Black Mass (1975 film)

Black Mass was a film of a satanic mass produced and directed by the Philadelphia filmmaker Ray Hoersch, later known as R.C. Horsch. A midnight run at the Arcadia in Center City was cancelled in February 1975 after what the Philadelphia Inquirer called reported pressure from the Philadelphia Archdiocese, and the film was screened instead at midnight at the Bandbox Theater in Germantown on Saturday, March 1, 1975.¹

The Film

The Religious News Service reported that the film was "reputed to be the only literal representation ever made of an authentic satanic rite" and was based on transcripts of the rite obtained by Hoersch, who had "reportedly attempted to film the actual ceremony" and, failing that, obtained the transcripts, "including the mystical incantations." Hoersch described it: "The Satanic Mass is the exact inverse of the Catholic ceremony. Every part of it is reversed in blasphemy, for its intention is a deliberate corruption, a parody of the Mass. Starting with the processional, the ritual uses a nude as the altar piece. The second section is a baptism, in which a girl dressed in white renounces her Christianity and seals her pact with the devil. And the third part is the Invocation to lust."² In an interview recorded in 2013 and rebroadcast in 2026 he recalled it as "a literal Catholic black mass in Latin" that "kind of bombed" because few in the audience spoke Latin, said that he had made it as "something to do that was contrary to the law," and said that he still held the film rights to Anton LaVey's The Satanic Bible, which he had bought for about 150 dollars.³

The Protest

Sixteen Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and Jewish leaders of Philadelphia, led by Cardinal John Krol, signed a joint statement calling the film's content "a blasphemous attack on the religious rites held in sacred reverence by millions of Christian believers" and "a frontal attack on the sacred itself," and urged "believers of every religious conviction to use every moral force to discourage the showing of this film in the Philadelphia area." They said it was "obviously intended not to be viewed as a film, but as a blasphemous ritualistic observance," noted that current plans called for it to be shown in one theater every Saturday at midnight, and asked everyone in the local film industry "to resist and reject every attempt to market or portray this film." The signers included Rabbi Charles Lacks, president of the Greater Philadelphia Board of Rabbis, and its executive director, Rabbi Harold Goldfarb; Francis G. Brown, general secretary of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends; the Rev. William J. Brown of the Donegal Presbytery of the United Presbyterian Church; and Bishop E. L. Hickman of the First Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, with representatives of the Greek Orthodox community, the United Church of Christ, the Pennsylvania Baptist Association, the Byzantine Ukrainian Rite, the United Methodists, and the Metropolitan Christian Council of Philadelphia. In an addendum the Board of Rabbis said that the film "not only constitutes an obscene travesty of Catholic sancta, but deeply outrages the religious sensitivities of all God fearing people" and that it saw "no redeeming social or aesthetic value whatever in 'Black Mass.'"²

The Bandbox

Art Carduner of the Bandbox, who gave the film its new home, booked the screening as a benefit for the Friends of the Bandbox, and Hoersch attended.¹ The Bandbox had earlier taken over the run of In the Year of the Pig in late 1969, when city inspectors closed Hoersch's Underground Cinema 16 on Sansom Street.⁴ Hoersch said in the same interview that the archdiocese had the run cancelled after one screening, and that after the film he lost interest in the sex-film business and turned to fashion photography.³ Eleven weeks before the Bandbox screening, on December 10, 1974, he had been arrested by the United States Secret Service for counterfeiting ten-dollar bills.⁵