Oh sure, the horror subgenre known as Satanic Panic may have made a bit of a resurgence in the last couple of years with Exorcist sequels, Omen prequels and the sight of Russell Crowe going toe to toe with ol’ beelzebub on more than one occasion, but if you really want to see this curious horror offshoot operating at full capacity, you have to go back to the 70s – because back then, everyone was doing it.
However, in the midst of such glossy, studio productions thats saw the ungodly escapades of Damien Thorne and Regan MacNeill (not to mention the real-life horrors of the Charles Manson murders), a gritty and impressively camp slice of American Gothic turned up that squared up to all other contenders simply by being as aggressively fucking weird as it could be – which isn’t that shocking when you realise that it was directed by the man who gave us The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Prepare to put up your god-fearing brollies, because the forecast calls for The Devil’s Rain.
We are literally thrown into the movie apparently already in progress as a fiendish storm lashes a house owned by the Preston family and inside, youngest son Mark and his mother, Emma, anxiously await the return of patriarch Steve as they fuss about the security of a mysterious book they have hidden on their property. The good news is Steve eventually returns home – the bad news is that he’s melting into a gelatinous waxy substance that creates the distraction needed for Emma to be spirited away by shadowy abductors and Mark realises that if he is to end this madness, he’ll have to meet it at its source.
We get to meet this source after Mark drives to a ghost town in the middle of the dessert that’s inhabited by Jonathan Corbis and his cloaked cult of Satan worshipers and it seems that the cowboy hat wearing villain has had a beef with the Preston clanforca lot longer than their natural life span would suggest. Discovering, to his William Shatner-esque horror, that the entire cult – including his kidnapped mother – have been reduced to eyeless drones whose souls have been imprisoned in an infernal glass bottle named the Devil’s Rain and Corbis goades him a simple game: to see who’s faith is stronger.
Needless to say, things don’t go quite in Mark’s favour, but luckily, his elder brother, Tom and his ESP sensitive wife, Julie, take up the search after hearing of the disappearance of the entire family and before you know it, they are soon fending off Corbis’ eyeball-challenged followers too as they attempt to get to the bottom of a curse that’s lasted for over three hundred years. But can a rifle, a can-do spirit and Tom Skerritt’s moustache succeed in the fight to dry up the Devil’s Rain once and for all?
If you were to follow The Devil’s Rain’s truly unholy Rotten Tomatoes score (a measly 15% if you can believe it) then you would probably just write Robert Fuest’s genuinely mental horror flick off as ludicrous camp trash, but back in the mid-seventies, horror had a sense of – well I don’t want to say respectability – but directors such as William Friedkin and Roman Polanski had taken the genre out of gloomy castles and mist enshrouded graveyards in favour of dumping it into America’s modern cities to masterful effect. However, compared to the class-acts of The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, I guess I could understand how The Devil’s Rain’s hokey nature would have annoyed critics at the time, especially considering the rather flashy cast on display. However, in these more enlightened times, we’re free to embrace the more out-there examples of the genre that may have slipped through the cracks and taken in this regard, The Devil’s Rain kicks fucking ass.
At a razor tight 86 minutes, Fuest goes all in to deliver a truly berzerk example of American Gothic that, at turns, alternates entertainingly between being borderline goofy and genuinely creepy and immediately puts this into practice with an opening scene that Thrones in everything but the kitchen sink. There’s a pounding storm, mysterious intrigue, William Shatner indulging in his patented brand of melodramatic overacting and a dude who melts into a puddle right before our very eyes and that’s all before a bug-eyed, robe-wearing Ernest Borgnine shows up with a taste to consume every bit of scenery he can whenever he appears on screen. When he does, it’s fucking glorious and the whole first half, which sees both Shatner and Borgnine try to match each other’s faith (read: overacting abilities) would have made a super cool, Tales From The Crypt-style short story that ends with Captain Kirk succumbing to the forces of evil and losing his eyes – which amusingly makes him look exactly like the Michael Myers mask that would dominate the genre two years on.
However, the story goes on with Tom Skerritt’s brother character in the mix and from there, shit gets even weirder as as the movie gets even further buffeted by premonitions, Borgnine transforming into a goat monster mid-prayer and the sight of none other than John Travolta in his first screen role as he staggers about the place with eye sockets emptier than his 1975 filmography. It sure ain’t subtle, but Fuest’s quest to go all out camp with this trippy little flick results in a movie that not only goes hard with the freaky imagery, but also manages to avoid the greater sin of being boring for virtually the entirety of its runtime.
Yes, the film widely avoids achieving the game changing greatness over every 70s flick I’ve already mentioned (not to mention the likes of The Texas Chain Saw Massarce, Halloween and Alien) and it’s frequently more kooky than terrifying, but is fun, by God and not only does it deliver a cracker of an ending, but it’s the it film I’ve listed that has the co-pilot from Airwolf turn into a demonic goat person. So there’s that….
After a film that’s explores the atmospheric virtues of stormy nights and dry hot deserts, the ending spectacularly goes for broke by diving headlong into an ending that involves the discovery and destruction of a giant, ornate vase that contains the screaming, wailing souls that Corbis has been collecting like baseball cards for over 300 years. The result? All hell literally breaking lose and a climax that sees everyone who has accepted Satan as their savior suddenly find themselves melting into piles of drippy, green goo to massively enjoyable effect. I mean, it might not be the most incredible ending of any motion picture ever like the gloriously hyperbolic poster insists, but it certainly put a smile on my face.
While hardly a stone cold horror classic, or even Fuest’s best foray into overly camp chills (the original Dr. Phibes nails this hands down), The Devil’s Rain proves to be incredibly enjoyable genre hokum that’s loaded with all the broad performances and melting satanists fans of this sort of thing could ever hope for.
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