley (Mark Patton, in his first movie, made a few years prior to A Nightmare On Elm Street 2), the only guy in the fan club.

A lot has happened in the last few years. like Mona claiming that she had a baby — we never see her son, who she believes is trapped as a child in a man’s body even if Sissy thinks otherwise — with Dean as she tried to be in the movie. Of course — another spoiler — it was with Joe and she’s upset now that Joe has become Joanne, which is a tremendously big thing today much less in 1982.

The girls all used to sing “Sincerely” by the McGuire Sisters and sing it one more time before we see the store closed, faded away, as all things do. This ending destroyed me, as the girls said they would meet again in twenty years, in the same spot, but the same place no longer exists.

This played a small theatrical series of dates at four theaters before airing on Showtime.

Critics didn’t like how the mirrors showed the past but I feel that it works well. Despite those mixed returns, Pauline Kael said, “When Robert Altman gives a project everything he’s got, his skills are such that he can make poetry out of fake poetry and magic out of fake magic.”

How is this film Satanic? According to the Church of Satan film list, “Some of the Satanic points in this wonderful film include touching upon the Satanic Sins of Pretentiousness, Self-Deceit, Herd Conformity, and Lack of Perspective. And the acceptance of all forms of human sexual expression between consenting adults.”

It’s also an exploration of how women must suppress their emotions, personalities and sexuality to be part of the male-dominated world instead of giving in to their true carnal nature. It’s also about the power of myth and how movie stars can transcend our reality.

It’s writer, Ed Graczyk, said of his play “Jimmy Dean can only be described as the result of my own observations and frustrations with progress that ignores a past; the lack of personalization and pride and the recurring need of people to build facades to conceal the truths of their lives. It is the facade that makes abnormal people seem normal and the sad people seem happy, a personal observation which I feel makes the people I write about colorful, theatrical, but most of all, honest. The inspiration for Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean came many years ago during my five-year association with the Midland Community Theatre in west Texas. While I was there I had the opportunity to visit Marfa, the site used by Warner Bros. in filming Giant. The only remaining evidence of the film was the facade of the mansion Reata used to film the on location scenes, now crumbling and supported by six telephone poles. It was the memory of that site, the pace of the people and the vivid recollection of the idol James Dean on the youth of the period that resulted in the writing of this play.”

I’m struck by the love that the girls have for one another despite all of the pain between them. Yet you feel as if they could murder one another at nearly any second.