Abel Raises Cain
Studio: Crashcourse Documentaries
Rated: NOT RATED
Website: http://www.abelraisescain.com/
Release Date: 2005-08-26
Cast: Alan Abel, Jeanne Abel, Lee Chirillo, Frank Murgalo, Paul Hiatt
Director: Jenny Abel, Jeff Hockett
Screenwriter: Jenny Abel, Jeff Hockett
Music Score: Alan Abel
WorkNameSort: Abel Raises Cain
Our Rating: 3.50

Alan Abel has been a fixture on TV for close to half a century. He’s been seen and heard espousing a host of unlikely causes, including the enforced clothing of “indecent” naked animals and the censure of women who insist on breast-feeding their babies in public. He’s also appeared as the founder of a school for beggars, among other controversial endeavors.

The name may still fail to click, and that’s because Abel rarely if ever operates under his own ID; he talked up the panhandling school from beneath a black hood. Otherwise, some sharp-eyed couch potato might recognize him as one of America’s greatest hoaxers – a perennial fly in the ointment who has gained infamy staging a succession of stunts that left the media with egg on their faces and hoodwinked citizens calling for his head. Some of those pranks, like the clothe-the-animals campaign, went on for years before they were exposed as mischievous frauds. Others – including getting an accomplice to pose as a repentant Iran-Contra participant – were only as long-lived as their topicality. The begging classes? Never happened. But what great TV.

Abel’s daughter, Jenny, positions this filmed biography as a tribute to her dad, who she considers a borderline public servant. Every time he mounts another con, she explains, he’s reminding us all to question the veracity of everything we see and hear. She’s technically correct, but what really earns our allegiance is a common interest in witnessing the humiliation of journos who will rush to get a sensational story on the air without doing the most rudimentary homework. Our delight in seeing Abel get away with his schemes time after time carries us through the movie’s wonkier moments – like the spurious claim that he found it harder to grab the media’s attention as news reporting became “more serious” later in the 20th century. Yeah, turn on any local newscast and breathe deep the seriousness.

The movie could also do a better job of explaining the inner forces that drive Abel – and especially his wife, one of his regular co-conspirators. Such gaps, though, don’t seriously detract from the movie’s roguish pull. When it was nearing its end, I began to wonder if the entire film might itself be a ruse, and if there really is (or was) an Alan Abel. Jenny and the fam must have been dancing in the end zone.

This article appears in Aug 24-30, 2005.