Directed by
Amy Berg
Running Time: 103 minutes
Not Rated
DVD Release date: May 8, 2007
For the most part, the award-winning documentary Deliver Us from Evil tells the story of Father Oliver O’Grady. Father Ollie, as he is known, is a pedophile. He is a molester of children, one who has gone so far as to rape an infant. Through his own words and actions, O’Grady shows himself to be a detached narcissist, a troubling character, a monster.
He is not imprisoned; he leads a relatively worry-free life in Ireland.
Nor has he ever received significant punishment for his crimes. He served as a Catholic priest throughout northern California starting in the 1970s. When accusations of his crimes surfaced, the bureaucracy of the church protected him and their own reputation above the welfare of their parishioners. Rather than remove O’Grady from society, or at the very least the priesthood, the Catholic hierarchy merely removed him from the location of the accusations.
Instead of facing justice for his crimes, O’Grady relocated, or rather was relocated by the diocese.
Deliver Us from Evil is a film told mostly through emotions. It is presented to deliver sensations of shock, outrage, injustice, and pathos. At times, it lacks clarity of events and their context, but its faults here are more than made up for by its sense of humanity. O’Grady’s victims are shown not just as victims, but as people. They are relatable, familiar. As such, their pain resonates with the viewers.
Deliver Us from Evil is an upsetting film, in the best possible way.
The DVD
The majority of the DVD features for Deliver Us from Evil come in the way of two sets of Deleted Scenes. This shouldn’t be surprising because, as with many documentaries, 150 hours of footage had to become 103 minutes of movie. The first set of deleted scenes is labeled as such, and contains 11 chapters covering different parts of the story and a wide range of topics.
The second section of deleted scenes is called Bible vs. Church. This part contains 6 chapters and focuses on aspects of the Catholic church which have no biblical basis, or run counter to scripture. All chapters together, it makes for an interesting enough mini-documentary, hampered somewhat by its liberal use of the mostly unlikeable Pat Wall.
Both sections of Deleted Scenes come with an Audio Only Introduction, as well as optional commentary by director Amy Berg and producer Matthew Cooke. This same pair also provides a, largely redundant, commentary track on the film itself.
We are also afforded the standard assortment of trailers, mostly centering on recent to fairly recent documentary releases.
Capping off the extras is an ending wisely relegated to alternate.
