Satanic Panic is rebooting pop culture (see: Eddie Munson on Stranger Things), but has it ever really gone? You can certainly feel its lasting effects whenever social media is armed to spread false information. Hysteria! creator Matthew Scott Kane aimed to infuse that spirit into his new Peacock series; It’s in small-town Michigan circa 1989, as heavy metal-loving high school kids clash with their conservative parents. There’s also a supernatural mystery, the surprise of the local sheriff played by cult film legend Bruce Campbell.
Forward Hysteria!Just in time for the spooky season, io9 spoke with Kane and fellow writer and executive producer David A. Goodwin to learn more about the show’s origins, goals, riff-tastic soundtrack, and more.
Cheryl Eddy, io9: Satanic Panic “nostalgia” has emerged in recent years—it was a prominent theme Stranger Thingsand there was a documentary about its origins that came out last year, The Devil Wants You. How do you do it Hysteria! approach Fear of Satan in a way that brings something new to the discussion?
Matthew Scott Kane: I can’t speak to the documentary that came out … I’ve tried to avoid all media related to Satanic Panic for the last year or so just to focus on what’s in front of me. But I think what we’re really doing is trying to make a connection between then and now. When I started writing this post back in 2019, there were a lot of concerns in my mind that I think many other people were feeling as well. Unfortunately, I think they still feel it today, which is that there are so many ways now that the truth is gathered and distributed, and that that distribution has completely changed many people’s view of truth and what the world is. surrounds them.
So I wanted to take that idea and the idea of what’s going on right now and the last few years and apply it back to Satan’s Terror, where I feel like the same thing is happening. This is a time when some people genuinely believed that the Smurfs and He-Man and all sorts of cartoon characters were trying to lure your kids into some sort of satanic underground secret. We did it this way because it’s really fun to go back and look at this period and talk about heavy metal movies and John Hughes movies and Video Nasties and all that stuff. But for me that’s where I think we stand out from other things.
David A. Goodman: I think the core of the show—I came to the show after Matt wrote the pilot, and that’s what I really connected to and I think. [how] connecting to Satanic Panic is this variation of a parent’s fear of what their child is up to. Is my child going out at night and getting into trouble? And the answer is yes. The fear of those parents, and how it manifests itself, ends up being nothing [happening] during Satan’s Panic. Each generation goes through some version of this. And Satanic Horror—there’s a little nostalgia for the ’80s, the age before the Internet and early cell phones, but the world was changing nonetheless. It ends up being a great way to get that, and add this level of horror and crime procedural and comedy.
io9: You mentioned heavy metal. Hysteria! it was clear that it was made by people who love metal. What is your background in that department? Also, did you start with a list of songs that you knew you wanted to put on the soundtrack?
Kane: To answer your first question, what is my background in metal I was given a bunch of ’80s metal albums for Christmas during my childhood years. Iron Maiden and Metallica and all that kind of stuff was just something that was handed down to me from my dad and my brother—he was two years older than me, so he was always two steps ahead. me. I was in a band in high school, but it would be embarrassing to call it a band. We weren’t even close.
Coming to the music of the show, we had an amazing music director named Jen Malone, who sang the songs. Wednesday as well as Euphoriaand many other great things. And a lot of what you hear on the show, I’d say about 75% of the songs were scripted … the idea was “We want to set this scene in this song for a reason.” And then the other 25% is a collaboration of, “We’re not sure what this moment needs.” Jen has a lot more depth of knowledge than David or myself in terms of music. He would come in and give us buckets and buckets of great options for things we wouldn’t have otherwise.
Goodman: I have no background in metal. I had never listened to it before I started working on this show, although I was surprised to find that I liked metal songs. I didn’t even know they were called metal. Matt gave me the first lesson in what I needed to listen to, and I’m already loving it. It has great depth. I think that’s another piece of it that is easily dismissed as superficial and bad and dangerous. There is a lot of depth in the music, in the words of these great bands that make this music. This has been a very creative creative experience for me as I have been exposed to something I had discarded. So that was my experience in the program.
io9: Bruce Campbell plays a character that feels completely right for him, but also different than anything we’ve seen him do before—a level-headed city manager trying to cope with all the crazy things happening around him. How much of a role did Bruce play when he came in? And is he the reason the show is set in Michigan?
Kane: That’s not why the show is set in Michigan, but him being from Michigan helps the connection. Most of the staff and myself, I grew up in Southeast Michigan. I watched Bruce and Sam Raimi all my high school career, and Bruce was sent a pilot script while we were playing. We had written the first four episodes or so, and we sent him a test script and he responded well to it and signed on to the board. However, very soon after Bruce signed on the hit of the writers’ strike, so we didn’t know how this role would suit Bruce. But miraculously—or shouldn’t it be miraculously, he’s an amazing actor—he came in and hit it out of the park in the first four episodes. And then after that, it was really fun writing for Bruce Campbell now that we knew who we were writing for. There was a loud explosion. He is a legend for a reason. He came in and gave us an excellent job.
Goodman: Matt and I are both big fans of his. I couldn’t believe it at all when the news broke that he was going to be on the show. Again [he was] such a joy to work with, a joy to write for, too [he] you have created a component with multiple levels in it. Actors of the genre, have to do two jobs. They have to create their characters and make them believable in a world that bends the truth. And that’s his again.
Hysteria! arrives on October 18.
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