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The Devil's Rain
[Dark Sky Films]
1975; color
Directed by Robert Fuest
Starring: William Shatner, Ernest Borgnine, Ida Lupino, John Travolta, Tom Skerritt & Eddie Albert
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According to some press I read about this film, The Devil's Rain has the distinction of receiving a "golden turkey" award from a fella named Michael Medved. Not knowing what a golden turkey or a Michael Medved was, I consulted the first source I always go to when looking for information about a random piece of pop culture trivia from before I was born, The Kommandant. From that exercise I learned that a golden turkey award is intended to be some sort of critical black mark bestowed on only the "worst," possibly most poorly executed, film (or films, he wasn't clear on that part) of any particular year. And Michael Medved is some sort of film critic dude with a right wing agenda. Normally I like to gather a little more information on a subject before making a statement about it but in this case I think it's fair to say any movie that earned an award for being bad and / or poorly executed by a critic with a right wing agenda would qualify for review on the BMB. This one has both! So obviously we had to review it. Plus it boasts a cast of such cinematic luminaries as Ernest Borgnine, Eddie Albert, Tom Skerritt, William Shatner, Ida Lupino and John Travolta. (Although technically John Travolta is only in it for, like, a second; and had they not put a picture of what he looks like in the movie with the word "Travolta" under it on the cover, I totally wouldn't have even known it was him.) At any rate, at the beginning of the film we are introduced to a portion of a family consisting of Shatner (son #1) and Lupino (the mom), who live on the family dirt farm with their gray-haired caretaker who isn't famous enough to have made the box cover. Through conversation between the three we begin to piece together a story that will carry us through the rest of the film, culminating in what the tagline promises will be "absolutely the most incredible ending of any motion picture." But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Seems the family is in possession of some sort of book that is being sought out by some sort of evil dude. Soon after we gather this information we see the family patriarch return home - parts of him anyway - only to see the remaining portions of him melt into a goopy pile of wax. (Seriously, it's a long story; you're just gonna have to watch the movie yourself to get the whole thing.) Then Shatner heads out to a deserted ghost town to confront the aforementioned evil dude, played by Borgnine. Once the family's other son, Tom Skerritt, gets a wind of his family unfortunate twists of fate he brings his wife and that guy from Green Acres back to his hometown and things really start to get crazy. The rest of the film is filled with Satanic mumbo jumbo, eyeless people in hoods, repeated random acts of bad acting and Ernest Borgnine as a man-goat. Now, I know what you're thinking - how could anyone deem a movie containing the things described above be singled out for "badness"? But, apparently, it happened. As far as the "most incredible ending of any motion picture" part, it didn't have that per se, but it did have one of the most confounding and non-sensical endings of any motion picture ever witnessed by me; and that is saying something.
—Bunny
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