Weirdhouse Cinema: The Devil's Rain

Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be talking about the nineteen seventy five satanic cult melt movie The Devil's Rain, a movie that I first saw, oh, I'd say, somewhere between thirteen and fifteen years ago, and I didn't remember much about it except there is a famous melting sequence at the end of this movie, and my memory was that it goes on and on and on and on, and wow, was that impression ever validated by rewatching this.

This is like the godfather of melt movies. It is quite a melt movie. If you are into film homes that depict the generally unrealistic liquefacation of the flesh. The most I guess famous mainstream example of this being either The Wicked Witch of the West melting or All the Nazis melting at the end of Raiders of the Lost Art, both fine examples in their own right, but you can definitely get deeper into the weeds. I do greatly enjoy

the Nazi melting in Raiders. But one difference I want to point out is that in Raiders, it seems that when like the SS agent melts and it melts like a candle, they attempted to do that in some biologically accurate color schemes, so he basically melts in like blood and viscera kind of colors. The melting in this movie is the full box of crayons. It's just whatever color you want where you know, we're green, blue, purple, pink. Everything's in there in this movie. And we may we'll

probably discuss this a bit more. We made to some degree try to make sense of it, but I don't think any real sense can be made of it. But in this movie, if you are a devout Satan worshiper, you get to exchange your fleshly body for a body that is made of multi colored wax. Yeah, and like, not only does solid wax veltle liquid wax, So if you were shot with a gun, you will bleed multicolored wax.

If you were melted by rain of either divine or infernal origin, I'm not sure which direction it actually is going in. At any rate, it will melt you like multi colored candles, and it's so yeah, they're not even trying to make it seem like this is an actual organic process. This is something psychedelic and weird and just straight up nineteen seventies. You know, most movies that depict people making a covenant with Satan depict more enticements. So you know, you make a deal with the devil, you

get fame, power, pleasure, riches, all that stuff. In this movie, the cultists don't really seem to get much of anything in the way of power and riches and pleasure. It seems like, well, you get to become made of wax. Doesn't that sound great? Well, I think Corbus are our cult leader. He he does in the flashback to three hundred years ago. He's telling the other cultists in this

kind of, you know, very pilgrimy setting. He's like, well, you've gotten to taste the pleasures of the flash you got you got your earthly pleasures out of this, and now I will take you to the hell. And that's the arrangement. So it's implied they got to have some sort of earthly pleasures, but I don't know they were. There's a pretty stuffy looking lot, so it might have been rather mundane by you know, three hundred years ago status.

These were not pleasures of the flash by nineteen seventy standards. No, what what were the pleasures and power that enjoyed by like Pilgrim William Shatner that that really earned him the wax Hell of the future got to wear shorts or something probably. Also, I wanted to point out, so this movie is notable for being a seventies cheeseball satanic cult movie, but also for the melting sequences, but also for having a rather interesting cast. So we'll get into that in

a moment. But one of the cast members is Tom Skarrett. He's sort of one of the heroes of the film. And I have to point out the Amazon Prime landing page for the streaming version of this movie is a picture of Tom Skarrett sort of gazing off into the distance where he looks so much like a perfect cross between Leonard Nimoy and Josh Brolin. Do you see it? Yeah, it's a weird it's a weird image to try and sell this movie on. It's kind of like anybody else.

Anybody who wanted to see this because of the movie satanism or the melting they've seen it. Now we just want to sell people on like mid seventies Tom Scarett handsomeness. Okay, Tom Scarrett is handsome, Michelle, I'll give him that. But also I don't know if that's going to get people to watch. But okay, so maybe the image doesn't get you in, you'll hook him with the plot description. Right, that's that's you're in. The plot description of the movie. Here is a man tries to save his family from

a Satanic cult ruled by a powerful preacher. Somebody didn't copy at it that and it makes me wonder, what was the descriptor that started with a vowel before they changed it out too powerful? Was it originally ruled by an evil preacher? And then they're like, now that's two on the nose, let's change evil to powerful. But then they didn't change the article. Maybe it was all powerful ah,

and then they're like, well that doesn't hold up. He's not quite all powerful, that's right, but reasonably powerful, intimidatingly powerful. So it seems to me like The Devil's Reign did not get very good reviews when it came out. It has since garnered some kind of retrospective appreciation, though a lot of reviewers have said it's kind of boring or dull. I'm not going to say this is a good movie, because it's not. But I did not find it boring.

I was I was highly entertained. Yeah, I found that it really sucked me in. It has. It's never dull on the screen. I mean, there's always some sort of interesting desert setting or strange satanic chapel, or somebody's making a strange facial expression or has been reduced to an eyeless cult member, or of course for large stretches of the movie are actively melting. There's there's a lot to keep your attention. Yeah, it's it's you look back at the reviews, and you know, nobody seemed to like it

when it came out. It arguably had a very devastating effect on the career of the of the director, and we'll get into that. Um, but yeah, it's It's also unlike just about anything else, so it definitely got stuck in people's heads. It developed a cult following for my money, and part of this may have been from sort of I think I may have caught parts of it for the first time on the Sci Fi Channel back in

the day. But this film feels like an episode of Night Gallery that was stretched out to feature length and then also had its plot surgically removed. It. Yeah, it really has the feel of an anthology TV series, Like it feels like an episode of one of those shows that doesn't have consistent characters. It's like a self contained

plot every time. And I wonder if that might have to do with the fact that it feels in some ways like the plot is really rushed, like it throws you right into the middle of the story without any explanation or introduction. So for the first I don't know, ten fifteen minutes, you're really like, what is going on? It's really confusing, But then other parts of it feel totally padded out. There's so much just driving and looking

around at things. The sense of confusion, though, is sustained throughout the entire picture, given that most of the picture you spend time. If you're giving it even a halfway dedicated viewing like we did here, you're just going to find yourself continually asking questions that cannot be answered. And on one level, I feel like that's kind of accidentally fitting for a film about normal human mortals and encountering

some strange cult from beyond the pale. You know, you're never you're never supposed to completely make sense of what evil wizards are up to. And and the movie itself has this strange dream like quality like it makes it does. It has dream logic. So when you try and ask like why are people made out of wax? And why or what's this about the Devil's Reign? And is this

the Devil's Reign? Or is that the Devil's Rain, Like none of it really makes logical sense, and it's very difficult to even attempt to stitch it together into such a sensible construction. But it has that kind of dream logic where if you were to explain this as a dream, people wouldn't doubt that you had this experience with you, you know, your rain in pure dream mode. That being said, I don't feel like that that is an intentional result

of the filmmaking here. I think I think we we wound up here maybe due to some um some errors and adequacies some what have you. I totally agree it has that feeling of each scene you're in there are suddenly kind of mechanisms in play that you're like, what what what what's this about an amulet? Now, where did that come from? And why are they calling it the Devil's Rain? And I don't know, but it just plows forward relentlessly. So yeah, it has that that dreamlike quality. Uh,

should we do an elevator pitch? Go for it if you can summon one? Okay, okay? For generations, the Preston family has been pursued by an ancient evil in the form of Ernest Borg nine. Finally, the satanic Borg has captured several family members in his grip. Will Borg ninety and wickedness prevail? Or will the Preston's be able to liquefy the hooded minions of Beelzebub? Sounds pretty good? All right, Let's go ahead and listen to the trailer, Audios. It's

a pretty good trailer. There have been films about earthquakes, airplane disasters, and blazing infernos, but there has never been anything like The Devil's Reign. Yes, that wasn't your father? Was his face? Mother? Mark Commas? Damn? They had no faces the Devil's Reign. The three hundred year search for the power to damn mankind is over, and the towering terror of the Devil on Earth is now unleashed. Burn Burn, Burn Burn. The Devil's Reign. Hundreds of souls held captives

in an eternity of hell si possessed by the Devil. You, my son, have defiled all that is holy. Oh my god, Oh my god. They become his worshippers and his two months all right, before we go into the rest of the episode, if you want to watch The Devil's Rain before you listen to us discuss it more, well, you can find it a number of places. Several films put out a great restored blu ray of the movie, and you'll find that wherever you get your films, as loads

of extras on it. This movie is also widely available streaming in nice quality, nice quality, but with questionable metadata. Yeah, all right, let's get into the people who brought this film to us, starting at the top here with the director Robert Fuest, who lived nineteen twenty seven through twenty twelve, British director noted for his stylish seventies approach to genre cinema. In nineteen seventy he had two films out, an adaptation of Worthering Heights with Timothy Dalton in it, and a

thriller called and Soon the Darkness. We previously discussed him as director of nineteen seventy ones The Abominable Doctor Fibes, which was just a delightful horror film with style for Miles. I did not realize this was the same director as Doctor Fibes. But that's interesting because Doctor five again. I mean, I greatly enjoyed the campiness of the Devil's Reign, but Doctor Fibes is leagues ahead in terms of like creativity

and confidence and all that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, But he followed that up with seventy two sequel, Doctor Fibes Rises again in nineteen seventy three is The Final Program, which was based on a Michael moorecock novel and the star John Finch. And then came this film, which critics universally panned, and it may be the reason he mostly did TV after The Devil's Reign, But you know, sometimes it goes that way, all right. The writers on this a mysterious lot,

as if shrouded in cultest hooding. Here we have Gabe Eso writer dates unknown, though I believe he's still alive based on just some some poking around. Screenwriter with limited credits mostly TV, and the most notable credits being for an episode of Star Trek Deep Space nine and three episodes of Policewoman. On Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki and general database. It mentions that he's also a film historian,

and indeed I looked it up. He wrote nineteen sixty eight Tarzan of the Movies, a pictorial history of more than fifty years of Edgar Rice Burrough's legendary hero, as well as some old Hollywood biographies. The other writers are James Ashton, dates unknown. This is their only credit, and Gerald Hoptman also dates unknown. This is also their only credit for writing, but it was also an associate producer on this film and associate producer on nineteen eighty one's

Evil Speak. Okay, but it's time to talk about the cast, because that is one of the real reasons people are going to tune into this movie, apart from the melting that's right and Riya. Starring in this bad Boy is Ernest borg Nine playing Jonathan Corbus. Borg Nine lived nineteen seventeen through twenty twelve. Academy Award winning actor known for such films as nineteen fifty five's Marty, nineteen eighty ones Escape from New York in nineteen seventy two is the

Poseidon Adventure. You might also remember him from nineteen seventy nines The Black Hole or nineteen sixty nins The Wild Bunch. I mean really, he's one of those actors who pops up in every genre, every level of budget. And interestingly enough, he claimed that this movie was financed by the mob and that he was never actually paid WHOA. And I was curious, like this was something he made at a like a panel late in life, So I did look it up and well in interestingly enough, The Devil's Reign

was a Bryanston distributing Company film. This is a company that existed from seventy two through seventy six, which I believe was allegedly connected to the Colombo crime family. Other films include seventy four's Dark Star and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Oh wow, Dark Star, So that's John Carpenter Texas Chainsaw Massacer is who So this is like horror Royalty stems from at least alleged mob financing. I didn't really know

laundering at all. Yeah, maybe somebody who's more informed on the history of organized crime in Cinema can write in with details or a link or something about this, but at any rate, there's no denying borg nine though. Yeah, great great career. Later in life he did a number of voiceover roles as well. He had that with that wonderful, memorable Simpsons guest role where he played a fictionalized version

of himself. This was the Friday the Thirteenth parody. As I recall m Okay, one of the things about Bourg nine is I think a lot of us that came along either later in his career or more familiar with those later day pictures. We often think of him for his post Marty roles as likable every man, or his role as the lead character on the sixties television show like McHale's Navy. We think of him as like kind

of a friendly, weird grandpa. As his villainous turn in this film may feel like an outlier, but you start looking around in his older films, especially his pre Marty stuff, he did play a lot of heavies. So key examples of this are fifty threes from Here to Eternity, where he gets in like a knife fight with Frank Sinatra, and then there's nineteen fifty five Bad Day at Black Rock. But yeah, this is a guy who played a lot

of heavies back in the day. I don't remember exactly what his character does in The Wild Bunch, but basically everybody in the Wild Bunch is bad. But yeah, So nobody's going to accuse The Devil's Reign of being a serious acting showcase. But I think sometimes it takes the context of a fairly bad movie to make you realize the raw charisma of a standout number of the cast. And for me, that's exactly what's going on with Ernest Borgnine. Here. Borg Nine carries this movie on his shoulders. I think

it probably doesn't work at all without him. And even though you know, I'm sure when he did it he saw this film as ephemeral silliness. He does not phone it in. He does not pull a Michael Rennie and assignment terror and phone in a performance. He shows up, and he brings several friends, and they're all his goat familiars. Without Ernest borg Nine, I think The Devil's Reign wouldn't be ten percent as entertaining as it is. Yeah, I agree, he's great in this. I'd read that filmmakers had at

one point some interest in Vincent Price playing this role. Oh, that could have been fun too, But he could have been fun and a Price is great and and would have made this role his own. But borg nine is just an entirely different energy, you know. Yeah, And I don't know, there's something too about And I don't know how much of this is them leaning into it once

they knew borg nine was their guy. But like when we encounter Corbus and like cowboy mode, kind of like mortal mode, before we really know that he's an evil cult leader, you know, like that's there's a there's a physicality there, there's a certain um uh like rugged almost swagger that you're only going to get from somebody like

borg nine. I agree, Actually, I mean I always love Vincent Price, but I think this would be a lesser movie if it were Vincent Price, because it would be more on the nose, and I think Price would have played the role more conventionally evil. Borg Nine's cult leader is very fun to watch because he is so he's just beaming that huge grin and the you know, the twinkle in his eye, and most of the time he's sounding very friendly until he edges over into absolute menace. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Now he does famously turn into a goat man a bit in this film, and I think one of the interesting things about it is it's good looking effects. I don't want to it's not. This is not a situation where oh yeah, he turns into a goat, but it looks crappy. Now it looks really good, but it but it limits his ability to portray this natural level of unhinged.

Cult leader of charisma, Ernest borgnine is biologically a cartoon character, and counterintuitively, by putting him in in devilish he goat makeup, they actually tone down his visual charisma and his his weirdness. Like he looks less exciting and less weird in the goat makeup than he does with his just normal human face. Yeah. Great eyebrows in this picture too, just crazy eyebrows. I love it to a certain extent. Our main hero is

this character Eddie Albert, who plays doctor Sam Richards. He's kind of our I guess he represents fringe science, the enemy of Satanism. I think it's interesting because this guy, like at the very end, he sort of becomes the hero who defeats the cult. But up until the very end, I kept being like, Oh, yeah, this guy, what's his deal? Like he does not read for ninety five percent of

the movie. As the hero. He reads as like, I don't know, he's a side guy who's hanging out with Tom Skarrett and then suddenly he's the guy who beats the bad guys at the end. Yeah yeah, and doesn't seem to really risk much personally himself. Yeah, Like he's not the one whose family is at the center of this.

But anyway. Eddie Albert though Live nineteen oh six or two thousand and five Academy Award nominated actor, best known for such films as fifty three's Roman, Holiday, sixty two Is The Longest Day, seventy two is The Heartbreak Kid, and of course TV's Green Acres, on which he starred. So this is another case of a notable actor who hit He'd only just been nominated for Best Actor in seventy two, and he was in Disney's Escape to Which

Mountain the same year seventy five. So you keep asking yourself with this movie, like, what are all these these these actors doing out in the middle of the Mexican desert filming? This sets satanant cult movie on perhaps mob money, maybe the money was good. I don't know, Yeah, all right. And then another case of this we have Ida Lupino in this playing Emma Preston, the matriarch of the Preston

family that is so cursed in this. She lived nineteen eighteen through nineteen ninety five British American actress, director, writer, and producer. She acted from the early thirties into the late seventies, perhaps most notably in such pictures from the forties as High Sierra, Ladies in Retirement, The Hard Way, and Pillowed to Post. But she's also notable as a

director and writer. I've seen her described as the most prominent female filmmaker of fifties so the fifties Hollywood system, and she was the first woman, apparently to direct a

noir film, nineteen fifty three's The Hitch High. She directed and starred in nineteen fifty ones on Dangerous Ground, and other directorial credits include fifty Threes, The Bigmist, nineteen fifties Outage, and she also directed a lot of TV, including two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, nine episodes of Thriller, and one episode of the original Twilight Zone that episode being

nineteen sixty four's The Masks. So I was very excited about Lupino going into this, but unfortunately I just can't say much about her acting performance because for ninety percent in the movie, she's just a rubber mask. Like, yeah, she's the rubber mask, but that we will talk more about what the cultists look like. But she's the mask with the black eyes in a black hood, just going ah, you know, join us son. But I will say she does a very good job of melting, and if I

remember correctly that she melts multiple times. Yeah, all right. This is also a Shatner movie because William Shatner himself plays Mark Preston born nineteen thirty one. I mean what you can just quickly you say. This is, of course Captain James T. Kirk from the sixties Track series and the various film adaptations of Track. This movie is from the space between the TV show and his return to

the character on screen in seventy nine. His other notable TV series include T. J. Hooker from eighty two to eighty six. Of course we have Tech War, both the novel series that has his name on and end the TV adaptation with the music by warrens Yvon. He have to learn about tech war sooner or later. Yeah, they do. He's also in two very notable Twilight Zone episodes, Nick of Time from nineteen sixty and of course, Nightmare at

twenty thousand Feet from sixty three. Other pure genre film credits for Shatner include The Horror at thirty seven thousand Feet as the TV movie that I know you and I have talked about before and you may have seen in full. Is this the one where he has to go battle an ancient druid curse in part of an airplane, well just part of an airplane? Yes, yes, this is the one. Okay, there's also seventy four's Impulse nineteen sixty six, is Incubus in nineteen eighty two is Visiting Hours? All right?

So William Shatner is one of the most goofed on actors of all time. You know, everybody loves to do gentle ribbing of his line delivery, you know, like making fun of him, but they still like him. I'm gonna in some ways stick up for Shatner as a sometimes genuinely good actor. I think, when paired with good written

material and the right director, he's genuinely very good. So if you go back and watch like the Nicholas Meyers star Trek movies, you know, Wrath of Khan, Voyage Home, Undiscovered Country, I think in those Shatner is actually excellent. But when people do the parody impressions of him affecting strange dramatic pauses and choosing which word of a sentence to emphasize almost at random, you know, you know, all

the weird line reading and stuff. I think, stuff like The Devil's Reign maybe exactly what they have in mind, because he's like that in this movie. Strange pauses and sentences that don't make any dramatic sense, gazing off into the distance, and moments that don't really earn that for any reason, generally odd line readings. So I defend Shatner not just as camp. I think he can sometimes be really great, but this movie is much more of a showcase of his camp side, and in my opinion, his

performance is very funny. Yeah. I'm not a huge Shatner fan, but I would say I will say that I did enjoy him in this. I don't know, I don't know if it's something about him playing kind of a failed hero and kind of a Satanic weasel. You know, there's this outer strength and bluster to the character, but ultimately there's this inner weakness in how in hollowness that ends up kind of devouring him. So I don't know, it felt maybe it just felt enough against type with this

character that I enjoyed him more. Hard to say. I don't know if this makes any sense, but you really it just comes through that he's really enjoying his shirtless torture scenes with the Satanic Cold. He does have a lot of shirtless torture scenes in this, but I feel like any fan of Star Trek should also watch The Devil's Right. You've seen Shatner from both sides now, and so you understand from up and down. All right, let's let's mention some other folks here. Keenan Wynn plays Sheriff Owens.

Not a major character, but he pops up here and there. He's the sheriff. He's the authority figure that ultimately doesn't pull through Live nineteen sixteen through nineteen eighty six American actor with tons of credits across the forty fifty sixty, seventies, and eighties. He voiced Captain Culley in nineteen eighty two Is the Last Unicorn, and he played Colonel bat Guano in nineteen sixty four's Doctor Strange Love, among many other roles. You're gonna have to answer to the Coca Cola company.

Let's see Tom Scarrett. We already mentioned he plays Tom Preston. This is Foot Shatner's brother, right, Yes, I think so that. I don't know if they made that fully clear, but yes, he yeah, yeah, he's the brother. What else could he be? He's he's not William Shatner's father. There is a family photo that I guess kind of establishes things early on. But yes. Scarrett was born nineteen thirty three, TV and

film actor with credits going back to sixty two. But I imagine for many of you, Hey, he's Dallas from nineteen seventy Nine's Alien, He's Viper from nineteen eighty six is Top Gun. He also had roles in ninety sevens contact eighty nine Steel Magnolia's other credits include Harold and Maud, The Dead Zone, Mash Poulter Geys three, and Hey, the

Christopher Lambert Chess movie Night Moves. So Scarrett is in a way the hero of this movie, I would say he's, you know, he's like the other guy there who defeats the cult at the end, alongside Eddie Albert. Nevertheless, I'd say his part does not have much to it. He does what is required of him. He's ruggedly handsome in that seventies way. He throws a good punch. But I think from what I recall, he actually has rather few lines. It seems like he's not a very dialogue oriented character. Yeah,

he's you know, he's more action. He's kind of this rugged Western kind of a hero. I guess it's funny seeing him in a role like this because I know Tom Scarrett actually did a lot. You know, he's a big star in his day. But for some reason, I primarily associate him with Space, because like the main movies I love with him in there are Alien, where he's Dallas who's doomed, and in Contact, where he plays a sort of the bureaucratically entangled scientist who you know, knows

how to play politics, whereas Ellie Airway does not. And I think he's also doomed in Contact. So like he's the guy who goes to die in Space. Yeah, so in a way, it's It's kind of odd that Shatner and Scarrett don't have their roles reversed here, because yeah, interesting, it could be more doomed if he had, if he had to play the other brother all right now playing his character's wife, right, playing Julie Preston. He is the actor Joan Prather Boor nineteen fifty. She was only active

from I think seventy two through eighty nine. In addition to some TV roles, he appeared in the single Girls from seventy four, Big Bad Mama from seventy four, Smile from seventy five, Rabbit Tests from seventy eight, and Take This Job and Shove It from eighty one. Allegedly, she introduced one of her co stars on this picture to scientology, that co star being John Travolta. Okay, so we can

get to John Travolta in the second. But I'm gonna say I don't want to be mean, but Joan Prother feels to me like she is on another planet in the I don't know if her character is. Maybe it makes sense because she's a character who like has psychic visions and esp but she seems like she's in a trance almost the whole time, not very present. Yeah, and then there's this she does have, I think, an effective screen presence of like um of great distress at times,

especially in the final moments of the film. There's a real dark charisma to her that I think works and leaves leaves you on an unsettling note as you leave the theater. Yeah. But okay, So you brought up John Travolta. I knew he was in this movie, and I was looking out for him while I was watching it, and I didn't catch him. I was like, where was John Travolta.

Thinking back on it and and watching some parts the second time, I think maybe he's a guy that he's the guy that Joan Prather and Tom Scarrett fight in the house. Yeah. I think by the time we encounter him, he's already cultified, right, right, So he's got mask face, so he's not as clearly recognizable as as Travolta. Yeah. I think I read that after Travolta rose to fame, they like they cut a scene back in that had had some uncultified John Travolta not to try and capitalize

on it. But that's not present in the cut that we watch. So I can't speak to it, bummer, But yeah, John Travolta playing Danny doesn't even have a last name, Trala. Is it Zuko? No, that's his character from Grease. He's got the same first name though, Danny Zuka. Okay. Anyway, Travolta was born fifty four, and at this point in his career, Yeah, he was super young. He'd done some bit TV roles before, but this was his first film. He'd of course followed this up with some big hits.

He did carry in seventy six Saturday Night Fever and seventy seven Grease and seventy eight Urban Cowboy and eighties Staying Alive in eighty three. Of course, his career took a went on a noticeable slump after this, but then he came back big and ninety four's pull Fiction and was back on top of everything for the rest of the decade. Really, for our purposes, I guess we have to mention ninety seven Face Off being ultimately a pretty weird film, and then of course there's Year two thousand,

magnum Opus Battlefield Earth. I think Face Off is a classic. One thing is people, Okay, so it is an action movie, and I think It is primarily remembered as an action movie with you know, the sort of slow motion gunfight scenes and stuff, but people forget how strange the science fiction premise of that movie is. There's like a prison at the bottom of the ocean, and there's face transplants and all that. It's like a profoundly odd film Battlefield Earth.

I don't know what you can even say about that. You've got to get some man animals in here to fix this. All right, Let's see who else do we need to talk about here? Um, we have a character named John that shows up. He's like the dottering old old man that just talks about it. It came here and they didn't have faces and melting yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, a fun roll character like this in a cult supernatural film. But this is played by Woodrow Chamblis, who lived nineteen

fourteen from nineteen eighty one. Mostly a TV actor, but he was also in the nineteen seventy desert horror film Gargoyles from seventy two. You know, I haven't seen it, but I've been interested in checking out Gargoyles for Weirdhouse. So it's a nineteen seventy two made for TV. Monster movie with creature effects by Stan Winston starring Bernie Casey. Yeah, it's I haven't seen it forever. It's a film that when I see a clip from it, I don't know.

I think it's a film that I caught on Sci Fi or maybe A and E God help us back in the day. That it's a film that if I see a clip from it, it makes me feel like I'm watching TV indoors on a nice Sunday afternoon and I should really be outdoors. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, but yeah, maybe it requires some revisiting. I recall some fabulous full body guar will shots suits

that are shot just in like full light. Sorry, I was looking up because I was trying to remember who else was the actor I knew who was in it. Scott Glenn is also something. As I said, I haven't seen it, but yeah, Bernie Casey plays a gargoyle apparently, and Scott Glenn's in there somewhere all right. Speaking of in there somewhere, we also have Claudio Brook in this

picture playing a preacher. He's essentially a witch hunting preacher who burns the Satanist three hundred years ago in a flashback. That's right, a stern witch finder we can all look up to, except he betrays our our main character's ancestors. They're like, hey, if we bring you the Satanic cult, you'll spare us, right, And he's like sure, and then they do. He goes back on his word. He's like, well, I'll spare you as far as like you can go

to heaven, but I still have to burn your bodies. Yeah, your bodies did a lot of bad things, like wearing those shorts, so you're you're going up in flames exactly. So you never never trust a guy who has a Heinrich Kramer test too. Claudio Brook, who I think I've mentioned, even though we haven't talked about a Claudio Brook film before. Fantastic Mexican actor with varied credits extended back through the

mid nineteen fifties. His credits range from art films and serious dramas to El Santo pictures and bizarre horror films. You know, we'll come back to him again some day he would. After this, though, he would go on to star in the notable Mexican satanic film Alucarda from nineteen seventy seven, Dracula backwards. Yeah, oh well, maybe it is a Dracula. Yeah, this is not the only film that

has used Alucard as Dracula spelled backwards. In fact, wasn't the undercover vampire in the flashback in Santo in the Treasure of Dracula called Count Alucard? Am I wrong about that? Yeah? I believe you're right on this. Now. I haven't seen Alucarda yet. It's on my list because it's it's held up. It's supposed to be a very good possession film. I don't think it actually has anything to do with with vampires, so I don't know more of a satanic movie than

it is a vamp movie. So one thing I read about this movie I think this might have even been on this Wikipedia page, is that some writers somewhere pointed out that this is really a cult movie because it's about a cult. It's a cult movie in the colloquial sense, you know, it has a you know, sort of ironic following, but also involved an actual cult leader. I don't I don't know if that's a correct way to categorize what Anton LaVey was. But Anton LaVey was involved in making

this movie. Yes, he has a credit as playing a high priest. You see him in a golden goat helmet, and then he was also a technical advisor to like tell them how Satanic magic actually works. Yes, this is the way made up Satanic magic works. Allow me to show you so. Anton LaVey lived nineteen thirty through nineteen ninety seven. He was the then High Priest of the Church of Satan and then an also author of the

Satanic Bible and some other books. I'd say, you know, an interesting cultural figure, a born showman with a knack of keyboards. I suppose we're yeah to infer that he advised the director on some of the finer points of fake Satan worship in this and I believes his wife at the time is also in the picture in the

background as part of the main Satanic sequences. He was also an advisor on nineteen seventy four's Lucifer's Women, nineteen seventy seven's The Car, in which James Brolin battles the Satanic Car, nineteen eighty three's Doctor Dracula with John Carradine, and nineteen eighty nine's Charles Manson Superstar. Apparently he had no involvement with nineteen sixty eight Rosemary's Baby, despite rumors to the country. You know, I don't know much about

Anton LaVey, but I maybe I'm wrong. I thought his version of Satanism was not one that like believed in in actual like the magical, like a sea of rituals or anything. So I'm a little confused about what the technical advising role would be here. Yeah, I don't. I don't think this film is a really an accurate depiction of Lavayan Satanism or anything. But you know, maybe it was just more a situation where he's like, Hey, I

hear you're making a Satanist movie. Don't you think you should hire somebody like me to hang out on set and advise you on a couple of things. I can loan you some costumes. Yeah, yeah, maybe it's as simple as that. I've got all these ropes, all right, But this is a melt movie, and you can't talk about a melt movie without talking a little bit about the special makeup effects. And that's where Ellis Burman Junior aka Sonny Burman comes into play here. He lived nineteen thirty

five through twenty twenty. Again, this movie is all about wax based Satanists spurting wax and melting in big puddles of wax, and the lead on all of this was Ellis Burman Junior. I've read that they were having to basically invent ways to do all these effects on the fly, but they also had days upon day is to produce them, which is why I guess we have so much compelling footage of people melting, and yeah, the end results are

pretty mesmerizing. Burman's previous work included nineteen seventies Beneath the Planet of the Apes, in nineteen seventy two Scargoyles, okay, and and I do have to trust that. I think it's my understanding that the work of people like Burman aren't necessarily completely reflected in like IMDb credits. A lot of times they're on crews for stuff and they're just

not they're not credited for what they did. But he definitely followed this up with work on nineteen seventy six Is The Man Who Fell to Earth and Return of a Man called Horse, seventy seven's Empire of the Ants and Close Encounters of the Third Kind seventy eights, Matilda, which is a boxing kangaroo movie starring Elliott Gould. Last time I checked, you could stream that via the Criterion Channel. Wait, I just really Empire of the Ants. That's Burt Eye Gordon. Yeah, yeah,

so we got a mister big connection here. Seven nine, Prophecy, The Bear Movie eighty three, Space Hunter eighty four star Man. He did the He was involved in the sloth makeup for nineteen eighty five's The Goonies, and he also worked on nineteen eighty five's Howling Too and Oh and then as far as Trek goes, he worked on Star Trek's five, First Contact Insurrection, fifty episodes of Deep Space nine, Voyager, Enterprise, and Nemesis A Star Trek five. That's all you need

to know. According to its not fair. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I didn't mean that. Ellis Burman Junior, which one's five again? Five is the really bad one, the one where like they meet what is I think they meet Spok's half brother and he's like and he's like, you know, Spok is all logic and his half brother is all emotion, and he's this like empathic cult leader essentially who who you know, gets people to connect to

their pain. And he's like give me your pain, and Shatner has a great monologue and it's not actually great, where he's like, by need my pain, I won't give you my pain. Our pain makes us who we are. And then at the end they go to a place in the middle of the galaxy where God lives essentially, but then it's not really God. It's like the Wizard of Oz and it's revealed to just be some kind of alien. They blast him. Yeah, all right, okay, one that one does ring a bell. Now, it's not good.

It's widely considered one of the worst Star Trek movies. But like you said, we can't we can't blame Berman for this. According to his obit, his company Cosmic Kinetics, also was involved in building the Terminator robot for the Terminator and the creation of alf all right. And then finally, the music credit here goes to al de Lori, who lived nineteen thirty through twenty twelve. I thought the music

in this film was quite effective. Kind of a general ambiance of weird, unsettling instrumental drift and occasional cacophony that's kind of fitting for that nineteen seventies nigh gallery vibe m Albalai was a sessions keyboardist who worked mostly in pop, surf, rock,

and country. He was also a Grammy Award winning producer who produced a number of non satanic hits for Glenn Campbell in the nineteen sixties, including Gentle on My Mind, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Wichita, Lineman, and Galveston. He was a sessions musician on The Beach Boys Pet Sounds in sixty six. Yeah, and then he also did this score. He has I think eleven composition credits on IMDb.

But this is really the only film that stands out certainly to me, And as far as I know, this soundtrack has never been released as a as an album in any format. Hey, some boutique reissuer put it put this out on vinyl. Oh yeah, I mean the melty effects in this film. There's so many great directions you could go with that vinyl. Yeah, all right, we ready

you talk about the plot. Let's do it so it begins with a bunch of you know, infernal whaling that it kind of sounds like the Siberian Well to Hell hoax tape. I think I've made that comparison on this show before. About as general audio montages of whaling. But then we fade to bosh and we start seeing scenes from the triptych of the Last Judgment, so, you know, a little hellish vignettes. There's a general survey of unpleasant

imagery from paintings. You get birdmen with black eyes and cauldrons for helmets eating naked sinners along with you know more. You know now, that's what I call moaning and lamentations and people screaming let me out of here, and so forth. And then the actual action opens with an image of

a crucifix. There's a painted wooden Christ hanging from the cross, and the shadow of a human hand cast across the figure, and then the sound of a rolling storm in the background, with rain and heavy thunder, and we reveal a woman looking nervously out of window into the night as the rain pours down. And this is Missus Preston, played by Ida Lupino. She clearly has tattered nerves. She's something is worrying her greatly, and a man named John brings her

some tea, but she spills it. She's she's so frazzled John, Did you take John here to be like their butler? Sort of he wasn't dressed like a butler, and a Victorian said, I don't know what he was. He just brought them tea. Yeah, this is the old man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. Um yeah, because he's not her husband, because we're about to meet him. So yeah, he's just kind of I don't know if he's supposed to be an uncle or what. Oh maybe he's an uncle. Yeah, Okay,

I don't know he's I don't know. He's some guy. They just call him John. Finally, somebody arrives at the door and it is Ida Lupino's son Mark, played by none other than William Shatner. So he comes in from out of the rain. As we alluded to earlier, this movie really throws you right into the middle of the

action with no explanation. And I could explain with hindsight of having seen the rest of the movie what happens in this scene, but I think if I did, it would not really capture the level of randomness and confusion you feel as a first time viewer. So I kind of want to do a little beat by beat here, all right, So Shatner comes in the door, Missus Preston greets him with relief, she calls him Mark. She says well, Mark says, no sign of him, odd inflection, like was

their sign of somebody else or the truck. Shatner says, I got as far as Simpson's bridge, or what's left of it. The river's about swept it away, and missus Preston says he couldn't have just disappeared. He couldn't, and Shatner says he probably pulled off someplace to wade out the storm. And Shatner lifts the telephone from the hook and he says, gazing off into the distance ponderously and with surprise, it's still dead. Missus Preston says, I know.

Shatner says the winds knocked the lines down, and missus Preston says, I don't think so, and they start to argue. So Mark says it's just the storm, and she insists, no, it's my dream night after night. It always starts the same way. It starts with a storm and then your father. But Mark cuts her off. He doesn't want to hear this, He's heard it a thousand times. He insists that father is all right. He says, there's you know, there's no

way he got turned into a weird makeup effect. And then the dog starts barking outside, so they go outside. John says someone's here, and they all go to look, and then a guy staggers in through the rain, his shirts torn open with frankly hilarious makeup. His eyes have been like the area around his eyes has been replaced with a rubber mask that has sort of blended in to his skin, with makeup around that, and his eyes are hollow, like there are not eyeballs in them. There's

like sort of black cloth behind his eyelids. I think when I first saw this, it seemed like we were supposed to understand that he had been tortured or mutilated or something. But looking back on it now, I think maybe it's just that he has been mask faced by the coult. Yeah. I have to say I like the the the effect they did with their like weird waxy faces and no eyes, with this kind of like red

swelling around where the eyes used to be. Um. I mean, it's an obvious makeup effect, but it also it made me think about how well nowadays and certainly for decades now, the go to for this effect. He has put some black contacts in those eyeballs, right, and uh, and you know that can look really good, but it's also been so done to death, like it's it's done in so many movies of varying budgets. It's done by just teenagers at the mall, so it's it's it's kind of lost

a lot of its impact. So it's kind of neat to see something that goes in a different direction. I guess before those contacts were available. I'll take that. I'll take that, okay, So uh, Shatner says, Dad, and miss Preston says Steve, and the guy staggering in says the book Corbus, and missus Preston says, oh God help us,

and Mark says where is Corbus? And boy, I hope you like the word Corbus, because you're going to hear people say it about six thousand times, and especially Shatner will just punctuate every line he says with Corbus, and especially since it's one of those it's like a kind of a funny sounding name. It doesn't necessarily it might be a real name, but it doesn't sound like a

real name. It sounds like the kind of name people make up for for a fictional story without checking to see if anybody's actually named that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, or something made up on the fly, and the Dungeons and Dragon session like maybe they originally named this character Corbus. And then they're like, I don't know, it sounds too too bird like and he's a goat. Yeah, now that I say, I'm sure Corpus is a real name. I don't know. It just it just doesn't have that feeling.

But okay, so you know where is Corbus? So very very dramatic inquiry by William Shatner here and Steve the mask faced man says the desert redstone. He's waiting for the book. Give Corbus what belongs to him, and then he collapses on the ground and starts to melt, and Missus Preston says, don't go near him, don't touch him. But he's like, I don't even know how to describe this. He looks like he's covered in melting wax crayon tumors. Yeah, I mean it's gross and and it's certainly surreal, but

also feels it doesn't it doesn't. Yeah, like you say, it's not. They're not going for a realistic biological melting here, this is something else going on, and so it hits all the right notes. It doesn't. It's not one of the things where you watch it and you're like, ah, this is this is fake. I mean, you know it's not real. It's easy to suspend disbelief, but it's it's very gross. There's a strong element of body hartor here. So the melting Steve starts talking in Latin and Miss

Preston repeats him. He's saying in nominee satanis in the name of Satan. That wasn't your father And they argue about this shatters like it was his face. It was his clothes, but was it his face. We'll never find out. We never will find out, that's right. So Miss Preston says, the book, the book, don't you see my dream? It

was a warning they found us. So again, this is the kind of like thrown into the middle of equality that makes me think this is like an anthology TV episode, you know, it's like the cold open on Ones, the teaser to be like, what is going on and hopefully it will be explained later, Yeah, but it won't, not

to any compartially. It will be partially explained. Yeah, so everybody goes inside, We're treated to a long shot of the rain splattering upon the puddle of green and blue goop that was once Steve Eve and man, they are really banking on you enjoying looking at this. Because I went back and timed it. The shot of the goop is seventeen seconds long. Yeah, they really milk there with their wax goop shots in this picture. I think Fulchi would would approved. I think he would. He would say,

good notes on this. You should definitely let the camera linger over the gross things. Oh yes, the fulchy ethos is oh, oh is this? Is this a part of the body that's usually on the inside, but now it's on the outside. Let's get a look at that. Okay, So inside they arguing. The confusing arguing continues again. The viewer is like, has no idea, what's going on? Miss Preston says Corbus, has your father? I tell you it

wasn't him, Mark, it wasn't him. And so the melting man had said Corbus was in Redstone, and they explained this is the old mining town, a god forsaken place. And then missus Preston pries up a loose brick from the floor and reveals a secret compartment from which she removes an old book, and then she gives it to Shatner. She begs him to take the book to Corbus, and Shatner refuses. He says, I won't give the Devil's man what he wants. And so they're, you know, they're like, well,

we gotta be we gotta do something. So Mark Shatner, Mark the character, goes in. He gets a pistol out of a drawer, and he says, I'll fight him on my terms, not his. And then missus Preston says, she like pulls out something. We can't even really see what it is. It's sort of offscreen, but she's like holding something in her hands, and she says, Corbus can't harm you as long as you wear this amulet. What sounds good though, he's being he's going on a quest, all right. Yes,

he has a gun. He needs a magical item as well. Magical item, so she gives him an amulet. No explanation of the amulet. Then somebody arrives in a truck outside. Mark goes out to meet him, wearing a rain jacket and a cowboy hat. So there's a shatterer in a cowboy hat, and who is this supposed to be? I think maybe it's supposed to be the father. But Mark goes, he gets out to the truck and then he finds a doll pinned to the steering wheels. So there's nobody

in the truck. It's just a creepy doll. Yeah, And then there's like a scream from inside. Right. This is one of the at least a couple of moments in the film where unseen cultists are just totally rolling high with their dexterity checks, with their stealth checks, because they can just move around unseen. They're like the Dwarfs and Phantasm. Yes, by the time you know they were there, they've already

like blown up a car or something exactly right. So he hears commotion back at the house and he runs back in. He finds John hanging upside down from the ceiling. He's not dead, he's still like he cuts him down, but he's somehow they got him hanging upside down from the ceiling. The house is fully ransacked, his mother is missing. All in a matter of what seemed like about fifteen seconds, Like we looked at the goop in the rain longer

than Chatner was outside, that's true. But the old man John, he's he's sitting there recovering from his experience, and he says they had no faces, no faces. And then I think, I think what Shatner's character goes and make sure the book is still in the in its hiding place, and yes, basically, it's like, all right, I'm going to continue my next

phase of the quest. That's right. So he goes on the hunt for Corbus and we are treated here to a good amount of padding scenes of him driving around in the desert, standing next to the car and stuff, and eventually he arrives at Redstone. This is a desert ghost town with with an eerie New England style church building.

It's all boarded up from the outside. And Mark drives up and he is greeted in the middle of the town by a laconical cowboy played by Ernest Borgnine, and there's there's initially almost a kind of um, you know, gospel story kind of miracle at the water pump. So Shatner is trying to work the water pumped it because he's thirsty, I guess, and nothing comes out with dust and then Ernest Borgnine walks over and he's like, hey there,

and he pumps the pump and it just gushes with water. Oh, and then Shatner tastes the water, but he says it's bitter and he spits it out. And then I wonder if what you made of this? So he says it's bitter, he spits it out. Then Borgnine says sweet way to endo thirst though, isn't it? And I didn't understand what this meant, Like was he saying I don't know the water was bitter because it was poison and Borgnine is

praising the exquisite embrace of death. I just kind of chalked it up to being like cowboy nothing dialogue, you know that, it's just like, oh you're thirsty, cowboy, here you go. Yeah, because the poison, that interpretation doesn't make sense because next Chatterer does drink it. Now. I wasn't sure if at this point Schattner's character knows who Corbus is or knows that this is Corbus, like it was. I found like this was a little bit vague, because

that's the thing. This is our evil cult leader and his most human cowboy form. Yeah, so he I think he does he knows there is a Corbus, but he doesn't realize this is Corbus. He's like, I will speak only to Corbus, and then Corbus says, I am Corpus, speak to me, and he gets right down to business. So Shatner wants his family back. He's like, give me my mother and father, and borg nine says, did you bring the book? And Shatner says, I'm not afraid of you. Corbus.

Corbus and mister you know, Corbus says, mister Preston, I'd be very disappointed if you were. So they start kind of posturing at each other, you know. Shatner is like, you're evil and Corbus is like, let me show you what I've put my faith in. And there's a great moment like Shatner angles toward the camera and points his finger out. He's pointing straight into the camera and he says Corbus. He says, I'll face whatever you have behind those doors, and I guess he's talking about the church,

he says, and I'll come out exactly as I went in. So, you know, after this kind of posturing, they eventually agree on a trial, a test, a challenge. Mark will go inside Corbus's boarded up church and face whatever's in there, and it'll be a test of faith, Corbus's faith against a Marks, which I suppose is mainline Christianity. And if Mark prevails, Corbus will release his mother and father. If Corbus prevails, Mark will bring him the book. We don't again,

we don't know what this book is. It's just a book. Now. Obviously it is really early in the picture. To just go all in on a bat against the chief antagonist does not bode well from Mark here where he's just like, all right, let's do it, let's go week. I think we can end this picture in the first half hour. I'm putting my soul and everything on the line. Give me, give me your worst board nine. You can imagine that the next forty five minutes are eating up with shots

of them walking to the church. But anyway, so they go into the church, Okay, let's describe it. So it is a Satanic church. Is pew is full of figures in black hoods and robes and kind of an omega man ash. I don't know which movie came out first, but there are red and purple curtains, candles, a stone altar topped with an inverted cross and draped with cloth that says Reggie Satanas and it's got a big pentacle.

The vibe is very incense books just weird, absolutely, but also there is there are illustrations, so like there is a big stained glass window, which okay, so this is a Satanic church with a stained glass window. They actually commissioned that. I'm gonna say the stained glass goat head needs some work. It does not look very scary. It looks like a sports mascot, like it could be the Chicago Bulls logo. It does. It does look a little sports mascotti, a little superhero ish and I don't know

if the it's it's white too. Yeah, I'm not sure if that has that's maybe due to the like Lavayan Satanism influence like this, you know, sort of this idea of Satan Lucifer the light Bringer or something or if. I don't know, it's just some sort of quirk at design, but it stands out in a way that's maybe not completely great. But but I mean, the rest of the set looks really good though. I think it's a nice dark, atmospheric Satanic chapel, like if you were part of a

Satanic couple looking to get married. This is a proper venue. I'd say, go for it, I guess. So, yeah, yeah, we commit ourselves to evil anew every day. And so oh they've even got a Satanic organ. I thought that was funny with the pipes and the nice Yeah. So Shatner goes in. You know, he's still got his magic amulet and his guns, so I think he's feeling confident. And Ernest borgnine comes out. He's changed out of his

cowboy outfit into a cribson robe majestic Satanic regalia. And you know, a long story short, they both start praying for Nine is praying to Satan, Shatner is praying to Jesus. And eventually, you know that it kind of like it comes to a to a peak, and Shatner gets freaked out because he sees his mother among the Devil's congregation and she has the mask face with the with the black eyes, and you know, she she's telling, you know, it's very joy in us. She says, you will know

the peace of mind that I have found. And Shatner gets scared and he starts blasting with his gun. He shoots a cultist and multicolored goop comes out of him. It's like pink and Green Goop, and borg nine has a very actually great moment again, Ernest Borgnine is just, you know, in a class above what this movie is. He has a great moment where he sort of scoffs at Shatner shooting the gun. He says, is that your faith?

And Shatner runs outside. He still thinks the magical amulet will protect him, so he's holding it up and he says, I'm still free. Corbus Corbus and borg nine He's even got away around this. Bourg Nine makes him hallucinate that the amulet is actually a snake wrapped around his neck, so Shatner willingly takes it off and throws it to the ground. Whoops. Yeah, and then just he sends in the cultists to grab him and hold him down. Yeah, he says, soon the family name of Preston will be

no more. And then from here we cut to a different movie. Now we're in Scanners, though to be fair, this was before Scanners. Yeah, we have to go to the occult research facility at the nearest University I believe. Yeah, I don't know where this what university is supposed to be, but yeah, it's like an academic medical setting. And we see Joan Prather lying on a table and they say that she is consciously controlling the rate of her heartbeat. So I guess we should describe the new characters we

meet in the scene. We meet Eddie Albert as doctor Sam Richards, we meet Tom Skarrett as doctor Tom Preston, and Joan Prather as Julie Preston. So they're like in a university auditorium. They're doing a demonstration of Julie's psychic powers, and there is a wonderful nonsense exchange. So the professor, Eddie Albert says, there is nothing subconscious that cannot be raised to the conscious level, and then a student goes, what about parapsychology telepathy. Professor says, yes, I include that

extrasensory perception. And the student says, doctor Preston, isn't there a danger that these experiments could interfere with normal brain activity? And Tom Scritt says, no, no, no, We've studied many cases like this. There's no reason for concern. If there were,

believe me, my wife would not be involved. So doctor Richard says, you know, you said, yeah, there's no danger, only discovery, and that they are finally on the verge of discovering quote the brain wave pattern that signifies esp activity, and so Julie's I don't know, she's controlling her heartbeat and stuff. And she starts reporting her experience. She says, it starts with a feeling of absolute calm, as if

I were drifting into a perfect sleep. It sounds like she's kind of describing like a self hypnosis or something. And she goes on and mentions a few more things, and then eventually she starts seeing things. She says, a funny change takes place. There are images and sounds, and she sees the Chicago Bulls logo. You know it's it's

the goat face on the stained glass. And then she sees shirtless William Shatner being tortured, and she sees people in robes with torches, and she sees Ernest borgnine in goat makeup, and she sees herself trapped behind glass being rained on, and she suddenly screams. She screams Tom, and then Tom Scarrett runs up to her and he says, Julie, something's happened to my family. I didn't understand this at all, Like, how does he know she's the one who's psychic and

she hasn't told him yet. Yeah, this whole sequence is spawn because it's yeah, it's like, what's going on with her? How does he know it? The whole exchange that seems like she just has a general case of the paranormals and uh, and now she has been awakened some sort of insight into what's going on with the colt certainly access to scenes from the film that we haven't we haven't witnessed yet. Uh So now we have new characters in on the hunt. So we cut to the desert. Tom, Julie,

and doctor Richards all go out to the desert to investigate. First, there is a scene with the sheriff played by bat Guano played by by Keenan Wynn, and uh, the Sheriff's basically like, sorry, I can't help you. There's been a storm and we're still rescuing hundreds of people and uh, your you know, your folks were probably just killed in the storm. There's no chance they were turned into wax by an evil culd. So the police are not helping,

you know. The Preston's are on their They check at the house to hear the story of what happened from the old Man John. He describes the encounter from earlier, and then they find one clue on the ground. There is hardened wax out on the sidewalk. Yeah. Yeah, they just keep picking at it. Yeah, it's like, you don't know what that dripped from. Don't get your hands all over that. That's true. Yeah, So they go to Redstone. Oh, meanwhile, there is a There are scenes where William Shatner is

being like sexy tortured by Ernest Borgnine. So he is shirtless and wrapped up in chains and borg Nine's taunting him, saying, tell me where the book is. You gambled and you lost, Give me the book. And then borg nine brings him, Oh, a vision of Lilith, the Queen of Delights, who's just like a lady, who comes and kisses William Shatner and then he's like, oh ha, it was actually your mother

and she still doesn't have eyes. Tom Scarrett and Julie arrive in Redstone and they're looking around checking everything out. Seems deserted. They don't run into anybody at first. They go and investigate the Devil's Chapel and look all around in there, and then Finally, when they're back outside, they get attacked by a cult member in a speeding car, and there's a big chase and they run into a building and they fight and wrestle. I think this is

John Travolta. Maybe, yeah, I think this is elis John Travolta that they encounter. So they beat up John Travolta, tie him up, and then then like Julie looks into his non eyes and this unlocks a long flashback. Yeah, this takes us back three hundred years and gives us the origin story of all this culting nonsense that's going on.

So the short version is that Ernest borg nine Corbus once ran a Satanic cult in colonial New England, and one of his cult members betrayed him and stole a book in which they all wrote down the names of those who had pledged their souls to Satan, and Corbus wants the book back. He and there the sequence. There are a lot of very funny I don't know what felt like overuse of these, and thou was I'm not an expert on archaic grammars, so maybe they were being

used correctly, but it felt weird. So borg nine is walking around this room full of people kind of cowering in fear, and he says, didst one of the fall from the favor of Lucifer. Yeah, so I get my loose understanding of all this is that he's the devil's man. He's maybe not even human. He brings satanic cultism to these various pilgrim folks. They get to enjoy the pleasures of the flash and so forth, and then he's like, Okay, now I'm going to take you to the Hell as

per our original arrangement. And then at least some of the cult members were like, it would really be great to not do that. We'd rather not go to the hell. So why don't we just steal that book that he wrote our names in and then we can get buy in a technicality, Right then he won't remember which of us got the pleasures of the flesh, I guess, so he'll he just like can't recall who it was who wore shorts, or maybe he needs to produce documentary evidence too,

Satan in order to fulfill this end of the bargain. Like, you know, if you can't produce a copy of the contract, it might as well not exist. Yeah, and a lot lawful evil. Oh, and one of these, one of these ancient colonial times guys is William Shatner, And I guess this is h was Shatner. Martin Fife, the guy who

borgnine keeps saying this name without explaining what it means. Yeah, Like, I guess it's one of these things where everyone we see here that's not Ernest borgnine, like their descendants, just happen to look like them, as this sometimes the case with movies and certainly with damned Bloodlines and so forth.

And of course, as far as Williams, I mean, as far as Ernest Borgnine's Corbus is concerned, he's not really a human entity anyway, so he can come back later and look just like himself, no problem, right, So they eventually revealed that I think it was. It was Aaronnessa, the wife of Martin Fife played by Shatner. She is the one who stole the book, and she has brought an angry pitchfork mob led by the Reverend Claudio Brook Yes,

and they capture all the Satanists and burn them. And so they're they're burning Ernest bourg nine and he, oh, he's great in the scene, he's like on the stake laughing. He says, think ye, to destroy something stronger than life. Oh, and there is a moment where, unless I heard this wrong, I think Claudio Brooks says um. He says, you are condemned because of your hinneous crimes that you committed. But anyway, so oh oh this is also Martin Fife and Aranessa

are betrayed by Claudio Brooks. So I think she had made a deal with him. She's like, hey, you know, I reveal the existence of the Satanic cult. I tell you who they are and where to find him. Uh and I and I hand over the book or I don't know, I take away the book. I don't know if she gave him the book but to reveal the cult and that her husband would be spared. And nope, Claudio brook goes back on his word. He's like, you're

all gonna burn. Sorry, But I think Corbus sent a kid off through a secret passage way with the book or something. The book gets away and of course and becomes this whole plotline. Why did the Preston's have the book? I forget how did they end up with the book? Why doesn't Corbus have it? I think it's like the family secret, like, hey, guess what, our entire family line, our entire bloodline going back three hundred years, is actually damned. But as long as the forces of Satan don't get

this book, then it's like we're not damned. So just make sure that nobody comes walking asking around for the book. Better put it beneath the floorboards. But physically, how did the Preston family end up with it? I think they do, maybe say in the movie, but I forgot what. I don't understand how that happened. I do not know. Okay, all right, so they've got the book for some and Corbus has wanted it back for hundreds of years. Finally he's got them, and he is going to sexy torture

William Shatner until he gives him the book. And back in the present, so you know they've seen all this. So Tom Skirrett sends Julie off to h I don't know what, get the sheriff or something, and Tom goes back. So he's watching the procession of Satan's minions. They're like walking through the hills carrying torches. And now does he sneak in yet or is that later? No, this is where he sneaks in. He because, as we all know, to infiltrate any kind of cultic activity, all you need

to do is put a robe on and nobody will notice. Right, he sneaks They don't notice that he still has eyeballs. Yeah, he kind of sneaks in with them to witness the Black Mass. And this is where we see Ernest borgnine in goat makeup. So he's got shaggy hair now and a billy goat beard and big old rams horns. Uh. I guess I don't know if they're rams horns, goat horns whatever, you know, horns and uh. And I don't know. Comments on good form, oh, just that you know it's

it's a good look. I like the makeup effects, but you're just you're inhibiting Ernest borgnine's acting ability by covering up that expressive face of his even a little bit. Well, they bring out shirtless Shatner and he is transformed into another mask face. They give him the black cloth eyes, and so yeah, he's one of them now against his will. And I think we see Anton Lavay in the background

in the scene. He's wearing like a gold helmet that actually looks a lot like the motorcycle helmets in Psychomania. It is reminiscent of that. We should also mention when we start seeing them the hat the eyeless Shatner here. This of course will remind some folks of the mask from Halloween, and at least there I don't think it's

hard to really figure this out. I don't think ultimately that people making a case that that cast originates from this film, but I think that has been claimed in the past, So I'm not exactly sure what picture the Shatner cast comes from that ultimately becomes the Michael Myers mask, but at least some folks have pointed to this film as a possible origin point. Certainly, when you see Elis William Shatner his face turned into a flesh mask, it does bring to mind Michael Myers a little bit. That's

a really good point, and I can see it there. Yeah. Anyway, for some reason, Tom Scarrett gets caught, maybe he sees his mother or something, but the big fight breaks out, he kind of has to blast his way out of there. He runs off and escapes. Meanwhile, Julie is captured by the cultists, and so the final act is the showdown. Tom goes back and meets with doctor Richards and they

try to figure out what's going on. They've got the book now, and they're like looking, they're like reading the book and trying to figure out the lore, and they read things like I condemn thy soul to the Devil's reign. What is the devil's reign? Don't know yet? Yeah, and we might never know. We get some we get some additional evidence, but the jury is still out right. Well, okay,

so let's get to the part with this. So they go back to the town and they go to the chapel Julie is being inducted into the cult out in the wilderness. They go into the chapel while it's empty, they find like a like a man hole to Hell in the chapel. Is that how you understood it? Yeah? Yeah, Basically they this is time Scarrets of Character has been here before and just like they didn't search anything at all. I guess this time they do uncover this weird well

that I yeah, maybe goes to Hell, who knows. But in it it has this bizarre artifact that I guess looks like a ah, what is this like a large vase with a golden goat head on it. It's like an orb that contains a television and the show. There's like an oval screen that is showing you a TV show, and what's on the show is a bunch of people standing in the rain and screaming and saying let me out. And then on top of the TV, the orb shaped TV, there is a golden goat head. And then they refer

to this the object as the Devil's rain. I'm guessing the best I can do is that if you become a Satanic cultist serving Corbus, your body becomes a wax body because your soul has left your real body and your soul is now in some sort of a rainy nether realm that is contained within this artifact, and it has a screen so people can like watch what's happening in that, so you can count and keep track of

the souls that are inside it. I guess, yeah, okay, okay, So here's the yeah, the big showdown, so they find this. I think doctor Richards runs off with this artifact. I don't remember what he's planning to do with it, but there's a showdown in the church where Tom Scarrett confronts them and they're trying to rescue Julie, and there's a big fight, and in the end, the guy who saves the day is doctor Richards, the pseudoscientist here comes out and he's like, he's like, I've got the Devil's Rain

and I defeat you, and he smashes it. Oh no, no, that's not how it goes down, okay, because he has it and he's like, I'll smash it. And then Carves is like, get that from this old fool, and so they grab it from him. The Shatner's character grabs it. That's right, that's right. But then the doc says, he's like, what Shatner's character's name. Mark. He's like, Mark, you don't have to do this, Mark, you can end all this suffering. And somehow he gets through to the possessed Shatner and

he smashes it. And then that does I'm not exactly sure what. It releases their souls from the Devil's Rain the object and makes them susceptible to melting in the rain because it then starts to actually rain from the sky. And here we get to the most famous scene in the movie, the Great Melting, the final melt down. I think we need to do a whole little subsection here

devoted to the final meltdown. So the cultists, it starts to rain when that happens, and the cultists all melt, and they melt and melt and melt and melt and melt and melt. And my memory from the last time I saw I saw this movie hold so strong and the melting is interminable in a way that took me through a whole series of reactions that went on. At first, I was like, ah, this is weird, and I was greatly enjoying it. Then I started to get bored, Then

I started to get annoyed. Then I came full circle and became just just in filled with respect and admiration for the relentlessness of the great melt. Yeah. I remember basically how everything goes down pacing wise, So I knew that once people started melting, this is what the film was now, Yeah, and that I should just roll with

it and find enjoyment in it. And you know, to enjoy the various details of um, you know, of robed cultists melting out of their eyeballs, falling and then melting, more of of of goat headed corbus melting as he struggles with somebody there on the altarpiece. Yeah, there's Yeah, it's just melt. A melting masterpiece. If you like people melting in the multicolored goo, no other film will do it for you like this. Oh, and then there's there's sort of a stinger, right, so we think all the

cultists melt, including Ernest borgnine. He melts. He kind of like retains his form somewhat as he melts, so he didn't just turn into goo. He like his face becomes huge and kind of stretches and stuff. Yeah, bulging eye looks very gross. And then kind of like topples over into the hell well and flames shoot up. So we're not we're sort of we think, Okay, I guess he's out of it. I think he's defeated. Oh, but then

we see like a hand come back up. But then the church explodes, so maybe he is defeated after all. But then we at the end, Julie and Tom are hugging and it's like, oh, we've made it through. But then it's like revealed that maybe this is a glamor and in fact Julie is Ernest borg nine. Yeah, we

get that. This scene where it's it's Ernest borg nine that is hugging Tom Scarrett's character, and he gives us this evil grin, and then we cut to that screen on the Devil's reigin that object, that urn or whatever it is, and who's trapped in there in the rain realm?

Who's screaming? But Julie and is the credits roll. She like keeps screaming, and then there's this like really haunting moment where she stops and she's just kind of like staring out through the screen at us the viewer, and uh, yeah, it's a it's a creepy moment. Okay, do we need to do a dump of lore related questions here because we still don't know exactly what is the deal with the Devil's Reigin. Oh there's so many questions. I mean, yeah,

what what's with the Why does your body become wax? Yeah, we do see some sort of like burning of wax affig, so I guess there's some sort of loose connection there. But I don't know why your body becomes wax. I don't know why you don't have eyes. I don't know why we call this artifact the Devil's Rain. I don't know that the rain that melts waxy satanists. Is this the devil's reign as well? Or is this like the divine rain? I'm not sure? And then even like Devil's ragin,

what does that mean? I was like doing some searches, and I found some just off allusions to the devil's reign and some pre existing literature like once and some sort of religious poem and maybe as a turn of phrase, talking about like a really heavy rain. So but but nothing that where I was like, oh, well, this is clearly what one should infer from the words the Devil's ragin. So the devil's reign is the orb that has the soul TV inside it, and when they smash it, it

suddenly starts raining from the sky. So like the orb is not literally rain, there is literal rain, but nobody evercalls that the devil's rain, and that rain melts the devil's devotees, right, which of course doesn't. Also it also doesn't make sense why would rain melt wax? Rain doesn't melt wax. Rain, if anything, should solidifyt wax. That's melting. And again they already have liquid wax in them, which you see when they are shot. So that's right, it's

a complete dream logic. Why did the dude at the beginning melt the house? If Steve shows up at the house and he's just melting like they hadn't smashed the Devil's Rain, the object at that point, oh I can think of is like it's the ultimate Melt movie and you want to give him a taste of what they're gonna stick around for if they've watched the full film, because I think some of the trailer, I think even the trailer we listen to, they're like, you've got to

see the finale to this picture. Don't leave this one early. If you can come late, but don't leave early. Okay, Rob, If I give you the job of being the cannon master of the Devil's you are now the sole editor of the Devil's Reign. Wikia, can you make sense to try to just spell out the lore for me? How does the Devil's Reign work? I mean, as best I can tell is you know we went through the part already where I guess you know Satan has a deal

for you. Plage your soul to him, get those earthly delights, and then Corbus will take you to the hell. But three hundred years ago, the Coltists say, okay, well, we've had the earthly delights, we don't want to go to the hell. Let's just keep that magic book out of Corbus's hands, and then he can't take us to the hell. But then, you know, when we get the witch hunters show up, things get disrupted, and then the Preston family

is able to make off with the book. So at some point though Corbus is going to catch wind of them again. He's i aided by eyelas wax servants while the souls of these people are trapped inside that kind of soul repository that we keep calling the Devil's Reign. The Coltists make another go at keeping the book from Corbus. Ultimately they end up having the opportunity to destroy the Devil's Reign object and this causes Corbus and his followers

to melt in the rain. The actual weather event rain, but it doesn't completely work, as Corbus survives, takes on the guys of Joan Preston, seduces Tom Scarrett's character, and Joan winds up trapped in the Devil's Rain. And then I guess the search for the book continues, or maybe there's nobody left to search for the book. The Preston family is destroyed, but I don't know if he gets

to take anybody other than Joan to Hell at this point. Wait, I think you're mixing up the actress and the character's names. Is Julie Preston, right, I'm sorry, Julie Preston? Yeah, yeah, so maybe Julie is the only Preston that gets to go to hell. Maybe everyone else got to escape their damnation. That's my best bet. That's all I got. Ultimately, though, the real hero is parapsychology, esp and telepathy in the form of doctor Richards. Here. Yeah, the doctor Richards survived

and probably published some papers on this, that's right. And uh and and I don't know, maybe maybe there's a there's a whole sequel that never was out there in which he studies, uh, the artifact the Devil's Rain. He'd like, you know, glues it back together again. Or I guess it was never destroyed because she's still stuck in it proved the existence of the Devil's Rain once and for all. Yeah, So I don't recommend trying to make sense of any of this but um as just a in illogical nineteen

seventies weird satanic horror spectacle. Um, I think it's it's very engaging. I respect the way that the collar of Tom Skerrett's shirt is on the outside of the collar of his jacket. That's that that thumbs up from me. Well, we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Do you have an analysis on what's happening in The Devil's Reign? Do you have some clarity on on the theology of

this movie? We would we'd love to hear from you if you do, you have memories of seeing this in the theater and the drive in back in the day, or catching it on television and chunks like like I did, and wondering what in the world am I watching? Yeah, right in, we'd love to hear from you. Just a reminder that Weird House Cinema. That's our Friday episode when we set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. But we're primarily a science podcast with

core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays Core. Those are our core episodes, and then on Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster fact episode on Mondays. We do listener mail and if you want a complete list of all the movies that we've covered on Weird House Cinema, well, you can go to letterbox dot com. It's l tt r boxd dot com. We have a user name on there, it's weird House, and we have a list of all the movies we've covered, and sometimes there's a peak ahead

at while we're covering the following week. Huge thanks to our audio producer jj Pauseway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at intact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.