‘The Devil’s Rain’ (1975) (B-Movie Review) — Part One

It’s time for another of my multi-part B-movie reviews.

Away we go! :)

This movie is such an interesting combination of horror and insipid writing that it boggles the mind when you consider the sheer star power behind this … weird thing.

Let’s put it this way. The movie opens. It’s dark, it’s rainy … but that’s after the credits. The positively grotesque credits displayed with the work of Hieronymus Bosch in the background.

Image via The Movie Sleuth.

So after extended credits (featuring such delightful images as a demonic-looking creature defecating coins), we see that it’s night and it’s dark. And rainy. And, in a house in the middle of Wherever They Are, Ida Lupino (as a woman named Emma) is wearing a stripey dress and freaking out. Her husband tries to calm her down, but she continues to lose her shit. Why? Who knows? Maybe she’s under the weather?

A mother and son moment. (Image via Million Monkey Theater.)

And then William Shatner shows up, wearing the World’s Most Obvious Toupee, which has been plastered to his head by the pouring rain.

Anyway, it seems that a Satanic priest named Jonathan Corbis (played by an extremely red Ernest Borgnine) put a curse on the Preston family — that would be the people living in that house I just mentioned.

Red. It’s my color (or colour). (Image via From Midnight with Love.)

So Mark must take him a big, leather-bound book — really fancy and old, like a book the Devil might actually read — to Corbis, which I think is supposed to get him to lift the curse. Thus, Mark is required to go back out in the rain, lugging a big old book … but, wait! For some reason, he has to go back to the house — I’ll admit, less than fifteen minutes into the film, I was already blogging this one in my head and I might have spaced out or tuned out or just lost track. Anyway, he goes back to the house, still lugging the book, and when he goes inside, he sees his father hanging upside down. And he’s covered in blood.

Um. Wow!

Live in Hell and do not prosper. (Image via Unseen Films.)

PS: I wondered if this was one of those awful TV movies from the 70s. Turns out it was actually released in theaters in at least two major cities: New York and Los Angeles.

This will give you some idea.

Ida Lupino, Eddie Albert, Keenan Wynn, and Tom Skerritt must have been desperate or owed someone a great big favor.