Film offers different twist on haunted house

By Annette Espinoza
Diversity Institute Fellow

11.08.02

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It’s a film about a haunted house, but there are no ghosts and creepy things jumping out to scare viewers.

Instead, “Hell House” shows the audience graphic scenes of a suicide, abortion and a drug overdose — all as a part of one small town’s church’s effort to save souls.

The film documentary, which won an award this year at the San Francisco International Film Festival, was screened Friday, Oct. 19, at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville before a small crowd that didn’t seem to get the point the film’s director, George Ratliff, had in mind.

Many audience members — who were college-aged students — often laughed out loud during the 85-minute film’s showing.

Shawn Shepherd, house manager at the Belcourt Theater, said he had seen the film recently at the Nashville Independent Film Festival and described it as a huge success.

The documentary profiles the Trinity Assembly of God Church, which is located in a suburban community near Dallas, and goes behind the scenes to show how the church planned its “Hell House” production.

Church leaders held open auditions for its members, most of them teenagers who are chosen to act in scenes depicting a bloody abortion, adultery, suicide and a drug overdose.

Church members are shown building elaborate sets, including one where the actors are placed into a hole that is filled with a smog device and other electrical wires for a scene portraying souls lost in hell. Another set shows a painting of a Star of David, a symbol associated with Judaism, that a stage designer mistakenly crossed out thinking it was a pentagram.

In the film, visitors who toured the church’s Hell House are led into a small room and asked if they want to accept salvation. A majority of the people in that scene decline, but several of them accept and stay long enough for church members to pray with them.

The film’s Web site states that the Hell House had 13,000 visitors last year.

Shepherd said the Belcourt Theater planned to continue showing the film for a while.

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Collection page for news stories written by members of the fall 2002 Diversity Institute class.  10.29.02