Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: Hail Satan!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey.

Before the internet, if you wanted your opinion on a matter to be known, you had limited options. You could write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or periodical. You could go down to the town square, stand on a soap box, and annoy any and all passers by with your rant regarding the topic about which you were most passionate. Or you could book time on your local public access television station, free from the limitations and regulations of the Federal Communications Commission.

Probably my own previous experience with public television was the Wayne’s World sketch on Saturday Night Live. If my hometown had a public access station, I never knew about it when I was a kid. Eventually, I did discover one public access station in my hometown in Louisiana once I moved back from college. Every Friday night, this station would broadcast an auction of the most ridiculous items. Forget going out to the club or bar or whatever third space was around in the late 1990s. This show truly was must see TV. 

Apparently larger markets had stations devoted to public access. Thanks to AGFA, I recently discovered the show Decoupage!, a Los Angeles based program featuring the performance artist Craig Roose and his alter ego character Summer Caprice. A drag character, Summer Caprice would host a talk show where people as diverse as Susan Tyrell and Fred Willard would come through for unhinged interviews. And where else might you find Karen Black singing a cover of Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang with the band L7? Nowhere but public access television.

A more pertinent recent discovery is The Great Satan at Large, a program that aired a single time in Tucson, Arizona in 1991. In retrospect, perhaps the station airing it at 6 PM was not the best idea. Wanting to provide an alternative to the televangelism he saw on a lot of local stations, Lou Perfidio created a talk show where he portrayed Satan, complete with red suit, pitchfork, and devil horns, spewing the most profane statements imaginable while images of Hitler and swastikas were projected on a screen behind him. Like most talk shows, Satan had a panel of guests. God was there. And a perpetually masturbating court jester. There are special guests—a sadomasochistic couple who show up to perform some simulated sex acts. And here is where Perfidio landed in legal trouble with an obscenity charge as the female in the couple was only 17 years old (he later pled guilty to the delinquency of a minor). Meanwhile, it is also a call in show, and incels across Tucson dialed in, asking Satan to push the boundaries further and further.

The show is indeed pretty hellacious, and perhaps a better glimpse into Hell than even Ron Ormond and Estus W. Pirkle provided in their series of Christian exploitation films aimed at scaring viewers into accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. After 45 minutes of The Great Satan at Large, I was on my knees asking for forgiveness. I kind of want to watch it again right now though. But that’s just the way sin is I guess.

Perfidio did appear on another program on the Access Tucson network entitled 666Israel, where a televangelist character and Satan have a…well…I’m not sure how to describe their interaction honestly. You just have to see it to believe it. And thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can. It’s right there at your fingertips, along with every other perversion you can imagine. Hail Satan indeed.