‘Let The Devil In’ Debuts on MGM+
There are those in the small town of Jefferson in Morris County who still remember the shocking murder-suicide of a mother-son. In 1988, the fear of heavy metal music was reaching epidemic proportions. The so-called “Satanic Panic” had ultra-conservative right-wing preachers, teachers, parents and politicians shouting at the devil to blame bands like Black Sabbath, Kiss, AC-/DC, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden for all of society’s woes. In the midst of these ridiculous accusations, 14-year old Tom Sullivan killed his seriously religious mother and then himself. He stabbed her to death with his Boy Scout knife after she chastised him for his interest in the occult. The kid had a library of books about Satanism in his bedroom and after he did his dirty deed, he arranged them on the floor, set fire to his house, fled to a neighbor’s yard, and slit his own throat. His father and younger brother Brian escaped the flames when their fire alarm went off. Ten years later, Brian committed suicide.
The case fanned the flames of “Satanic Panic.” Now, 37 years later, horror filmmaker Eli Roth has turned his attention to true-crime to direct a four-part documentary mini-series, Let The Devil In, that debuted on MGM+ last month. I remember the case well. At the time, I was Editor of Metal Maniacs, a magazine that focused on the more brutal and extreme forms of metal. Those aforementioned bands were like commercial pop music compared to the bands we covered: Cannibal Corpse, Slayer, Insane Clown Possie, Anal Blast, Cattle Decapitation and Cradle Of Filth. Uncle Floyd even had me on his show talking specifically about these bands.
Of course, there are no limits to the human imagination. And it all seems so quaint now to blame heavy metal for anything, like three decades earlier when so called “protectors of morality” said in the 1950s that rock’n’roll caused juvenile delinquency . But this horrible case was real, and Eli Roth, a modern horror master, has made it come alive again.