America's religious right in all its scary, warmongering forms comes under the microscope in Michael Wilson's 'Silhouette City'.

It goes some way to making the case that some of the fundamentalist Christian thought infecting public policy in the world's most powerful nation is just as likely to lead us all to Armageddon than any fanatical Muslim grouping.

It begins with a long section on a minor sect which transforms itself from a sanctuary from crime and sexual abuse to a paramilitary group with a race hate message which conducts house to house infantry exercises in a specially-built 'silhouette city'.

All in preparation for a forecasted meltdown in America which they believed had turned into a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah.

Prayer meetings were conducted amid a backdrop of weaponry displayed on the walls – some of the 52,000 guns the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord amassed before the Feds surrounded them in 1985 and jailed their leaders, without any Waco-style shootout.

The film then meanders into looking at how far militant and militarised bible bashing has permeated public life, including rock concert style gatherings where the language of holy war has taken a worrying hold.

There's an almost too-good-to-be true quote from a none-too-bright teen follower, "If I die in the right cause – isn't the word called a mortar or something?"

The link is made to the birth of fascism in Germany where similar inadequates were moulded in their millions into something genocidally lethal.

There is plenty of footage of Republicans getting hot and heavy with their alarming versions of good versus evil.

And most telling of all there is the Air Force base where religious fanaticism was so prevalent non-believers were outcasts.

While the sentiment behind the film is admirable, with some better editing it could have been a whole lot punchier.

The impression is of a filmmaker so proud to get so much raw footage of the religious right at work, rest and play that little attempt is made of making sense of it.

There's no narrative, just a bunch of interviews strung together. Much of it doesn't really go anywhere. The sect the film began with only had 150 members and had an annual income of $50,000 – and it was closed down 20 years ago.

One of its members recounts an epiphany he experienced when he went to attack a homosexual church, but sitting in the congregation he realised they worshipped the same God in the same way and he no right to judge them. But the story is never finished.

A rather strange shrink pops up and dispenses some analysis on group psychology.

This theme could have been developed a lot more but the opportunity is squandered.

Ultimately the film comes across as a rather hurried, unfocused effort.

There are a few interesting nuggets but ultimately the viewer could be forgiven for asking: "What have I really learned?"

Silhouette City will be screened tonight at 9.15 at Little Theatre and on Sunday at 6.30 p.m. at the BUEI auditorium.