The Acid King
The PR email for “The Acid King” calls the story of Ricky Kasso, and his murder of Gary Lauwers, as “the birth of Satanic Panic,” but that is hardly true. I’ve become interested in stories of this weird time in American history, which I was too young to really be affected by, because of the similarities between the modern QAnon and Satanic Panic, and know that the seeds of the Panic were already laid at the beginning of the 1980s. It’s not hard to see this as a major flashpoint in the era, however; while the idea of satanic ritual abuse and the McMartin daycare case were already in full swing, Kasso’s story added the devilish influence of heavy metal music into the equation, which was something still in full swing in the early ’90s, when I was a teenager. The film made by Jesse P. Pollack and Dan Jones does a good job of making that clear.
Has anyone made a documentary about Satanic Panic that was clear-eyed, and didn’t feel exploitative? In a way, the “Paradise Lost” trilogy about the West Memphis Three come closest, but even there you have moments with the parents of the boys who were murdered where fanaticism trumps reason. “The Acid King” does a very good job of interviewing people from Northport, New York, and setting the stage for the atmosphere around the town as we learn of Ricky Kasso, a delinquent who was kicked out of his family’s life, and turned to drugs and the occult before he brutally murdered Gary Lauwers, and then, hanged himself in his prison cell. It’s also shot in a way that makes it feel like it’s leaning into the more sensational aspects of the story, even when we get people criticizing like David St. Clair, a reporter whose book on the events, Say You Love Satan, not only plagiarized a Rolling Stone article on the story, but was also highly fictionalized, leaning into the media tenor about the idea of satanic cults at the time.
“The Acid King” gets people from the town, artists whom were inspired by the tragedy, and archival interviews with friends of Kasso and Lauwers to help give context and perspective on life in Northport, and Kasso and Lauwers. The film sometimes feels a bit sleazy in how it’s telling the story, but at its best, it dives into the heart of Satanic Panic, what led to people going nuts about heavy metal music and Dungeons & Dragons, and makes us feel for the lives impacted by the moment. Neither Kasso nor Lauwers were good kids, but they also didn’t necessarily deserve their fates. Maybe if things were different, their story wouldn’t need to be told.
