Plot
A curse affects the Preston family, caused by their betrayal of the Satanic priest Jonathan Corbis in colonial New England. Corbis has harassed the Preston family for generations to obtain a book containing the signatures of the members of his cult which bind their souls to Satan. Corbis captures patriarch Steve Preston, who is allowed to escape to warn his wife Emma and son Mark. He tells them to give the book to Corbis, before melting into a waxy substance. Mark advises Emma to keep the book hidden and entrusts her to family friend John. However, moments after he leaves to meet Corbis, he hears Emma scream and returns to find the Satanists have abducted Emma, leaving John bound, hanging by his feet and terrified.
In a ghost town in the desert, Mark challenges Corbis to a battle of faith. Corbis leads Mark to his cult's church where he reveals that Emma has joined them, as reflected by her now eyeless face. When Mark refuses to do the same, he is surrounded and overwhelmed by Corbis's followers.
Sheriff Owens scoffs at John's story of eyeless cultists living in a long-deserted town and refuses to conduct a search for the three missing Prestons, so Mark's older brother, Tom, and his wife Julie search for them on their own. In the ghost town they are attacked by Satanists. After escaping, Tom sends Julie to summon the authorities while he returns to rescue Mark. En route, Julie is captured by a Satanist who was waiting in her car.
Wearing the robe of a defeated Satanist, Tom infiltrates Corbis's church, where Corbis performs a ceremony to convert Mark into one of his eyeless minions. Tom is discovered by the Satanists, but eludes capture. He and Dr. Sam Richards, a psychic researcher, review the book, which explains that the source of Corbis's power is an ornate glass bottle known as "The Devil's Rain", which contains the souls of Corbis's disciples. They also find Mark's signature in the book, which Richards is sure was not there the last time Mark had the book.
Tom and Richards head to Corbis's church and remove The Devil's Rain from its hiding place. The Satanists converge on the church, so Tom and Richards retreat, taking The Devil's Rain but leaving behind the book, which is taken by Corbis. As Corbis begins the ceremony to convert Julie to an eyeless one, Tom jumps in to intervene, and is captured as well. Richards threatens to destroy The Devil's Rain, but is overpowered by the Satanists, and Mark takes the Devil's Rain from him. Richards tells Mark that he can still save his soul by destroying the bottle, while Corbis maintains that if the bottle is destroyed Mark will wander through nothingness for eternity, unable to enter either Heaven or Hell. Mark smashes the bottle. The Devil's Rain is released from the bottle, melting the Satanists (including Mark and Corbis) and burning down the church. Tom and Julie make a hasty exit. As Tom embraces Julie, it is revealed that he is actually embracing Corbis, and that his wife's soul has become trapped within a new Devil's Rain.
Production
Filming
The screenplay was originally set in New England, but for budgetary reasons shooting took place shot entirely on-location in Durango, Mexico and at Estudios Churubusco. [1]
Ernest Borgnine later claimed the film was financed using Mafia money, and that he had never been paid for his work. The distributor, Bryanston Distributing Company, was known to be a money laundering front of the Colombo crime family. The president, Louis Peraino, was a producer under the pseudonym "James V. Cullen."
According to Robert Fuest, financing problems caused the shoot to be cut by several weeks. As a result, multiple key scenes were never shot, resulting in a disjointed and ambiguous plot. He denied claims that he suffered a nervous breakdown during shooting.
Special effects
The “melting” effects in the film’s climax, created by Ellis Burman Jr. and Thomas R. Burman, [5] were achieved with wax life casts and inflatable sex dolls. For scenes were live actors were needed, Burman pumped a mixture of colored methyl cellulose, air, and smoke through flat-ironed tubes running under the actors' prosthetic makeup. [5] The producers thought Fuest's initial director's cut ran too short, and insisted on adding more melting footage. [5] Fuest referred to the sequence as "a terribly prologued wake…it goes on and on and on…it’s ridiculous." [5]
Ernest Borgnine's goat-demon makeup took four hours to apply. [5]
Multiple sources claim the life cast taken of William Shatner to create the “eyeless” facial prosthetics were used by Don Post to make the Captain Kirk mask that would later be modified to create Michael Myers mask in Halloween (1978). [10] [11] However, Shatner disputes this, claiming the Post mask was based on a cast taken during the production of Star Trek: The Original Series. [12]
Reception
The Devil's Rain received a uniformly negative critical response, with the chief complaint being the incoherent storyline. The film's lack of adequate scares was also widely criticized.
Vincent Canby in The New York Times opined that "The Devil's Rain is ostensibly a horror film, but it barely manages to be a horror ... It is as horrible as watching an egg fry." [14]
Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times said "All of this would be good silly fun if the movie weren't so painfully dull. The problem is that the material's stretched too thin. There's not enough here to fill a feature-length film." He particularly derided the exhaustive melting of the Satanists at the finale. He gave the film 1½ stars out of four, and eventually added it to his "Most Hated" movies list. [15]
Robert Fuest believed the film's failure had a detrimental effect on his career. He only directed one more feature film, the erotic drama Aphrodite (1982), and spent the remainder of his career in television.
In his 2010 book Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies, Australian film reviewer Michael Adams called The Devil's Rain "the ultimate cult movie ... It's about a cult, has a cult following, was devised with input from a cult leader, and saw a future superstar indoctrinated into a cult he'd help popularize." [4] The last reference is to John Travolta, who made his film debut in Devil's Rain, and Scientology, to which Travolta was introduced by a crew member during filming.
Screen Slate described the film as "the exemplar of a certain kind of 1970s American horror movie: slow, weird, 'plotless,' and depressing.... But what could more accurately depict the hollowed-out core of the post-Nixon American soul than nothingness, ennui, and a deal with the devil?" [10]
The Church of Satan (CoS) is a religious organization dedicated to the religion of Satanism as defined by Anton Szandor LaVey. Founded in San Francisco in 1966, by LaVey, it is considered the "oldest satanic religion in continual existence", and more importantly the most influential, inspiring "numerous imitator and breakaway groups". According to the Church, Satanism has been "codified" as "a religion and philosophy" by LaVey and his church. Founded in an era when there was much public interest in the occult, witchcraft and Satanism, the church enjoyed a heyday for several years after its founding. Celebrities attended LaVey's satanic parties and he was invited on talk shows. His Satanic Bible sold nearly a million copies.
John Joseph Travolta is an American actor, singer, and producer. He began acting in television before transitioning into a leading man in films. His accolades include a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Anton Szandor LaVey was an American author, musician, and LaVeyan Satanist. He was the founder of the Church of Satan, the philosophy of LaVeyan Satanism, and the concept of Satanism. He authored several books, including The Satanic Bible, The Satanic Rituals, The Satanic Witch, The Devil's Notebook, and Satan Speaks! In addition, he released three albums, including The Satanic Mass, Satan Takes a Holiday, and Strange Music. He played a minor on-screen role and served as technical advisor for the 1975 film The Devil's Rain and served as host and narrator for Nick Bougas' 1989 mondo film Death Scenes.
Kelly Kamalelehua Smith, known professionally as Kelly Preston, was an American actress. She appeared in more than 60 television and film productions, including Mischief (1985), Twins (1988), Jerry Maguire (1996), and For Love of the Game (1999). She married John Travolta in 1991, and collaborated with him on the comedy film The Experts (1989) and the biographical film Gotti (2018). She also starred in the films SpaceCamp (1986), The Cat in the Hat (2003), What a Girl Wants (2003), Sky High (2005), and Old Dogs (2009).
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Tory Christman is an American critic of Scientology and former member of the organization. Originally brought up a Catholic, Christman turned to Scientology after being introduced to the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health authored by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard while staying with her parents in Chicago. She identified with concepts described in the book including the idea of attaining the Scientology state of clear, and became a member of the organization in 1969. She hitchhiked from Chicago to Los Angeles, in order to begin the process of studying Scientology, and initially felt that it helped improve her life. In 1972, she joined the core group of staff members within Scientology called the Sea Org. After being a member of the Scientology organization for ten years, Christman reached the spiritual Operating Thetan level of OT III, and learned the story of Xenu. She subsequently rose to a higher Operating Thetan level of OT VII, the second-highest within the organization. Her medical condition of epilepsy caused difficulty while in Scientology, as the organization did not approve of taking medication in order to manage her condition.
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Robert Fuest was an English film and television director, screenwriter, production designer, and painter, who worked mostly in the horror, fantasy and suspense genres.
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Thomas William Davis is an American financial executive. From 2005 to 2011, Davis was the head of external affairs and chief spokesperson of the Church of Scientology International and Senior Vice President at the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International from the early 1990s. Between 2011 and 2013, Davis did not make any media public appearances. In June 2013, it was revealed Davis and his wife had relocated from Gold Base in Riverside County, California, to Austin, Texas. He currently resides in Los Angeles.
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