Doorways to Danger (GAM218)

Noah Lugeons

Eli Bosnick

***Doorways to Danger*** (also known as ***Doorways to Danger: The Video***) is the 1990 educational film that explained that if you ever even checked your horoscope once, you should probably start stockpiling babies to eat, because you are destined for hell.

### **Opening Phrase**

Where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema, because if we just talked about my cats, you'd notice.

### **How Bad Was It?**

Well, if you loved *Blood on the Highway*, but you wish it had been about the dangers of *MarioKart*, you will *love* this movie. It's *The Floor is Lava: The PSA*.

### **Best Worst**

* Marsh: ...teaser image.
* Noah: ...transitional graphics.
* Eli: ...eyewitness testimony.

### **Notes**

* Check out Marsh on Twitter, *Be Reasonable*, *Skeptics with a K*, and at The Good Thinking Society or Skeptic of the Year.
* Vision Video offers a "Leader's Guide."
* Possibly based on *Doorways to Danger* (1987), a tract from Evangelical Alliance.
* The song "Is Anybody There" is available on YouTube.

### **Jokes**

* [Noah:So now we're gonna meet our first—and who turned out to be, I guess, our most credible—talking head. Right? This is Christian minister and author on the—I'm sorry, I'll introduce him the way this movie introduces him: Kevin Logan, author and... occult troubleshooter.] [Marsh; Yeah, very very valid job title. His job title is basically "What are the symptoms? Yeah, sounds like demons. Sounds like demons to me."] And so, this is the only "expert" in the movie that I was able to Google, and it's the darkest darkest Google timeline 'cause, you Google him and then they're like "Oh, there's a million Kevin Logans more important than this guy." Then you put in "Kevin Logan Lancashire" (or however you pronounce that word in Britain) and it turns out the only article about him is "So, there's this vicar that nobody likes—he's retiring." [Marsh: I saw that! I found that as well.] And in the article he's just like "Fuckin' gays! Am I right?", and they're like "Okay, just a reminder, this guy's retiring. You can probably come back to church… or not. It's England." (12:50)
* Okay, but here's the best part: this is why we just saw the word levitation, because what she's describing is one *hundred* percent "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board"... they just cut the part where she said that. [Marsh: But I think there is some *heavy* subtext going on there, 'cause she says "I was walking in a field, there was a crowd, there was a girl lying down, there were six people on either side of her, they all had their eyes closed, they were all concentrating…" I thought, I've seen those videos online—we've all seen those videos.] See? It's because I keep sending them to you. [Marsh: And honestly, the language she uses just broke me, because if you start seeing *this* as her story target than "I dabbled in the occult", it all becomes really clear. 'Cause she says, verbatim, "My friend Sarah bent down, and it was me that was going to be bent over her, and everyone was around us, and she did breathing and everything else, and then she just went, and I started to really concentrate on her." This is one hundred percent a lesbian scene—this is absolutely what happened here.] (54:02)
* So, her and her friend apparently saw everyone playing "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board", and they're like "Alright, if all the other kids are levitating, I guess we'll jump off the cliff too." And it was her friend's turn to levitate, she says she looked down and her friend's face started to distort—which makes her own visage make a lot more sense to me now—but luckily just as her friend started going full demon faced, Carolyn started praying. And then everyone got mad at her, because they were just playing "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board", and she started calling on Jesus's name. [Eli: Yeah, but I have a very solid theory about what happened. The whole thing about "I was the one who was supposed to stand over here", here is what I think actually happened: I think they were playing "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board" and I think she was the person at the head. Now, if you know about the physics of "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board", that is the one thing that doesn't have multiple people's fingers on it. So, if you freak out because you're a Christian schoolgirl from England, and drop your friends head, they'll mash the back of their head against the ground, distort their face because they've whacked the back of their head against the ground, then you will pray to Jesus and ruin everyone's good time. This is about a girl who dropped her friend and assumed that she had been possessed by a demon. [Marsh: Oh shit, you're totally right 'cause she says at the end, "My friend was acting kind of drunk; she couldn't stand up straight, she couldn't focus." I mean, I had a different reason she couldn't stand up straight, but you've come up with another alternate possibility Eli.] (55:12)

### **Interstitials**

* Pastor Bob talks to little Noah about the dangers of Satanism. (6:46)
* Ouija at lunch in British Schools' [Doodly-Doo] (21:07)
* Witch Hair Dresser [Doodly-Doo] (28:08)
* Cormac the Demonic learns to answer Ouija boards on his first day in the Lower Hells. [Doodly-Doo] (46:18)
* Satanic ritual pitch meeting. (52:05)
* Cormac is reassigned to "lifting little girls." [Doodly-Doo] (57:26)

### **Tropes**

* Christians Don't Know How the World Works
* Coincidence Treated like a Miracle
* Indoctrination of Children
* Name That Movie!
* Not Christian Enough

### **Links**

* Episode on Audioboom
* Film on YouTube
* IMDB

### **Ad Reads**

* Candid: Messing with Marsh (1:18:30)
* Liquid Death: Sell Your Soul (1:20:34)
* For Hims: Eli Needs Dick Pills (1:22:22)