Occult Movies
| By: Dan Wooding; ©2001 |
| Dan Wooding examines a disturbing trend during the past year: movies about occult themes were almost as successful as family-friendly movies. What factors may have lead to this? |
OCCULT MOVIES WERE ALMOST AS SUCCESSFUL AS FAMILY-FRIENDLY FILMS LAST YEAR
- Occult movies last year were almost as successful at the box office as family-friendly movies.
That’s the conclusion of media expert, Dr. Ted Baehr, a renowned Christian expert on the entertainment media with more than 20 years’ experience.
“This is a troubling trend in movies,” Dr. Baehr said. “I am deeply concerned that, for the first time in the 16 years we have been reviewing movies, occult films have done so well. This is very troubling and an indication that teenagers are looking for something more in their movies. The problem with occultism is it teaches you to want to advance yourself at the expense of others. You repeat spells to improve your performance and to get rid of your enemies. Occultism basically relies on spiritual thuggery.”
Dr. Baehr, founder and chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission and MOVIEGUIDE(R), a magazine, radio program and TV show for families which reviews almost all movies from a biblical perspective, said that his MOVIEGUIDE(R) reviewers covered just about all movies released into the theaters last year—287 in all.
“We review every film that is released theatrically in the United States, our records are constantly compared with the industry standard, Paul Kagan Associates, Inc., and we come out reviewing all movies that are visible in the theaters. Paul Kagan Assoc. is the official accounting firm for the industry. There may be one or two one-day openings, but those movies don’t last very long, but we even try to cover those in limited release. At MOVIEGUIDE(R), we try to cover every single movie review so we can do really accurate figures. Because if you have one more redemptive movie or one more woman’s film that you have missed, that changes the statistic.
“Why? Because we do our sophisticated analysis and that analysis would not be accurate if we did not have the figures for each of our criteria for every movie. (For example, if you have three NC-17 movies, and you leave out the criteria for one, your averages and comparisons will be way off base.) The studios check our figures—one studio even spent thousands of dollars to do so—and have found consistently that we were absolutely accurate. This, and our blatant Christian worldview, makes us different from all other reviewers.
“What we try and do more than critiquing a film is to analyze the film and look at all of the significant factors in which people are interested. Many people are interested to know if there are violence, foul language or nudity in the movie, so they can then decide if they should go to see it or not, but we also look at the theology, the philosophy, the impact on children at different stages of development, and other very important factors. For instance, we look at environmentalism: How many movies have environmental themes, pro or con? We have listed every anti and pro environmentalist movie that has been released.
“For example, the German movie called Aimee and Jaguar is a clear communist, unabashedly pro-Marxist movie. We do the politically correct and also other religious categories, such as New Age paganism. We try to be as comprehensive as possible. In fact, we have had major entertainment magazines, like Entertainment Weekly, call us to find out how many movies had particular themes or content in it for the year because we are the only ones who make an attempt to do that.
“So naturally we want to show that the good does better and the bad does worse, but we don’t cook the books. We just take the figures. Last year, because of Sixth Sense and other similar movies, it meant that occult films, for the first time in the history of our rating system, did extremely well. So, sadly, last year occult films did almost as well as movies with Christian content.”
Dr. Baehr says that the trend he is seeing in the first nine months of this year is that the films that have done well continue to be broad audience films.
“This year we, as Christians, can breath a little easier as there seems to be more films with more overt Christian content and that percentage of films continues to increase,” he said. “But in the later summer, there have been a lot of small films. Some people feel that this is because of the Olympics and the Presidential election race. The number one movie recently was The Watcher, which was the lowest gross according to the LA Times of any one weekly film. I think the problem is that Hollywood did so well last year that the box offices is off this year. They did so well with family films like Stuart Little, Toy Story II and even Phantom Menace, that, when they start to release the movies that they like, their box office suffers. They love these little films, but they are not broad audience movies like Toy Story II, Chicken Run or even Mission Impossible II.”
Dr. Baehr urged people to continue to be media wise about the movies they go to watch.
For more information about MOVIEGUIDE(R), its Annual Awards Gala in Hollywood to encourage filmmakers around the world, Dr. Baehr’s Media-Wise Family speaking engagements and seminars, and/or the work of the Christian Film and Television Commission to redeem the values of Hollywood, please call (800) 899-6684, or write to P.O. Box 190010, Atlanta, GA 31119, USA.
Parent’s Note: If you want to train your own family to be media-wise, call 1-800-8996684 in North America, to order the, book, video or audio version of The Media-Wise Family, Dr. Ted Baehr’s latest teaching guide. Also, MOVIEGUIDE(R) now offers an online subscription to its magazine version, at MOVIEGUIDE. The magazine, which comes out 25 times a year, contains many articles and reviews that can help parents train their children to be media-wise consumers. MOVIEGUIDE(R) also regularly broadcasts several international TV and radio programs hosted by Dr. Baehr.
