Eric Goode’s latest documentary series widens the lens from a single wildlife obsession to an entire criminal underworld built around it. “Monsters of God,” which premiered on HBO on August 6, spends five episodes tracing the reptile-smuggling trade back to the 1960s, built on more than 175 interviews and roughly 1,500 hours of footage gathered over six years of production.
Goode, who also directed “Tiger King” and “Chimp Crazy,” said he wanted to document the era’s central smugglers before they died off, calling the project closer to investigative journalism than his earlier work. Producing partner Jeremy McBride described it as a portrait of obsession that blends character study with true crime, filtered through Goode’s own decades immersed in the reptile world.
The series follows dealers including Tom Crutchfield, once known as a prolific importer of rare snakes, lizards and turtles, and his rival Hank Molt, credited with pioneering the underground trade in endangered reptiles brought into the United States. Their story intersects with Anson Wong, a Malaysian exporter whom Goode tracked down for a tense sit-down interview in the mountains of Penang.
Goode said he felt genuine fear beforehand, noting he has received threats over the years tied to his work and questioning, even now, whether some of his pursuits amount to recklessness. The series also features Mario Tabraue, a convicted drug trafficker and animal collector who inspired comparisons to “Scarface,” and retired federal agent Larry Loveless, whose undercover work helped send Tabraue to prison for more than a century, though he ultimately served twelve years.
Bryan Christy, author of the 2008 book “The Lizard King,” which supplied the series’ narrative backbone, appears on camera and serves as a consulting producer. At a Los Angeles screening event, Christy credited the production team with breaking through a subculture he called far more guarded than the reptile world’s mainstream image suggests, saying he understood firsthand how difficult it was to get smugglers to open up to cameras after years of tracking them with only a notebook.
Goode has pushed back on the idea that the series indicts reptile keeping the way “Tiger King” and “Chimp Crazy” targeted big-cat ownership and chimp keeping. He said the calculus around reptiles is different and more complicated, suggesting that expanded legal breeding could ease pressure on poachers rather than replace it. He has also said the title refers to the human collectors rather than the animals, pointing to a long tradition of religious language used to justify dominion over the natural world.
