What We Can Learn from the Satanic Panic of the 1980s

In a complete surprise to its editors, Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s, sold out its first run. The second release by Spectacular Optical—a Canadian small-press publisher named after the ominous storefront from David Cronenberg's Videodrome—explores the hysteria that percolated in the 1980s over devils hiding behind every door, be it in film, TV, music, or even children's toys. Satan was everywhere. No one was safe.