The 1970s– an era of “unrest and mistrust, fear and violence,” says the opening minutes of Colin and Cameron Cairnes’ Late Night with the Devil, accurately reflecting the viewpoint of the burgeoning moral panic of the time. Fear mongering-ish as that sounds, after a decade of Christianity in crisis mode– including a 1966 Times cover asking, “Is God Dead?”– and the “Satanic” cult murders by the Manson Family in 1969, the ’70s were a time of peak (at least until then) obsession with all things occult, planting the seeds and ultimately leading to what would be known as the full-blown Satanic Panic in the decade to follow. The devil was believed to be real, and he was to be feared, expelled, and/or worshiped– in real life and reflected in dozens and dozens of horror films and countless categories of other media within that era.   

Late Night with the Devil toys with all this, of course, as we meet late-night talk show host and Johnny Carson ratings runner-up Jack Delroy, (David Dastmalchian), whose late wife has recently succumbed to breast cancer. Since her death, Jack’s show, “Night Owls with Jack Delroy,” has nosedived in ratings, desperate for Sweeps Week viewership gold. For his 1977 Halloween night live broadcast, show producers invite a psychic, a skeptic, and parapsychologist Dr. Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), as well as her book subject Lilly (Ingred Torelli), whose recent survival from a mass Satanic suicide cult leaves a demon lingering in her body known as “Mr. Wriggles.” Frantic for the publicity boost, Jack and “Night Owls” show producers push Dr. Ross-Mitchell and Lilly to unleash Mr. Wiggles, ensuing chaos. All of this is counterbalanced by Jack’s mysterious involvement in an all-men’s Hollywood club known as The Grove (referencing actual elite Hollywood all-men’s club, Bohemian Grove). 

The Satanic discourse began to make a serious imprint on Hollywood during its uprise in the late ’60s, after Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey released his 1969 book The Satanic Bible, befriending celebrities like actress Jayne Mansfield and filmmaker Kenneth Anger. LaVey would eventually appear on talk shows like Donahue and The Tonight Show, in attempts to explain/normalize/shock audiences regarding the topic of Satanism. However, it was the ritualistic nature of the murders performed by the Manson Family in Los Angeles that would instill major fear of Satanism in exchange of just morbid fascination, shaking Hollywood on a macro level, as music industry-reject Manson’s motives were partially tied to his dismissal from members of the Beach Boys, as well as one of his cult’s multiple victims being actress Sharon Tate and her unborn child with Rosemary’s Baby director Roman Polanski. 

‘Late Night with the Devil’

Late Night’s 1977 setting marked an especially memorable year for Satan in celluloid, with the likes of Suspiria and The Sentinel, however, it was the lasting impact of Polanski’s aforementioned 1968 film (and Ira Levin’s novel of the same name) that would go on to impact the legacy of the scared-of-Satan subgenre to a degree few other films have reached. Having the gall to depict Mia Farrow’s Rosemary being raped and impregnated by the Devil in an attempt to satiate her husband’s thirst for fame, Rosemary’s Baby would terrify viewers, rack up box office numbers, and prove to Hollywood that audiences were craving movies that validated their Satanic fears. Of course, this would also be proven again by the successes of The Exorcist and The Omen, clinging on to the last few bits of invalidating religious skepticism in the ’60s and ’70s, before the return of total Christian fundamentalism takeover in the Reagan era. 

Akin to Rosemary’s husband’s desire to be a famous actor– behind his charm and effervescence of which only a likable talk-show host could possess– Jack Delroy, too, is on a self-serving quest for fame, as suggested with his association with The Grove club. With an amusing lack of subtlety, Late Night mocks its real-life equivalent, the Bohemian Grove, which has long been the subject of intrigue and controversy, including its male-only members that have included American business leaders, ex-presidents, oil tycoons, and musicians via invitation-only, as well as serving as the first discussion place of the Atomic Bomb (a detail curiously left out of last year’s Oppenheimer). For its annual gathering known as the “Cremation of Care,” Bohemian members perform a sacrificial ritual to the area’s surrounding Redwood trees, donning costumes and cremating a coffin effigy called “Care” before a 40-foot owl statue, (coinciding with “Night Owls”) allegedly to banish members’ outside worldly cares and complete deference and dedication to the club location’s forest. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones famously infiltrated the grounds and captured footage of the ritual in 2000, claiming to have witnessed more nefarious activity (which a spokesperson for the Bohemian denied). Though its origins date back to as early as the 1870s, so little is factually known about the social elitist club, as it has been largely a source of speculation-only. 

‘Satan Wants You’

A few fictional years shy of the real-life phenomenon, Late Night’s secondary story regarding Dr. Ross-Mitchell and her muse, the sometimes-possessed Lilly, draws explicit inspiration from the 1980 book Michelle Remembers, written by Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith, with a tagline exclaiming, “The shocking true story of the ultimate evil– a child’s possession by the Devil!” As explained in length in the 2023 documentary Satan Wants You, the memoir detailed Smith’s alleged childhood memories of purported abuse at the hands of Satan-worshippers, which she recalled through the process of the now-disregarded “recovered-memory therapy,” or hypnosis. Pazder, Smith’s longtime psychiatrist and eventual husband, manipulated Michelle into “remembering” allegations that she was forced into attending Church of Satan rituals as a young child with her mother, some of which Satan himself appeared, and that Smith was tortured and assaulted in outrageous ways, including being forcefully touched by sacrificed newborn babies and other corpses.

The success of the book led to Pazder and Smith becoming sensations and so-called “authorities” on Satanic ritual abuse, as television appearances on talk shows such as Oprah fascinated the public, of which the hosts never questioned the book’s validity. This would serve as the blueprint for years to come, as talk shows like The Geraldo Rivera Show– who, similarly to Late Night’s “Night Owls,” hosted a Halloween-time special about related occult topics in 1988– sensationalized stories like these for ratings and frequently reinforced false narratives about “Satanic cult abuse” that were eventually discovered to have been false. Michelle Remembers was later debunked. 

Michelle Smith & Lawrence Pazder – ‘Satan Wants You’

Few talk shows, especially of the late-night variety, spotlighted supernaturality for viewership as often as American-born, Australian-based host Don Lane, whose show The Don Lane Show lasted from 1975-1983 and served as the primary inspiration for the crux of the screenplay, the Jack Delroy character, and Dastmalchian’s approach to the role. Fascinated with guests that worked in the paranormal field, (but not necessarily as exploitative of them as his peers), Lane regularly hosted several psychics and investigators during his talk show tenure, including illusionist Uri Geller and spiritualist Doris Stokes. During one notorious broadcast in 1980, Lane hosted Geller and skeptic James Randi, in which Randi would not relent on attempts at debunking Geller’s spoon-bending trick, which infuriated Lane so much he told him to “piss off” and stormed off his own set (ripped right out of a page in real-life and mirrored on-screen in Late Night).

While the decades of myths that fueled the Satanic Panic may feel asinine to those of us who grew up with science and skepticism, its ripple effects still continue to bleed into questions of what constitutes unhealthy relationships to media, believing what we’re told and shown, and the dangers of lack of media literacy. Visual entertainment– filmic or televisual, scripted or captured– may not be responsible for its audiences’ relationship to moralism, as Late Night with the Devil forces us to question just how far we’re willing to be outside-influenced for entertainment. But, damn if the Devil doesn’t know how to put on a great show. 

Late Night with the Devil comes home to Shudder on April 19.