A teenage heavy metal band brings “satanic panic” to the suburbs in ’80s-set miniseries Hysteria!
“Satanic panic” may sound like a rock band from the early aughts, but it is a phenomenon that was actually rife in the 1980s, when a fear of ritualistic abuse spread through North America fueled by horror movies, the Tate-LaBianca murders and new religious movements arising from counterculture.
For their show Hysteria!, showrunners Matthew Scott Kane and David A. Goodman spent years researching how allegations of satanic worship affected communities. “I was reading books like Saturday Morning Mind Control — which is a book about how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Smurfs are programming your kids to become satanists,” says Kane, deadpanning: “As we’ve seen in the decades since, anyone who is a satanist started with the Turtles.”
As we have now moved into an era of post-truth, Kane felt like what stoked a fire 40 years ago was suddenly more relevant than ever. “Something that was on my mind was this idea that you can put anything you want online, and up until a year or two ago no one was there to fact-check it. Everyone’s version of the truth and everyone’s perception of their own reality started to shift,” he says. “I think that relates very strongly to what was happening in the satanic panic — it’s just a lot more fun to write a story about heavy metal, horror and teen rock bands than it is to write a story about today.”
Hysteria! starts with a popular high school boy going missing under suspicious circumstances and a high school metal band that are viewed as the culprits. “We’re in a band that’s very unpopular, but it’s a heavy metal band, so because somebody goes missing and it’s the satanic panic, people start to give us some attention,” explains Emjay Anthony, who plays the band’s guitarist, Dylan Campbell. “We kind of end up rolling with it — and it turns out to be a lot more than we anticipated.”
The show that fellow Dethkrunch bandmember Chiara Aurerila, who plays lead singer Jordy, says covers “horror, music and the ’80s,” also features a concerned — maybe even hysterical — parent or two. Starring as Dylan’s mother, who doesn’t know what to believe, is Modern Family star Julie Bowen. “Julie’s just a phenomenal actor,” says Goodman. “One of the reasons she was so successful in [the role of Claire Dunphy] was because of how real she seemed. She enters this role in the same way. She connects to the emotions of a mom who is worried and wondering, ‘What is my teenager up to?’ And then, her experiencing the [paranormal] things she experiences plays on all these fears that ground the show in the experience of the audience.”
Someone very familiar with the satanic panic phenomenon is Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell, who at the height of the movement was making horror movies about demonic possession. “It was during the Reagan era,” he says. “Things were right or wrong, and you went to church on Sundays, if you were a good boy. So, yeah, horror at that time was still kind of a little taboo.” But while Hysteria! might seem like familiar territory, what drew Campbell to the role of Police Chief Dandridge is one unusual aspect of the character. “Most cops [in movies and TV] are very one-note, they’re not that bright, they’re disrespectful to people,” he says. “It was nice to see a guy who could have a conversation with a teenager, not talk down to them, try and help them.”
Joining Campbell and Bowen in one of her most intense roles to date — and that’s saying something — is Pitch Perfect actor Anna Camp, as Tracy Whitehead, the deeply religious mother spearheading a witch hunt for the town’s garage band. “I go into every character that might be considered the ‘villain’ and I love them,” she says. “As an actor, I never want to play ‘The Bad Guy.’ I don’t go into it going, ‘How can I be evil? How can I be mean?’ I go in thinking, ‘What do I want from the other person?’ If I’m trying to scare my daughter into being safe, yes, someone might think that’s mean and evil, but from my perspective, Tracy’s doing it only out of love. Pure love.”
But not everyone is thrilled about Tracy’s desire to bring religion back into the lives of misguided teenagers, including her own daughter Faith (Nikki Hahn). “A really big part of Faith’s arc is Faith finding her own individuality, finding her voice, learning how to stick up for what she thinks is right and not just be a mini-Tracy,” says Hahn. “A big theme for Faith is being a normal teenager, living her normal high school life and exploring friendships and relationships.”
For Camp, the theme of parents and children clashing rings as true today as it did when she was a teenager. “Every generation is rebelling against the previous generation,” she says. “[The ’80s] is such a vibrant landscape, but we’re still dealing with the exact same issues. And we’re hitting on a lot of themes that are incredibly relevant today when it comes to censorship and rebellion and looking down on people for being different. It is something we should not be doing, but it’s happening — especially in our political landscape today.”
Hysteria! airs Tuesday, November 12, on Showcase