🌧️ The Devil's Rain 1975: A Wild Satanic Meltdown

The Devil’s Rain 1975: Satanists, Shatner and One of Horror’s Wildest Meltdowns

My Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ☆ 4.4/5

Some horror movies earn a lasting reputation simply because they are nearly perfect in craft and execution. Others survive for decades because there is nothing else quite like them anywhere. The Devil's Rain 1975 belongs firmly in that second category. Released in 1975 and directed by Robert Fuest, the film brings together Ernest Borgnine, William Shatner, Tom Skerritt, Eddie Albert, Ida Lupino, and Keenan Wynn. A young John Travolta and real life Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey round out the cast.

What Is The Devil’s Rain 1975 About?

The Preston family possesses an old, weathered book. It contains the names of people who pledged themselves to Satan centuries earlier, back during Puritan times in colonial America. Jonathan Corbis, played by Ernest Borgnine, wants that book back badly, and his followers have waited a very long time to finally settle the score.

The film was shot partly in Mexico, a co production between Sandy Howard Productions and Estudios Churubusco. That gave the production access to authentic desert locations at a manageable budget. Bryanston Distributing Company released the finished film theatrically in the United States on August 7, 1975. It went on to earn roughly 1.8 million dollars at the box office.

That feud eventually leads the Preston family to an isolated desert ghost town and directly into Corbis's cult. Mark Preston, played by Shatner, sets out to confront Corbis. His father has already been melted into a pile of goo, and his mother has been abducted from the family ranch. What follows involves flashbacks to Puritan times, psychic visions, and a Satanic church built in the middle of the desert.

Ida Lupino, already a legendary actress and director by 1975, plays Emma Preston, Mark's mother. Emma spends much of the film in distress. She eventually shuffles around as one of the cult's black eyed, soulless followers, a grim fate for a nervous, protective parent. Tom Skerritt plays Tom, Mark's brother, rounding out the Preston family at the center of the story. Eddie Albert, still widely recognized from Green Acres at the time, plays Dr. Samuel Richards, a psychic researcher whose scientific curiosity pulls him directly into the family's escalating nightmare.

Ernest Borgnine Goes to the Dark Side

Ernest Borgnine deserves his own section here, since he is one of the movie's biggest attractions for exactly the wrong reason. Borgnine spent most of his career playing tough, earthy, working class characters, the kind of actor audiences trusted rather than feared. Watching him suddenly play a Satanic cult leader takes real adjustment, and the film never quite convinces viewers he belongs in Corbis's robes.

His performance is large, theatrical, and strange, which actually fits a movie that only grows more bizarre as it steadily progresses toward its finale. Borgnine had already won the Academy Award for Best Actor playing Marty Piletti in 1955's Marty. That shy, decent butcher sits about as far from Jonathan Corbis as a role can get. Seeing that same actor cackle, vanish in puffs of smoke, and transform into a full horned Goat God makes for a strange pleasure.

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William Shatner Versus the Devil

William Shatner plays Mark Preston, bringing plenty of intense, staccato delivery. It makes the movie even more entertaining than it has any right to be. His confrontation with Corbis anchors much of the film's second half. Shatner's eventual transformation into one of the cult's hollow eyed followers provides one of the movie's most memorable images.

Shatner arrived on this project at an interesting career moment. He was well past Star Trek's original run and still years away from returning to the franchise on the big screen. That gap left him working across a wide range of television and film projects during the mid 1970s. The Devil's Rain sits comfortably among the stranger entries on that resume.

Anton LaVey Was More Than a Name in the Credits

Anton LaVey deserves a substantial section here rather than a passing trivia note. LaVey, founder of the real life Church of Satan, served as the film's technical advisor and appears on screen in the role of High Priest. Contemporary reviews specifically commented on the participation of an actual Satanist in the production, treating his involvement as a selling point for the film.

There is an interesting wrinkle worth explaining here. The Satanism depicted in The Devil's Rain does not accurately represent LaVey's own Church of Satan philosophy. LaVey's Nine Satanic Statements explicitly reject devil worship as it appears in the film. His framework favors symbolic, largely secular ritual psychology over literal supernatural allegiance. The Corbis cult shown on screen, complete with literal devil worship and blood pacts, sits much closer to old fashioned pulp horror. It bears little resemblance to anything LaVey actually taught.

That distinction matters quite a bit. It gives the film a far more interesting angle than simply noting that LaVey worked on the movie. LaVey's partner and Church of Satan co founder, Diane Hegarty, also appears in the film, credited as Diane LaVey in the role of Priscilla Corbis. Though the couple never formally married, Hegarty had been central to building the Church of Satan alongside LaVey since its founding. Her presence in the cast forms another link between the fictional cult on screen and the real organization operating in San Francisco.

How Much Did LaVey Influence the Movie?

Understanding exactly what a technical advisor credit actually means matters here too. It would be very easy to overstate LaVey's real creative control over the finished picture. The role generally means offering guidance on ritual details, terminology, and atmosphere, rather than writing scenes or directing actors outright. Nothing in the historical record suggests LaVey scripted the film's actual content. What his presence certainly gave the filmmakers was something valuable to advertise. The founder and High Priest of the real Church of Satan had actually agreed to work on their fictional Satanic horror movie. Few other productions of the era could claim that kind of hook.

John Travolta Before Carrie, Saturday Night Fever and Grease

The Devil's Rain 1975 marked John Travolta's debut in a theatrical motion picture, appearing as Danny, one of Corbis's robed followers. Travolta was virtually unknown at the time of filming, working small roles years before Carrie, Saturday Night Fever, and Grease. Those films would soon make him one of America's biggest stars.

That contrast reads as funny in hindsight, especially for anyone watching the film today already knowing exactly who Travolta would become. This blink and you will miss him supporting player wore the same hollow, blacked out cultist makeup as everyone else in Corbis's cult. Within just a few years, he became one of the most recognizable faces in American cinema. Some later theatrical reissues even played up Travolta's small role once his fame exploded, occasionally billing him more prominently than his actual screen time warranted.

A Cast That Shouldn’t Possibly Fit in One Movie

The full cast reads almost like names pulled randomly out of several completely different eras of Hollywood. Borgnine, Shatner, Skerritt, Albert, Lupino, Wynn, Travolta, and LaVey somehow share this one 85 minute Satanic horror movie. Few casts from any single decade combine that much recognizable star power with that much genuine strangeness in one production.

The Desert Ghost Town Makes the Movie

The film's isolated desert ghost town setting does enormous work for the atmosphere. Empty streets, abandoned Western style buildings, and open desert landscape give the whole production a wonderfully strange, off kilter quality. Even when the plot grows confusing, the location makes the movie look like some forgotten roadside Western attraction that Satanists have quietly taken over.

Those Hollow Black Eyes

One of the film's simplest visual ideas remains one of its most effective. Corbis's followers wander the ghost town with empty, blackened eye sockets, a unsettling image achieved with minimal makeup rather than elaborate effects work. Compared with modern prosthetics and digital effects, the technique looks cheap by current standards, yet it still lands visually. The silently wandering cultists are probably more memorable today than most of the film's actual plot.

And Then Everybody Starts Melting

The climax is what The Devil's Rain is remembered for above everything else. It deserves the biggest section in any honest look back at the film. Bodies melt completely. Faces collapse entirely. Cast members dissolve into streams of brightly colored goo, one after another, well past the point where most films would have already cut away. Just when the sequence seems like it must surely finally be over, more people melt.

The American Film Institute's own catalog entry, prepared by studying the film's history, confirms this same split reaction. Reviews published in trade papers during June and August of 1975 commended the special effects even while the broader critical response remained lukewarm at best.

Contemporary reviews singled out the melting effects for praise even as they panned much of the rest of the film. Trade papers covering the film's 1975 release specifically commended the special effects, and the melting wax makeup earned mention as the production's clearest achievement overall.

How the Melting Effects Were Made

Makeup effects artist Tom Burman led the team responsible for that climax, working through The Burman Studio alongside his brother Ellis. Burman had cut his teeth as an uncredited assistant to makeup legend John Chambers during production of the original Planet of the Apes in 1968. That gave him real pedigree before tackling Corbis's cult. Burman later described building the multicolor melt effects using unconventional props, including parts sourced from sex shop dolls. He combined these with more traditional wax and prosthetic techniques for the finished sequence.

Robert Fuest Was No Stranger to Strange Horror

Robert Fuest directed The Devil's Rain, and his background helps explain why the film can look stylish and completely bonkers at the same time. Fuest had already built a reputation for visually inventive horror through The Abominable Dr. Phibes and its sequel, films that leaned into theatrical excess and striking production design rather than straightforward scares. That same visual confidence shows up throughout The Devil's Rain, even when the screenplay itself struggles to stay coherent.

Cinematographer Alex Phillips Jr. shot the film anamorphically using the Todd AO process, a technical choice that gave the desert vistas real scope on theater screens of the era. Production designer Nikita Knatz built out the Satanic church interior and surrounding sets. The finished space looks decorated by someone who had just discovered Hieronymus Bosch's darkest paintings and taken them a little too literally.

One detail from the production rarely gets mentioned alongside the film's more famous oddities. Editor Michael Kahn cut The Devil's Rain two years before beginning his legendary collaboration with Steven Spielberg on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Kahn would go on to win three Academy Awards across a career built on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan. His work here counts as an unlikely early credit.

Critics Hated It

The Devil's Rain received a poor critical reception on release, and there is no reason to hide that fact here. It actually makes the film's story more interesting rather than less. Contemporary response ran tepid at best, and reviews collected in the decades since include some harsh assessments of the film's writing and direction.

Severin Films eventually gave the movie a serious physical media treatment few would have predicted back in 1975. The restored 4K Ultra HD edition was scanned from the original camera negative. That release includes extensive interviews with Tom Burman discussing the melting effects, plus archival footage of Shatner discussing the production. Film historians who have studied the movie's strange history contribute commentary as well.

Why The Devil’s Rain Is More Fun Today

Fifty years later, the honest Kilroy question is simple, and it is worth asking plainly rather than dancing around. Does any of that original critical judgment actually matter anymore to a modern viewer? The Devil's Rain has everything a strange 1970s horror collector could possibly want in one package. Satanic panic atmosphere arrives years before the actual widespread moral panic of the 1980s ever took hold across American communities.

A ghost town setting, William Shatner at full intensity, and Ernest Borgnine turning demonic all show up here. So does real life Satanist Anton LaVey on camera, along with a young John Travolta years before stardom. Hollow eyed cultists and enough melting faces to fill three other horror movies round out this single 85 minute runtime.

Modern horror collectors drawn to strange, star packed 1970s oddities tend to respond to this film far more warmly. Critics on its original release felt very differently. That warmer reception says less about the film's actual craft than about how genre audiences now values strangeness and unpredictability. The Devil's Rain has both in enormous supply, whether or not the plot fully holds together.

It may not qualify as a great film by any conventional standard, but it is difficult to forget once seen. The film's Mexican and American production roots, its restored 4K release, and its persistent cult reputation all point toward the same conclusion. A movie this strange, combining star power with weirdness, was never going to simply fade away and get forgotten.

Kilroy Verdict

Kilroy verdict, a solid 4.4 out of 5 overall. The Devil's Rain 1975 is messy, weird, and sometimes downright ridiculous, and that combination is precisely why it remains worth watching today. Come for Borgnine and Shatner chewing scenery together, two completely different acting styles colliding in the same desert. Stay for Anton LaVey's presence and a baby faced John Travolta years away from stardom. Stay especially for one of the strangest, gooiest finales 1970s horror ever managed to put on screen.