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| It's not saying too much to remark that this incredibly colorful poster for Robert Fuest's The Devil's Rain promises more than the movie delivers |
QUICK REVIEW:
A family's patriarch vanishes, and their son goes looking for him. This is somehow connected to a satanical church out in the desolate countryside, whose leader Corbis has lost a highly important book.
The Devil's Rain presents a hardly understandable story, which bounces out by having members of the satanic church melt to death at several occasions. SPOILER The title refers to the rain which melts them all, when their spooky soul-goblet gets smashed in the end.
The film is well photographed, by Álex Phillips Jr. (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)), and it has some scary sounds made as the purgatory lamentations of souls.
But its narrative drives in a kind of neutral gear for too long, and elements like Ernest Borgnine (The Wild Bunch (1969)) playing a goat make the experience more involuntarily funny than frightening. Another such grotesque element is that William Shatner (Big Bad Mama (1974)) has no eyes for most of the film... One hardly notices that John Travolta (Domestic Disturbance (2001)) makes his completely unimpressive debut here as one of the 'melters' - These and other things about Devil's Rain have nonetheless over time given it a notoriety to some as a film so strange it simply has to be seen.
The Devil's Rain is written by Gerald Hopman (Evilspeak (1981), associate producer), Gabe Essoe (The Adventures of Black Feather (1995)) and James Ashton, (whose only credit it is), and directed by Robert Fuest (The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)). Fuest, who had directed 6 features before this, went down with the ridiculed flop the film became and subsequently worked only on TV, except for the erotica Aphrodite (1982).
Watch a trailer for the film from a Danish video here
Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
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[The Devil's Rain was released June 20 and runs 86 minutes. The shoot was reportedly shortened from 8 to 6 weeks during production. Real-life satanist Anton LaVey was used as an adviser on the film and has a minor part in it. Borgnine reportedly swore never to be in another film with a satanic topic due to strange accidents during production. The film was panned upon release: Roger Ebert gave it just 1½ stars out of 4, which translates to a note harsher than this review. Australian critic Michael Adams has called The Devil's Rain 'the ultimate cult film', [because]: "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." (Referring, of course, to Travolta, who is a prominent Scientology member.) The Devil's Rain is rotten at 20 % with a 3.9 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]
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