The Devil's Rain (Robert Fuest, 1975)

The stories of everyone involved in the making of The Devil's Rain are a lot more interesting than the film itself, but I have a perverse admiration for this goofy little Satanic cult movie. Sure, it's semi-coherent at best and lacking a strong central character and the concluding scene is somehow thirteen hours long even though the total running time is one hour and twenty-six minutes, but I find most of it compelling in a warm childhood blanket sort of way.

Bryanston Distributing Company bankrolled, produced, and distributed The Devil's Rain. Bryanston was a money-laundering front for New York City's Colombo crime family, and their first crack at the moviemaking game, the surprise crossover porn hit Deep Throat, made them a bundle but also got them embroiled in several obscenity cases. Bryanston also purchased the distribution rights to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, leading to the majority of the people who worked on that movie receiving zero payment for their efforts until New Line Cinema acquired the rights in the early '80s. Bryanston's other films include another porn flick, The Party at Kitty and Stud's (featuring a pre-fame Sylvester Stallone in a non-explicit role), Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein, John Carpenter's Dark Star, and the Earth, Wind & Fire movie That's the Way of the World.

Bryanston may have been run by gangsters, but those gangsters ensured that The Devil's Rain had room in the budget for a pretty solid cast, a lineup that Joe Bob Briggs has accurately called "a Satanic cult version of a Love Boat episode." We have Ernest Borgnine, Ida Lupino, Eddie Albert, William Shatner, Keenan Wynn, Tom Skerritt, Bunuel regular Claudio Brook, Church of Satan founder Anton Szandor LaVey, and a pre-fame John Travolta in a glorified extra part. Travolta appears briefly in two scenes and has a single line of dialogue, and his eyes and hair are never visible (he's wearing a hooded robe, and I'll get into the eye business later), but his name is prominently displayed in the opening and closing credits because Welcome Back, Kotter had become a hit shortly before the film's release.

Speaking of Travolta and Shatner and eye business, The Devil's Rain is responsible for a couple of major historical pop culture happenings. Depressed at the state of his career and looking for guidance, Travolta was introduced to Scientology by Joan Prather, who plays Tom Skerritt's ESP-gifted wife (more on that ESP business later). Yes, there is a straight line from The Devil's Rain to Battlefield Earth. On to Shatner. Several of the Satan-worshiping cult members in the movie have no eyeballs for some reason, so the actors are wearing masks of their own faces in these scenes, created by Don Post Studios. Spoiler alert: Shatner gets his eyeballs yoinked, so a Shatner mask was created. Don Post Studios used its Devil's Rain Shatner mold as the basis for a mass-produced line of Shatner Halloween masks, which were branded as Star Trek masks. A production designer on John Carpenter's Halloween bought three of these masks and spray-painted them white for use as the now-iconic Michael Myers mask. (Try to find the picture of three of the Halloween cast members wearing the three masks while playing acoustic guitars and singing at the wrap party. It's solid gold.)

Directing this impressive Hollywood cast in the remote desert a few hundred miles from Durango, Mexico, with New York mob money is legendary British production designer Robert Fuest, who also directed the incredible, highly recommended The Abominable Dr. Phibes and its well-regarded sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (I still need to catch up with that one). Fuest had a bad time on The Devil's Rain and didn't get to assert much creative independence. He kept asking the producers if he could make changes to the screenplay and they kept telling him no, he had no input on the edit (he agrees with almost everyone that the closing scene is hilariously overlong), and he's not particularly proud of the finished results. Despite these frustrations, Fuest makes it all look pretty good. He has a nice eye, even when forced to tamp down his full power.

The Devil's Rain begins in a ranch house in the middle of an exceedingly powerful rain storm (though not the titular devil's rain). A worried Mrs. Preston (Ida Lupino) anxiously waits with family friend John (Woodrow Chambliss) for her son and husband. Her husband has gone missing in the flooding and destruction of the storm, and her son Mark (William Shatner) is looking for him. Mark finally returns without his dad. There is much talk about a special hidden book and somebody named Corbis and how Corbis should never get his hands on the book. When Papa Preston finally returns, he has no eyeballs and his flesh is waxy and melting. He tells them that Corbis has found them and to keep the book safe. Then he promptly dies and melts away. Mrs. Preston thinks the eyeball-less patriarch is not really her husband. Mark gets his gun and says he's going to the desert to confront Corbis. Mrs. Preston gives Mark an amulet to wear from the same secret compartment in the floor containing the book. A pickup truck pulls into the yard. Mark goes out to greet the truck but sees only a tiny figure strapped to the steering wheel. All hell breaks loose inside. He goes in to investigate and sees a bloodied, battered John hanging upside down. His mother is missing. He frees John, who mentions a group of people with no faces. Mark yells "Cooooorbiiiiiiiss!" in full Shatner mode. We still don't know who the hell Corbis is or why the book is so damn important. What an opening scene.

The next day, after some intense chit-chat with Sheriff Owens (Keenan Wynn), Mark heads to a ghost town in the desert. The movie briefly turns into a western as a cowboy-hat-wearing Mark tries to get some water from a pump and an older cowboy comes out of a church to talk him up, western-style, amid the visually stunning Mexican desert. This older cowboy is the much-hyped Corbis (Ernest Borgnine), an emissary of Satan. He wants the damn book. Mark wants his damn parents. A faith-off throwdown is proposed, Satanism vs. Christianity in Corbis's church for all the marbles, on Netflix, sponsored by Snickers and Hulk Hogan's Real American Beer.

Meanwhile, Mark's brother Tom (Tom Skerritt) is at some paranormal presentation with his wife Julie (Joan Prather), a superstar of ESP, and the paranormal academic researcher and professor Dr. Richards (Eddie Albert). Does anyone know an actual professor of paranormal shit at any reputable college or university? These guys are in so many movies, but they seem to be over-represented compared to their real-world counterparts. These three will also end up in the desert with Corbis and Mark and the rest of the gang, including an eyeless pre-Sweathog, pre-plastic bubble, pre-greased lightnin', pre-disco dancing, pre-Operating Thetan Level VIII Travolta.

Does what follows make much sense? Not really. Is it boring? Sometimes. Does it look cool? Absolutely. Does Borgnine get to go hog wild? Hell yeah, brother. Do faces melt? Do they ever. Do we get to see the devil's rain? It's in the title, my man. Of course we get to see the devil's rain. Despite the Phish bootleg-length closing scene that keeps on noodlin' instead of chooglin' for an absurd length of time, I had a pretty good time with this movie. It's not that great, but it's so 1975 it hurts, and I have a major soft spot for it.

 

Invisible Ghost (Joseph H. Lewis, 1941)

A quick word of warning before we begin. If you attempt to watch Invisible Ghost through any of the proper, official streaming outlets, you will be punished with the colorized version, which looks like a combination of freshly vomited ratatouille and a child's watercolor. To see it in its original black and white glory, head to YouTube or the extralegal provider of your choice.

You probably think you know what you're in for with an early '40s movie called Invisible Ghost starring Bela Lugosi in the early years of his opiate addiction and career decline, but you would be wrong. This delightfully oddball creation was directed by my man Joseph H. Lewis, a filmmaker who injected established genre templates (horror, westerns, film noir, spy thrillers, romantic comedies, swashbucklers, war movies) with deep eccentricity, perversity, dark humor, personal touches, and a sort of proto-pop art visual style. Lewis made what I think is one of the greatest American films, 1950's Gun Crazy, and I'm also a huge fan of his 1955 gangster noir The Big Combo and 1958's Terror in a Texas Town, which is one of the strangest Hollywood westerns. Invisible Ghost is not really in the same league as top-shelf Lewis, but it's a uniquely strange little movie with a bizarrely and hilariously illogical plot and a strong visual personality.

Despite the title, this is not a supernatural haunted house movie. The haunted house here is Bela Lugosi's mind, and the invisible ghost is his fleeting episodes of madness and/or his estranged wife, who is still among the living. Lugosi plays Mr. Kessler, a prominent citizen and a figure of some importance, though his profession is a little vague (a doctor? a professor? a businessman?). He lives with his adult daughter Virginia (Polly Ann Young) and several servants, including the butler Evans (Clarence Muse), the maid Cecile (Terry Walker), a new cook (Dorothy Vernon), and the handyman Jules (Ernie Adams), who lives in a back house with his wife Mrs. Mason (Ottola Nesmith). Our other important characters include Mr. Kessler's aforementioned estranged wife (Betty Compson), only ever referred to as Mrs. Kessler (or Mother, if you're Virginia), and Virginia's milquetoast boyfriend Ralph (John McGuire).

WARNING: I'm going to unload some spoilers in my description because this movie has more twists and turns than a month of soap operas, so please skip the next few paragraphs if you plan on watching this soon.

Mr. Kessler is liked and respected by everyone who knows him, but he endured a scandal several years ago when his wife left him for another man. Her painted portrait still hangs prominently on the wall, and Kessler likes to look at it and predict his wife's return. He goes a little cuckoo every year on their wedding anniversary, instructing the servants to prepare a dinner for both of them, and he carries on a conversation with her even though she's not there. Since it's the only day of the year when he goes crazy as far as his daughter and servants know, they embarrassedly endure it and prefer to forget about it once the date passes. No one seems to connect the string of bizarre murders that have occurred on or near the Kessler property to Kessler's occasional odd behavior, and they change the subject when it's brought up.

Further complicating matters, handyman Jules came upon a car accident involving Kessler's wife and her boyfriend. The boyfriend died in the wreck. Mrs. Kessler survived, though she's a shadow of her former self, possibly due to a head injury or a shock. In an insane move, Jules covers up evidence of the accident and hides Mrs. Kessler away in the basement of the back house. His insane plan is to keep her location a secret from everyone except his wife until Mrs. Kessler regains her senses, whereupon he'll return her to Mr. Kessler and Virginia. His wife keeps insisting he tell the authorities and Mr. Kessler, but Jules is stubborn, though apparently not stubborn enough to lock the back door. Mrs. Kessler wanders out at night and stares into the window of Mr. Kessler's study. Mr. Kessler sees her but thinks he's hallucinating her, which sends him into a homicidal trance. He then kills one of his employees, leaving no evidence and no memory of what he's done. Oddly, Kessler, Virginia, and the longtime employees are very blasé about the murders, and brush off any suggestion to move out of the house.

That's not all. Virginia's boring-ass boyfriend Ralph exchanges knowingly disturbing glances with Cecile, the maid. Unbeknownst to Virgina, Ralph and Cecile used to be a couple until Ralph dumped her. She's not over it and is hopping mad about Ralph seeing Virginia. When Cecile turns up dead, Ralph gets the blame and is arrested, tried, convicted, denied appeal, and executed in U.S. judicial system record time. Everyone is very sad for one minute before quickly moving on. Ralph's identical (except for a few white streaks in his hair), but not twin, brother Paul then shows up, also played by John McGuire. I told you shit was weird in Invisible Ghost. SPOILERS OVER.

Except for Ralph, the characters are all interesting, multifaceted people who get at least a few moments to shine. Lugosi is ridiculously hammy when he goes into his psychotic trances, but I hardly consider that a negative. He's just such a fun guy to watch no matter what he's doing. I was a little worried we'd get some standard-issue Hollywood racism from Clarence Muse's Evans, but I was pleasantly surprised by his portrayal. Most black butler characters in otherwise white films from this period are saddled with exaggerated "yes, massa" accents, condescended to by the white characters, and presented as comic-relief simpletons who shake and shiver and get bug-eyed when scared. We've all seen this shit so many times, and it drags down so many otherwise solid films. It's shameful. In Invisible Ghost, however, Evans is presented as a three-dimensional, intelligent man with agency, common sense, and dignity. He's treated the same in the film as every other character, and even when he has to portray fear, he does it naturally. His butler gig is a job, just like every other job in the home. It's pathetic to have to congratulate a film for clearing a low bar, but it's rare for the time period.

Lewis keeps the pace brisk without sacrificing character development, and his shot compositions pack a punch, especially when he shifts from a medium shot to a closeup. I love the closeups on Mrs. Kessler staring up at Mr. Kessler's study in the rain. The narrative's many, many, many lapses in logic and sanity are easily forgivable because they're so damn weird, funny, and melodramatic. I particularly enjoy the fact that no one considers Kessler a suspect even though people keep getting murdered in his house. I had a great time with this one.