An earnest and straightforward chronicle of the infamous fire and brimstone religious propaganda that is Hell House, a new film by the same title chronicles a group of Christian fundamentalists in Texas, who each October create and perform a "haunted house" that is composed of graphic lessons in immorality, each based on what the church feels are evil sins of humanity that must be cleansed, and designed to scare average citizens into becoming converts. Some topics being "performed" in the house include: gays, AIDS, adultery, chat rooms, abortion, teen drugs, domestic abuse and suicide - all issues of complexity and sensitivity, hammered home as sin and worthy of banishment into hell.

The film dutifully spends the majority of its running time cataloging the production schedule of Hell House, from conceptualization to execution, and all of the negotiations, auditions, rehearsal times and a few family lives of the fundamentalist participants. It's actually interesting to see a brainstorming meeting where a topic of discussion is whether or not to put a lesbian couple in the house, or how to faithfully re-create a "rave," that evil bastion of drug paraphernalia and teen decadence. There's also a brilliant meeting of the minds where no one can remember the name of the "date rape drug" Rohypnol, but decide that it "doesn't matter." Interspersed are sequences where church members speak directly into the camera about sin, redemption and God.

One church family is featured at the film's center, composed of a single father and his four children, one of whom has cerebral palsy. It turns out his wife ran away with a man she met cruising the evil internet, and he's left to deal with the aftermath. The film shrewdly observes his pained expression during his personal trip through the house, as he observes the "adultery" sequence where a similar scenario is featured. Hell House needs more personal connections like this one.

Director George Ratliff takes a hands-off approach to the material, and I'm afraid that this material is so loaded it would have benefited more from someone with a distinctly unique perspective, like Michael Moore. As it stands, Hell House is a blandly objective and straightforward film that is neutral to a fault, and the events don't really add up to much. Still, there's enough here.

There is something really warped about teenagers "auditioning" to play "unrepentant" gay people dying of AIDS, suicide victims, domestic abusers and so on ad nauseam. And though I find the agenda of Hell House vile, the film itself takes great pains to present the dutiful Christian subjects fairly and objectively. But for my money, they come off as a brainwashed, politically incorrect cult. Insisting they only mean to save the rest of us from the wages of sin, they prattle on speaking in tongues, attending creepy prayer rallies and focusing their entire lives on the word of God.

After much build-up, the actual Hell House itself comes off like an overwrought, badly-staged amateur theatrical, and one wishes for the satiric hand of a Christopher Guest to pick this loony material up and make a mock-documentary satirizing the fundamentalist boobs at the center of the film. Shoddy sets, silly acting and laughable scare tactics are a ruse for the house's real agenda, which occurs in the last room after participants have witnessed every mortal sin imaginable and been dragged through a cliché and cheap looking version of hell. The real agenda of the fundamentalists, it seems, is to drag everyone there for a good time into a prayer session, a mass conversion room, a new member acquisition, if you will.

On the opening night of Hell House, there are some liberal teenaged dissenters who angrily exit the house, rightfully offended by its claim that gays are sinners who will die of AIDS before going to hell. In a fascinating confrontation, they corner one of the church lackeys with an angry and logical argument about how wrong-headed Hell House really is, and how damaging their fire-and-brimstone tactics can be to the perception of Christians in general. The church representative stands there like a deer in the headlights, unable to counter their aggressive argument with anything more than, "Well, the Bible says…"

I suppose Hell House is a worthy, objective document of a strange and alienating annual phenomenon, about as evil in conception as any of the proposed sins that go on behind its closed doors. I'm glad I saw it, and sure I won't be visiting Texas anytime soon.