Holy Hell

Austin Screens, World Premiere
D/W: Rafael Antonio Ruiz; W: Lowell Bartholomee; with Ken Edwards, Ellie McBride, Kenneth Wayne Bradley, Liz Fisher, Edwin Neal, Ben Wolfe, Lana Dieterich, Tiger Darrow, Carla Nickerson, Douglas Taylor, David Walter, Wayne Alan Brenner, Christopher Hitchens.

When a small, financially failing church group decides to produce a horror film in order to raise funds, all kinds of hell break loose. The church members are not daunted by their complete lack of knowledge – they recruit a makeup artist from a local hell house, and one of the screenwriters gets the task because she’s a top commenter on Amazon.com – but things boil over when an attack group wages a vocal protest of their endeavor. The campaign against the church’s damnable act of making a horror movie gains national attention, and soon the grassroots pastor is debating on TV no less an authority on atheism than Hitchens. With a script co-written by director Ruiz and Austin theatre legend Bartholomee, the film features a cast and crew full of local theatre stalwarts. Led by a quietly dominant performance by Edwards as Pastor Lane, this Austin community theatre showcase does the city proud. – Marjorie Baumgarten

Thursday, Oct. 22, 7pm, Rollins Studio Theatre; Wednesday, Oct. 28, 7pm, Rollins Studio Theatre

This article appears in October 23 • 2009.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.

A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Kimberley has written about film, books, and pop culture for The Austin Chronicle since 2000. She was named Editor of the Chronicle in 2016; she previously served as the paper’s Managing Editor, Screens Editor, Books Editor, and proofreader. Her work has been awarded by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for excellence in arts criticism, team reporting, and special section (Best of Austin). The Austin Alliance for Women...