THE DEVIL’S RAIN
I’m not the smartest guy in the room, and sometimes that room is just filled with me and my two dogs. But I’m not the dumbest guy either, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what the hell is going on in THE DEVIL’S RAIN.
Yes, it’s another Satanic cult film from the 1970s, and the devil worshippers were even wearing the same brand of hooded cloaks seen in Race with the Devil. But instead of having to deal with Peter Fonda, they had to tangle assholes with William Shatner. In fact, Rain is filled with more talent than you could shake a stick at without it being an episode of ABC’s Battle of the Network Stars. Besides T.J. Hooker, there’s Ernest Borgnine, Tom Skerritt, Eddie Albert, and John Travolta (although I couldn’t find him in the crowd of devil acolytes, and I was trying hard). Michael Kahn edited it, and he cut every Spielberg film from Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Ready Player One. And Robert Fuest, who did the amazing Doctor Phibes series, directed the damned thing.
But the film makes absolutely no sense. Well, actually that’s not true. Maybe a better thing to say is, the film has absolutely no purpose. There’s no discernable theme, no real comment or spine that tells us something about ourselves, or humanity or our place in the universe. There’s not even a focussed motivation for Borgnine, who goes through the film wanting a book, but the book holds no narrative payoff.
You know a movie is bad when you have a pretty cool (and gruesome) effect, where soulless homunculi start melting into white and green waxy-pus, and all you want is to get to the end credits. Who would have thought Shatner could have done something more repellent than his rendition of Mr. Tamborine Man?