The Occult Experience made its US debut at the 1985 International Film and Television Festival of New York. Four decades later, this made-for-TV doc is back in town as part of Spectacle’s “Spectober 2025” lineup. The film was made as a collaboration between Nevill Drury, a scholar of folk religions, and Frank Heimans, goliath of Australian documentary television. It surveys several faiths, including Thelema, Satanism, Wicca, and The Fellowship of Isis. Most coverage of American occultism in the ‘80s was produced by major news outlets like ABC, or religious outlets like CBN, which tended to lump a multitude of belief systems under the catch-all banner of “Satanism.” In contrast to the alarmist reporting of the era, which culminated in “The Satanic Panic,” The Occult Experience offers a refreshingly level-headed survey of spiritual practices in the English-speaking Western world circa 1985.
While most news segments depicted neo-pagan beliefs as part of some post-hippie thaumaturgical mania, The Occult Experience feels more PBS-special than ABC-exposé. In spite of its more equable tone, or perhaps because of it, the documentary is chock-full of sensational imagery and transfixing interviews. Watching this small-screen piece in a theater, one is awash in symbolic imagery, pagan chants, and stunning, if somewhat wedged-in sweeps of H.R Giger’s artworks, in addition to an interview with the Swiss artist that bookends the film. Fresh from summoning an Aztec fire god, and having accidentally set his loincloth on fire, the Wiccan priest Alex Sanders answers the filmmakers’ question about “What’s it like being a witch in the computer age?” Lilith Sinclair, priestess and editor of “The Satanic Newsletter,” recalls her experience as a human altar and why she founded The Church of Set, which she describes as “The Church of Satan, grown up.” With Heimans’s capable hands directing the cameras, and Drury’s informed, decidedly un-Barbara Walters interview style, the duo present a relatively unbiased and sprawling view of late-20th century spiritual practice from Esalen to Ireland.
Christian perspectives and rituals are also featured, albeit without the pomp and powder blue suits common to the televangelists who were wrestling away Channel 10’s viewers. Christianity functions as an effective counterpoint to neo-paganism in the film, and it is treated with the same anthropological distance as the other faiths. A group of Evangelicals attempt to cast out demons, which they conclude to be a condition of modernity. Reverend Dean Shilton appears to have all of Christendom shining behind him as he informs the viewer that Satanism is for weenies. These juxtapositions effectively avoid presenting Christianity as an antidote to the occult, showing it as just one more mystical belief system among dozens.
The Occult Experience screens tonight, October 24, and on October 27, at Spectacle as part of the series “Spectober 2025.”
