Rish's Reviews
From the director of Doctor Phibes comes The Devil's Rain!!! (why all the exclamation marks? I really don't know)!
A family has in its possession a book that a powerful cult wants possession of (I'm gonna keep using the word possession here, folks, consider yourself warned), and when one man faces down the cult, they take possession of him. Oh, and one more thing: the sect members HAVE NO EYES!!
Wow, for a cheap and silly movie, what a cast! Ernest Borgnine stars as Jonathan Corvis, king of the devil worshipers. It also stars (The Great) William Shatner, Eddie Albert, Tom Skerritt as Shatner's brother (the one with the butterfly collar), and John Travolta, as an eyeless devil worshipper. Possession.
The technical advisor to the film was "Anton Szander Lavey, High Priest of the Church of Satan." Cute. This was made in the mid-'70s Satan craze when filmmakers would cash in by throwing demons, possession, or witchcraft in their films. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Borgnine as a devil worshipper is fairly good. Borgnine as the Devil is absurd. The scene with Shatner screaming was somewhat disturbing. And not just because I'm a fan. The eye-job makeup looked creepy sometimes, and other times it was silly. John Travolta is virtually indistinguishable in his scenes. Only the lips give him away.
This film was both good and bad. There's about 45 minutes of story in this full-length movie. It went from somewhat dull to totally dull, but around the one hour point, it got cool. I liked the ghost town they shot in. Shatner's hairpiece looks like it's just been scraped off the interstate, but oh well. The film ends with a revolting ten minute melting sequence, more over the top than anything in John Waters or Andy Warhol's career. There was a long flashback setting up Corvis and more screaming Shatner. The final shot of the movie is pretty cool, all things considered.
I was raised in a religious household, where movies like this wouldn't be banned because they were trashy, but because they were devil-related. In its day, perhaps this would have been scary (I'll admit that the chanting is pretty good), but today, it is so tacky it's embarrassing.
But let's face it, I am one jaded little filmgoer. It would take a slow-motion baby in a blender sequence to really jar me. And as a kid, this probably would have scared me quite a bit. I can even see my fevered imagination conjuring up images of cult members with no eyes trying hard to get into my room at night. But it did absolutely nothing for me today. And in a way, that's too bad. Wouldn't it be great to be truly scared by a film again?
And if devil worshipers can't do it, what can?
Wait a minute, The Sixth Sense really scared me. As did What Lies Beneath. Okay, scratch what I just said.
I'd Recommend It To: People still intrigued even after this review.
Note: When Shatner appears later in the film sans his eyes, he was the spitting image of Halloween's Michael Myers, leading me to wonder if maybe it wasn't a prop from The Devil's Rain that they used, rather than a Captain Kirk mask.
And THAT was scary.