Imagine a Halloween-themed fire-and-brimstone version of Scared Straight and you're already halfway home to Hell House, a very entertaining documentary about an annual church-sponsored haunted house.  Now imagine that episode of The Simpsons where Chief Wiggum led Bart's field trip class through an anti-drug exhibit that showed, among other things, a stoner trying to eat a baby like a submarine sandwich, and you've pretty much got the other half figured out, too.

Hell House is both the title of this documentary as well as the haunted house extravaganza from which it takes its name.  Every fall, the Pentecostal Assemblies of God Trinity Church in Cedar Hill, Texas (it's just outside Dallas) lures thousands and thousands of visitors to their Hell House with the hopes of converting them into full-blown bible thumpers.  After all, as we're told, "A life without Jesus is a life lost."  Director George Ratliff's film shows the preparation and festivities surrounding the tenth annual ten-day installment in 2000.

So right now you're probably asking yourself, "So what the heck is this Hell House, anyway?"  It's a regular old Halloween-style haunted house, but instead of vampires and mummies leaping out of dark corners, this version features various staged scenes that preach the ills of things like abortion and homosexuality.  Essentially, it takes fanatical religion back to its basics – frightening the crap out of impressionable people by regaling them with tales of hellfire and eternal damnation (or, in other words, scaring the hell out of [or is it "into"?] them).

Ratliff's cameras follow the entire unbelievable process.  The brainstorming, which takes place months in advance, shows somebody suggesting they tackle the rave scene, and everyone else agrees despite not having a clue about what the rave scene is.  The highly competitive tryouts seem like something out of a beauty pageant mockumentary, and once the final cast lists are released, you'll be treated to snippets like, "Oh, my God, Tiffany!  You're in the rape scene!"  Even something as potentially benign as set-building (they start from scratch every year) becomes inadvertently hysterical, like one heated discussion over whether red or white spray paint should be used for a pentagram in one of Hell House's rooms, only to see the Star of David on the wall in the following scene.  But those are the kinds of things one should expect from people who preach the ills of Harry Potter, the Goosebumps series, and those wicked Magic cards.

And those are the kinds of things that make House such a successful documentary, as well. Ratliff, who was given unrestricted access to the behind-the-scenes doings of Hell House, shoots the film without taking sides, even though it would be extremely easy to portray the churchies as total nutters.  Admittedly, however, many viewers (like me) will automatically take the low road, regardless of how Ratliff cobbles his footage together.  There's no middle ground here – you'll either say, "Jeez, Maude, we should do something like that at our chur-diddly-urch," or be bent over at the waist from the constant comedy generated by these out-of-touch holy rollers.  In that respect House is preaching to two completely different choirs at the same time, which is a pretty amazing accomplishment.

The Assemblies of God faithful, whose regular old Sunday mass is nearly as overproduced as the Oscars, certainly have pure intent with Hell House, but they seem more concerned with converting visitors into full-time church members than saving their souls.  Their unintentional message is that membership is far more important than true salvation.  Religion has never looked as much like a cult as it does here.

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