[Film] John Hagee, Cult Film Enthusiast?

I click through the 600 televangelism channels my cable company offers several times a day: prurience, cheap jokes to trade around the water cooler, but also, I tell myself, in order to track the subculture that is going largely ignored and misunderstood and unappreciated by the mainstream media. (There the Religious Right are right.) Pat Robertson's 700 Club, for example, is a sociological goldmine.

Last night I paused on John Hagee, a family ministry out of San Antonio — family ministry meaning that his wife and their clone-like children actively participate in the general hoopla. Rev. Hagee was deep into a critique of Satanism — Harry Potter is a favorite topic on his show — but tonight, his target was Lair of the White Worm.

Now, I love Ken Russell, and when he gets his self-medication just right — White Worm was not one of those times — he can be an awesome filmmaker (The Boyfriend, or Song of Summer). But he's never been....well, mainstream.

We keep hearing about the perils of disintermediated individualism, but here we seem to be seeing a sort of freakish reintermediation, with the emergence of a new subculture, let's call it People Who Know Who Ken Russell Is, and it's composed of acid freaks, bipolar cinéastes, born-again Rapture enthusiasts and Hugh Grant groupies. Wow, I didn't see that coming. Now, if they can only coalesce around a single political candidate, we might have an election worthy of our attention.

PS. According to IMDb, Ken is currently working on a biopic of Nicola Tesla, called Charged. No cast listed.