Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 140 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.197
The Pick
THEY HAD NO FACES! To begin with, if you’ve never seen The Devil’s Rain, stop right now and view the trailer, which is jaw-droppingly amazing, before you read any further. Even if you hate the movie, this trailer is face-meltingly bonkers.
Hey Church of Cinapse, Austin here. It’s been a pet cause of mine to introduce horror-heads to this slice of celluloid insanity, so you can blame me directly if you hated it. But where else are you going to see William Shatner and Tom Skerritt playing redneck brothers who go toe to toe with Satan himself, played by Ernest Borgnine in goat makeup? What other PG-rated movie features a ludicrously long and extremely graphic segment of faces and bodies melting into bubbly goop… and Ida Lupino as Mrs. Preston!
Love it or hate it, The Devil’s Rain is one of the most unbelievable horror films of all time; one that should register much higher on the collective cult consciousness but languishes in obscurity. It’s another slice of 70s craziness released by the allegedly mafia-connected Bryanston Distributors, Inc. (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Coonskin), a company we’ve inadvertently covered a lot of lately.
I adore this movie unashamedly, but some of our viewers came to a far different conclusion: When it rains, it bores! Are pacing issues and crazy casting enough to keep this movie down, or does the weirdness win the day?
Did you get a chance to watch along with us this week? Want to recommend a great (or not so great) film for the whole gang to cover? Comment below or post on our Facebook or hit us up on Twitter!
Next Week’s Pick:
Stick with us as we continue our Trick Or Treat Two Cents event. For the entire month of October (which has generously gifted us with five Thursdays), we’re checking out several awesome horror picks curated together by Liam and Austin — neither of whom has seen all five. Why “Trick Or Treat”? To mix things up a bit, every review will close with a verdict of “Trick” or “Treat”.
Next week’s pick is the French 1960 classic Eyes Without A Face, available to watch via the Criterion Collection on Hulu Plus. This one’s a classy classic with class, so if The Devil’s Rain wasn’t your cup of tea, this is pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum. We’re all about variety!
Would you like to be a featured guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your 140 word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co!
The Team
Ed:
Tom Skerritt, Ernest Borgnine, and William Shatner stumble onto an old abandoned Western movie set and seemingly accidentally end up making a Satanism film. And yet somehow in that insane concoction of personalities and Satanism… The Devil’s Rain still manages to be largely boring. Its incomprehensibility could probably have been predicted, but the boredom I felt watching it was kind of a shocker. Incompetently assembled to minimize any kind of tension, fear, or mystery, we see otherwise talented actors flounder around, trying to make sense of the very scenes they are in. Then Borgnine turns into a goat creature, and we’re eventually treated to at least 5 straight minutes of various Satanists being melted in a rain storm. And I do mean 5 minutes. Of shots. Of melting people. The slapdash nature of this film combined with the surprisingly robust roster of famous actors and the outright boldness of its Satanic focus is probably just the right combination to keep The Devil’s Rain in the cult consciousness, but I was hoping for something far more outrageous. Although I guess any movie with a shirtless Shatner and a horned Borgnine can’t be all bad.
Verdict: Trick (@Ed_Travis)
James:
Lucifer may have all the best tunes, but he’s a bit hit-and-miss when it comes to movies. Still, he managed to assemble a cracking cast for the ridiculous Satanic shenanigans in The Devil’s Rain. Demonic possession must be the only excuse why the likes of Borgnine, Shatner, Skerritt and Lupino agreed to flounce around in silly costumes, laying the ham on thick under the watchful eye of actual Satanist Anton LaVey.
Despite being cheap, easily-derided bollocks that doesn’t make a lick of sense, there’s some inexplicable fun to be had watching head goat worshipper Ernest Borgnine’s evil eyebrows, hero Tom Skerritt’s farcical rescue attempts and William Shatner with creepy black eyes (surely an inspiration for a certain Mr. Carpenter three years later?). Also, a preponderance of FACE MELTING! Predictably, it fails as horror, but succeeds as guilty-pleasure comedy.
Verdict: Trick (@jconthagrid)
Liam:
The Devil’s Rain is at one level, it seems to me, a failure of a film. This film wants to be creepy and disturbing, and instead it comes off as pure schlock. I guess I should reject it, trying so hard for a level of frightening that it has no hope of reaching. It has other issues, like a convoluted plot (hey, attacking the Satanists with nothing but a shotgun failed last time, but shit, I am nothing if not persistent) and of course all the melting, which starts off as amazing and just ends up being too much. Like a pumpkin spice latte. However, despite all of these failings I had so much fun with this movie. It could do with a gore upgrade, and it is a waste of Tom Skerritt but otherwise a fun piece of B-movie ridiculousness. My mind was not blown by the ridiculous ending, but I was certainly amused. I loved Borgnine’s ridiculous make-up, and Shatner will always entertain, especially in such an ill fitting role. Over all though, it kept me interested, not for the characters sake but for what ridiculous thing the film makers would do next.
Verdict: Treat (@liamrulz)
Victor:
Let me get this straight: you look me in the eye and tell me Anton Lavey is your technical advisor and you expect me to NOT laugh in your face?
Despite the best efforts of Ida Lupino, the Shat, Dallas from Alien, Goat-Head Carface and his partner whose headgear makes him look like a solid gold dildo, this movie is a little too pokey to be the cult classic you’d want it to be. The characters and story were so thinly sketched and the atmosphere so generally lacking that I had nothing to hold on to.
Not a total loss, mind. There was the brain-chucking sight of Satanist McHale giving the Borgnine Backhand ™ to his traitorous wife; and the melty people finale was fun… for the first 2,000 minutes, anyway.
After that, it got a bit old…
Verdict: Trick (V.N. Pryor)
Brendan:
This movie contains Ernest Borgnine morphing into a fucking goat. So it has that going for it, which is nice. But The Devil’s Rain also strikes the same balance that I get from movies by the likes of Argento or Bava, where I can’t tell if the baffling story and incomprehensible narrative structure is the product of clever minds subverting audience expectations for how the story should go, or just lunatics throwing shit at the screen and seeing what sticks. Regardless, the film succeeds at conjuring a truly effective mood, a pervasive feeling of unease that builds throughout the movie until the final, jaw-dropping meltdown that is the climax. I can’t blame anyone for hating this movie or finding it boring, but it happened to hit me on the right wavelength, and I had a great time with it.
Verdict: Treat (@TheTrueBrendanF)
Austin:
I’ll grant that The Devil’s Rain suffers from some pacing issues, but to me it’s just a reminder of why the 70’s ruled. My introduction to this film was the trailer, which is simply one of the greatest trailers of all time. This was my third viewing of the film, but I’ve probably watched that trailer a hundred times. The cast is lovable, nice guy Ernest Borgnine as Satan is amazing, and the incredibly gruesome face-melting is not only shocking, but would never show up in a general audiences trailer these days, nor would the film escape an R rating (it was PG). And like James, I too have noticed that Shatner’s white, eyeless “possessed face” looks strikingly similar to the Shatner-masked Michael Myers.
My belief has been that The Devil’s Rain can be whatever you want it to be. If you go in hoping for a seriously shocking horror picture, it can be that. If you just want to see Shatner and Borgnine chew the scenery for a laugh, it’s got you there too. Even the gruesome body horror can be taken at face value or disregarded as goop and latex. I have to admit that several of my well-intentioned peers didn’t like the film or disregard it as camp, so perhaps my theory is incorrect. But it doesn’t change my enthusiasm for this devilish oddity.
Verdict: Treat (@VforVashaw)
Our Guests
Editorial note: We usually make corrections of typos and errors, but felt that it was in the spirit of this particular review to leave as is. — AV
Justin Harlan:
Dear Austin and/or Liam,
Why did you waster my time with a “horror” film that is neither scary nor entertaining? After watching half and finding it duller than Liam’s tweets, I decided to take a break, drink some apple cinnamon infused whiskey, and get back to it. Sadly, even the whiskey could not make the film worthy of my time.
I expected so much more… the title was promising… the cast even moreso… there are even horned demons! But none of these things were able to save this dud.
I think I’m be more angry that you made me watch this than even the week you enticed me to watch Blackenstein if it weren’t for the fact that I am still kinda tipsy.
Whiskey good. The Devil’s Rain bad.
Verdict: Trick (@thepaintedman)
Len Carmichael:
The Devil’s Rain… The Devil’s Rain… The devil’s rain was purely my tears from the pain and horror of watching Captain Kirk stumble through the first half of the movie, pretending to be scared. And the old man (John), what the hell was the point of that character? The rest was a blur of me shaking my head wondering how this was ever released. Was this intentionally bad? Or, am I just missing the point. Do yourself a favor, if you’re planning to watch the movie only do so for the awesome Satanic Church, and the hokey yet creepy/eerie film score.
Highlights: “Church of Sin”, Devil’s stained glass window, upside-down crosses, Corbis’ eyebrows, the sweet ghost town, Anton LaVey as himself basically, and the end credits
Lowlights: Your life after you wasted 90 mins on this, and everything else
Verdict: Trick (@abefroman_tskoc)
Jonathan Martello:
As an avid fan of B-horror and all around schlock, I’m a bit disappointed in myself for sleeping on this one for so long.
As is the case with many horror films, the trailer usually ends up being far better than the movie itself. But this absurd flick pretty much delivered everything it promised; William Shatner’s over-acting, Tom Skerritt’s under-acting, Ernest Borgnine’s crazy eyebrows. And of course, “Absolutely the most incredible ending in film history.”
I gotta say, I respect the filmmakers for having the balls to make such a claim. I’m sure the thought process went something like: “Fuck it. They all fuckin’ melt in the end. Now THAT’S some incredible shit.”
It was probably in their best interest to apply towards the niche market of the melting-bodies sub-genre of horror. I suppose I’m a bit biased towards films like this because it’s the sort of death you don’t see very often. A real diamond in the rough. I’m pretty much numb to stabbing and guts at this point of my life. Give me a good body-melt and it’ll put a smile on my face.
Verdict: Treat (Jon Martello)
Cole Bradley:
The Devil’s Rain is perfect cinema. Anyone who doesn’t like The Devil’s Rain isn’t a person worth knowing.
Verdict: Treat (@ColeWBradley)
The Verdict
Trick: 5 | Treat: 5
Verdict: We have a Tie!
Since 2 “Trick” voters copped to the experience being enjoyably bad, I’m tempted to call the verdict a TREAT by split decision…
…Or is it the greatest TRICK the Devil ever pulled?
Hey, now that you guys have watched The Devil’s Rain, this Misfits song will make sense!
Did you all get a chance to watch along with us? Share your thoughts with us here in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook!
Get it at Amazon:
The Devil’s Rain — [DVD]