Oddball Films presents You Give Me Fever - God, The Devil and Betty Boop, a hodge-podge of vintage shorts, documentaries, cartoons and burlesque numbers about the fervor of faith and the seduction of Satan. Films include local filmmaker Peter Adair's incredible documentary Holy Ghost People (1967), featuring the seemingly bizarre practices of a West Virginia Pentecostal congregation including speaking in tongues, ingestion of poison and use of snakes within their religious ceremonies. Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) is a satanic fueled vision in Technicolor with a droning music score by Mick Jagger and featuring the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey. Betty Boop is ice cold when she faces off against the Devil in the Fleischer brothers classic Red Hot Mamma (1934). Burlesque queen Betty Dolan is half Devil, half sexy lady and all sizzling in the innovatively costumed Satan-Tease (1955). Other shorts include Eucharist, the 60s neo-psychedelic short produced by the Lutheran Church, the trailer for the adult feature Satan's Cheerleaders, and for the early birds, evangelist Dr. Irwin Moon from the Moody Science Institute electrocutes himself to prove the Facts of Faith (1956).
Holy Ghost People (B+W, 1967)
Rightly hailed by Margaret Mead as one of the best ethnographic documentary films ever made, and a staple of every documentary film studies course Holy Ghost People by the late San Francisco filmmaker Peter Adair ("Stopping History", "Word is Out") examines the Scrabble Creek, West Virginia Pentecostal congregation whose fundamentalist philosophy encourages a literal interpretation of the Bible.
The film reveals the religious fervor, the faith healing, the trances, the glossolalia (speaking in tongues), the anointing, the ingestion of poison(Strychnine) and the use of rattlesnakes in the church's religious services. Shot inside the cramped interior of a poor, rural church Adair allows the raw power and the purity of the congregation's faith speak for itself and documents it unflinchingly.
Says one member:
"I could feel the quickening power of the holy ghost... I would dance under the power, and the quickening power would get on me."
Inside the church people surrender to the spirit, shrieking, flailing, crumpling to the floor, talking in tongues, drinking poison, and handling snakes as the ultimate test of their faith."Holy Ghost People" is visceral and jarring, dizzying and frenetic and captures the deep faith, ecstatic states and lethal consequences of their belief.
Betty Boop in Red Hot Mamma (B+W, 1934)
It was a cold and snowy night and Betty is freezing cold in her skimpy nighty, but when she blazes a fire in the fireplace, she finds herself in a cartoon inferno, face to face with the Devil himself, and you know no man is a match for Miss Boop!
Plus!
Other shorts include “Eucharist”, the 60s neo-psychedelic short produced by the Lutheran Church, the trailer for the adult feature Satan's Cheerleaders and more!
For The Early Birds:
The Moody Institute of Science, founded under the auspices of the Moody Bible Institute, an evangelical group started by Irwin Moon in San Francisco in 1938, produced a number of religious cult science films that were intended to demonstrate intelligent design through scientific experiments. In this electrifying short, Moon runs thousands of volts of god’s creation though his entire body. A stunner!