Product Description

The true story of the most notorious pedophile priest in the modern history of the Catholic church.System Requirements:Running Time: 101 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 031398210702 Manufacturer No: 21070

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9754 in DVD
• Brand: DELIVER US FROM EVIL (DVD MOVIE)
• Released on: 2007-05-08
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 103 minutes

Amazon.com
A devastating investigation into the pedophilia scandals tearing apart the Catholic Church, Deliver Us From Evil begins by looking into one priest, Father Oliver O'Grady, who agreed to be interviewed by journalist/filmmaker Amy Berg. O'Grady's genial calm is at first ingratiating, until he begins to describe his crimes with an unsettling sociopathic detachment. But O'Grady's blithe interview is only half of the story, as the documentary also unveils how church superiors covered up O'Grady's crimes and shuffled him from diocese to diocese in northern California, finally placing him in an unsupervised position of authority in a small town, where he sexually assaulted dozens of children; the video deposition of Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney is a grotesque portrait in brittle denial. What makes Deliver Us From Evil crucial viewing, however, are the remarkable interviews with a few of the victims (now adults) and their parents, whose stories are wrenching and riveting. With the support of a priest seeking to reform the church, two of the victims actually go to the Pope, seeking some form of help in addressing O'Grady's crimes. This stunningly potent documentary combines raw feeling with lucid and persuasive discussions of the reasons for--and disturbing breadth of--this crisis within the Church. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Outstanding. Very well done documentary.
It brings to light the sex abuse scandal in the catholic church leading all the way up to the current pope. I have lost what respect I had for the catholic religion as a whole, not the individuals, but the blind authority of the church. It is done in a way that does not further exploit the victims but honors them.

good simple documentary
I thought this was well done & simply presented, not over-complicated by too many witnesses for either side. I guess that's the same criteria some have used to deem this a bad documentary but I don't think Berg needed to prove much. To me it seemed a review of the past evidence & an update to present of ONE PARTICULAR BAD MAN, not the whole question of IF the church was a participant or not. If you're watching this to decide if some priests raped children, grow up. Priests raped children, okay? Many of them, for long periods of time & the mafia-like Vatican covered it up at all lengths, spent the donations of Catholics to pay for these crimes & continue to do it today. Religion justifies so much evil from time immemorial to present day. If you can't deal with that fact, then you'll watch this looking for some way to discredit Berg's choices of testimony. And those that still question it will be in church on Sunday getting their eucharist & passing their chock-full envelope to the basket. Bless your hearts & thanks for abetting crime.

Tries too hard for such an easy topic.
Deliver Us from Evil (Amy Berg, 2006)

I had to let this one sink in for a few weeks before even attempting a review of it. Deliver Us from Evil is the story of Oliver O'Grady, a Catholic priest notorious for abusing children. Over the course of three decades, the church, instead of dealing with the problem, simply moved O'Grady from parish to parish in northern California, giving him, as it were, a fresh stable of victims to choose from every few years. (To this day, O'Grady is under the protection of the Catholic Church, living now in Ireland.) More than that, though, the film provides us with O'Grady's testimony that church officials were aware of his actions as early as 1976.

This is where the film, unfortunately, breaks down. We see archive footage of testimony give by church higher-ups, none of which substantiates O'Grady's claims. (To be fair, none of it refutes them, either.) Are we witnessing evasion and evidence of a cover-up, or the befuddlement of a senile old man? It's obvious which interpretation the filmmakers would like you to believe, and that makes it even more questionable; naked emotional manipulation is annoying in romances. It's unforgivable in documentaries.

There can be no denying that what O'Grady did was a crime for which I'm not sure a suitable punishment exists, nor that the punishment he was given was in no way severe enough (nor, for that matter, that the church's continuing to offer him shelter and pension is equally unforgivable). And simply offering us this, Errol Morris-style, would have made for about as devastating a documentary as I can imagine. Why bother adding a few extra slaps in the face? ***