When It Rains, It Melts: Revisiting The Devil’s Rain at 50
Half a century on, The Devil’s Rain remains one of the strangest artifacts of the 1970s occult horror boom—an overheated stew of devil worship, grotesque visuals, and unexpected A-list casting that somehow managed to attract both Hollywood veterans and rising stars into its dripping, gooey vortex.
Directed by Robert Fuest—best known for the eccentric Dr. Phibes films—The Devil’s Rain is deeply entrenched in the cultural anxieties and supernatural fascinations of its time. The film plays like a fever dream born of late-night TV evangelist warnings and paperback Satanic panic, spinning a tale of black masses, soul-selling contracts, and a cursed family line haunted by a vengeful cult leader.
That cult leader, Jonathan Corbis, is played with devilish relish by Ernest Borgnine, who flips his usual affable persona on its head. Decked out in robes and goat-like makeup by the climax, Borgnine is clearly having the time of his life. He’s surrounded by a wildly eclectic cast: William Shatner as the tormented hero, Ida Lupino as his doomed mother, Tom Skerritt as his psychic brother, and Keenan Wynn as a blustery local sheriff. Oh—and there’s a young, largely silent John Travolta in his first film role, just months before Welcome Back, Kotter launched him into stardom.
But for all its firepower in front of the camera, the film never quite coalesces into a satisfying whole. The plot is thin, stretched across loosely connected sequences of ritualistic mumbo jumbo and endless scenes of people melting into waxy goo beneath acid rain—an effect that, while memorable, wears thin. The much-hyped “incredible ending” involves an extended final act of meltdowns, betrayals, and demonic possession that’s more exhausting than exhilarating.
Still, there’s a goofy charm to the way The Devil’s Rain leans hard into its Satanic aesthetic. This was the era of The Exorcist, Race with the Devil, and The Omen—and The Devil’s Rain rides that same wave of occult obsession, just with less discipline and a lot more slime. The involvement of real-life Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey (credited as technical advisor and appearing onscreen) only adds to the gonzo credentials, even if the end result feels more theatrical than terrifying.
The Prognosis:
As a piece of horror history, The Devil’s Rain deserves a glance—not for its scares, but for its sheer audacity. It’s a wild blend of old Hollywood gravitas, ‘70s devil craze, and low-budget exploitation, all filtered through Fuest’s offbeat lens. Fifty years later, it’s more fun as a conversation piece than a horror classic, but there’s no denying: few films have ever gone down in flames quite like this.
Australian sibling directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes have been meticulously crafting a distinctive voice from behind the lens and with their third outing, Late Night With The Devil they have tapped into the horror zeitgeist on a global scale. Their first feature, 100 Bloody Acres was a more straight up narrative, leaning heavily into macabre humour starring Angus Sampson and Damon Herriman as struggling brothers in the meat industry who add a secret ingredient into the mix with over-the-top comical results.
Upon closer scrutiny though, it would be their second feature, Scare Campaign that is more closely aligned with the direction that LNWTD would take, with a TV show venturing into the occult investigation that goes horribly wrong. Although it missed the mark to a degree in its execution, the Cairnes brothers have learnt from this previous outing and produced a creative and decisive tale with Late Night With The Devil.
The premise pits David Dastmalchian in his first leading role, as late night talk show Night Owls host Jack Delroy. Delroy embarks on a last ditch attempt to pull back the ratings through a marketing stunt set on Halloween 1977, and books a psychic Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), a sceptic, and a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon) who claims that her surrogate daughter Lily is possessed by the devil.
The look and feel of this feature is so sweetly on par, it is easy to drift into the era that it is set and be lured in by the spectacle; one of the many tricks that the Cairnes team perform well. The decade of choice is no mere accident either with America rife with violence and horror that has put society on the brink of sanity, exposed to the likes Son of Sam, David Berkowitz and Charles Manson, and with the breakdown of freedom, comes the exposure to occults and satanism, leaving everyone questioning to what end can humanity be exposed to? It is this playground that the directors’ choose to play in and through the medium of television, force this evil into the homes of every suburban household.
The Cairnes also have perfected their craft in storytelling, by slowly eeking out the threat of danger in their chosen format of late night television; each guest that is introduced is a snag on the tooth of the viewer, to pull them deeper into the world they have created, until the final act is revealed with the not so sweet Lily (Ingrid Torelli). The role of the critic, Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss) is a smart storytelling device too by constantly asking the questions that audiences will naturally come up with. How much of this is real? How much is performance? And how deeply can we keep probing for the truth before we get our cat-like curiosity scorched?
The breadcrumbs that are left along the way, adds to the weight of the journey, and the torment that is exposed by the film’s conclusion. The performances are solid and none more so than Dastmalchian, who’s character Jack is the character truly under scrutiny. How much has he had to sacrifice in order to keep up with the likes of fellow late night presenter Johnny Carson? Is there more to the history behind his wife’s mysterious and fatal illness? These questions can only be dealt with through the meticulous direction and the strength in Dastmalchian’s performance; oozing charm one minute before serving a backhand of depravity the next. We’re guided on a trail of human decline where the end is nowhere to be seen with ruin at every turn.
The Prognosis:
The American Dream is served up on a plate here and scorched beyond recognition. The Cairnes Brothers capitalise on their previous efforts to expose the frailty and deprivation through a stylised lens that is fresh, inviting and delightfully disturbing.
This is an example of an idea executed so adeptly that every creative player involved brings their A-game to the fold and delivers.
While there are some subtle flaws, the fact that they hold fast to the look, feel and strong performances, allows them to flourish and produce a solid, entertaining feature.
Like me, you may have believed that The Sixth Sense was M. Night Shyamalan’s directorial debut, such was the impact that movie had on his career and the horror genre.
Before this movie awakened our senses and Shyamalan became known as the director with the twist endings, he would take the helm with two other features, Praying with Anger, and Wide Awake.
The former would see Shyamalan write, direct, produce, and star (a sign of things to come) in a self-reflective story about an Indian American, who was raised in the States who goes to India to study, and a conflict of Western and Native culture collide.
Clearly, there is a lot of the director’s love and labour thrown into this project as he covers every aspect of the production process.
Six years later (1998) Shyamalan would venture into his sophomore feature with Wide Awake, a comedy drama starring Denis Leary, Dana Delany, and Rosie O’Donnell.
Once more faith, and religion (a reoccurring them in Shyamalan’s work) would play a part in this story, as a 10-year-old searches for answers around life and death.
Another signature that would return for the third movie and the film that would put Shyamalan’s name on the map would be to tell the story through the eyes of a young boy, capturing the essence of innocence in a ‘brave new world’.
The Sixth Sense
The blessing and the curse
The film was nominated for six Academy Awards and thrust Shyamalan into the spotlight.
The Sixth Sense has been referenced and parodied on numerous occasions, and cemented itself firmly into pop culture.
Starring Bruce Willis, Toni Collette, and career defining performance from Hayley Joel Osmont.
Despite all the accolades thrust toward the movie, because of its ‘surprise ending’, it falls into the trap of lost magic, once the reveal is apparent.
People may have been keen to re-watch and scrutinise every aspect for the clues set up along the way, but essentially, you could never capture THAT moment again with repeat viewing.
It’s a strong contender in Shyamalan’s canon of work, but arguably not his finest hour for this writer.
Personally, I don’t feel he has managed to top his follow-up movie…
Unbreakable
The elevation of success continues
Bruce Willis would once again work alongside Shyamalan following the success of The Sixth Sense.
This time Samuel Jackson and Robin Wright, rounding out a stellar cast that would accompany him.
Shyamalan’s ode to the comic book genre has been labelled as one of the best superhero movies of all time and you can clearly see the director’s love for the subject.
Unbreakable is a wonderful shot and beautifully told story that pits Willis’ David Dunn, a man who discovers that he is as the title suggests, unbreakable when he is the lone survivor of a train crash.
Dunn pits his strength and wits against Jackson’s Elijah, his polar opposite in that his body is prone to fracturing easily and in my mind, one of the best things about the film is the way Shyamalan’s narrative leads you to believe and identify with the reasons that Elijah resorts to villainous behaviour, a topic that many have tried but failed to convey.
Shyalaman’s third success would come in the form of…
Signs
The last hurrah?
Signs would complete Shyalaman’s hat trick of successes before his fall from grace.
Once more faith is put under scrutiny when Gibson’s Father Graham Hess is struggling to identify with his religion after the loss of his wife.
It’s his acceptance of that grief that shoulders him and ultimately his family through an alien invasion that threatens their way of life.
With each movie Shyamalan has released his formula had been pretty consistent, but audiences were starting to wisen up to his craft.
His next feature would break the camels back and see a downward trend in Shyamalan’s fortunes.
The Village
The one trick ponyrevealed
I’m gonna ask a question here relating to The Village, which in my opinion has received unfair criticism towards it.
If Shyamalan had not been the director, would we (the audience) have been so scornful?
Too many people had become familiar with the directors trick of adding a surprise ending that when said trick arrived in The Village, there was a sense of being let down.
“Oh, is that it? WTF!!”
However, if you take Shyamalan out of the equation and simply look at the movie on its own merit, it’s actually a lot stronger than our immediate reactions warranted.
Joaquin Phoenix returns as Shyamalan’s latest muse, this time portraying Lucius one of the next generation of a secluded villagers that we’re led to believe darkens back to days of yore, such is the existence that the inhabitants lead.
Believing that their secret is set to be exposed, the Elders are rescued by a stroke of luck when a blind girl, Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) ventures out into the outside world to retrieve some much needed medicine.
As I said, I liked this movie. Agreed not Shyalaman’s finest hour but it’s a solid movie.
Any fans of the directors work that found themselves sitting on the fence of uncertainty about Shyalaman’s directing prowess, would find their confidence drift further with his follow up film…
Lady In The Water
The fall from grace
There’s no doubt in my mind that Shyalaman is a smart man.
His intelligence brims to the surface of all of his movies.
But like another smart man once said, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’
And with his recent run of successful movie hits, one can’t help but thing that Lady In The Water is an example of how the directors vision had left his vision firmly in the clouds.
You have to commend him for the effort portrayed in infusing a fantastical world based in reality, but Shyalaman is so absorbed in his own creation and egotistical views that he fails to see the bigger picture, and because of this, he loses his audience in a convoluted mess of a fairy tale.
What makes it worse, is the now notorious self-casting of the writer come to save us all.
It feels so egotistical that and the delusion is worrying sign for a director/writer who had shown so much promise.
And as if he were hell-bent on destroying his career, Shyalaman decides to kill off a character within the plot who just so happens to be a movie critic.
If Lady In The Water has one saving grace, it’s that Giamatti’s performance keeps the narrative bopping above the surface, but not even the addition of a good cast in support, notably Bryce Dallas Howard as the nymph, Story, and Jeffrey Wright as Mr Dury can help save this film from drowning in a pool of its own vomit.
So, where to from here?
His first box office disappointment and Shyalaman chooses to push on regardless with…
The Happening
The film that limped across the line.
With a point to prove, Shyalaman would turn his attention next to a B-Movie horror with smarts.
But The Happening was hardly a victory.
Starring Mark Wahlberg, who himself criticised the film and Zooey Deschanel, an actress who usually sets the screen alight with her strong performances.
With a promising start, The Happening does hold promise, but the audience once again finds themselves lost in the lack of plot structure and smothered by the overbearing message on environmentalism.
By now, we’ve reached the mid-way point of Shyalaman’s career thus far and the feeling I get as I survey his filmography is that he’s a man with grand visions and ideas, but he’s not necessarily going to execute them effectively.
Case in point…
The Last Airbender
Dead on arrival
Based on the successful kids tv series on Nickelodeon, The Last Airbender should have been a success given its strong following, and this could be in part why it received a fairly strong opening weekend at the Box Office.
But the first movie that Shyalaman would attempt from a story that wasn’t his own would prove to be another failure for the director.
This film to me feels like a move from a guy who is lost in the world and with no sense of direction or where he is going.
Which is understandable considering his recent run of poor performances.
With a central character who displays no personality whatsoever and a script that clearly doesn’t connect with the writers ethos, The Last Airbender is a film that doesn’t even register on the Richter scale and doesn’t stir any emotion at all.
This is Shyalaman’s lowest point in his career.
When you reach rock bottom there’s only up though, right? Right?
An interesting response from Shyalaman during this time was to put on his producer hat and support another movie released in 2010 called Devil.
This film was actually quite good and showed promise, but importantly saw a success under Shyalaman’s name but this time not as a director.
That particular journey had still needed to right itself and was by far from finding solid ground.
Instead we’re treated to…
After Earth
The forgottenfailure
This movie was essentially a passion project of Will Smiths.
Based on an idea that he developed, After Earth would also star Smith’s son Jayden and produced by Smith himself alongside his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith and Shyalaman.
The latter of whom feels like is still in self destructive mode, clambering up the sides of the hole of failure, which he pretty much dig himself.
As if he didn’t learn his last lesson, Shyalaman plummets into another disappointing film by tackling a story that is not his own.
Ironically, the director had lost faith in himself. Ironic in that faith is the very subject that fascinates this director when approaching storytelling.
Will Smith would describe After Earth as his most painful failure and there’s a reason that most people have tried to bury this movie from their minds, which falls just short of being the worst post apocalyptic sci-fi film of all-time.
No one can take Battlefield Earth off that mantle.
Wayward Pines
The much needed reprieve
Although his next move saw Shyalaman only serve as director for the pilot and serve as Executive Producer, the choice was an important step in his career.
By turning his attention to a different medium, (a tv series), Shyalaman would be able to realign himself once more.
Take stock and arguably bring him back into contention as an auteur once more.
The Visit
The reawakening
This could very well be the turning point that Shyalaman was searching for in his climb back into the realms of success again.
On face value it struck me as just another found footage horror, with the protagonists played by sibling kids, Becca and and Tyler (Olivia De Jonge and Ed Oxenbould who both deserve high recognition for their performances in this) who go to stay with Nana and Pop-Pop, grandparents they’ve never seen before, which automatically sent signals off for me.
The plot line is a little clumsy in places as Shyamalan stumbles his way through telling a story on new-found confidence, albeit a little shakily.
There is another strength in the tale though to allow Shyalaman to stride forward in his tale, as the right ingredients are in place to propel the story forward with fear and trepidation combined with a genuine care factor for the central characters involved.
My only niggle was the slight arrogance from Shyalaman from the role of Becca.
She speaks intelligently enough but it just dips slightly into the level of annoyance and too many scars are on display still from Shyalaman’s previous outings.
This aside, it plays along nicely enough with a reward that doesn’t feel forced.
It’s a strong sign of things to come.
Split
The return to form?
By the time I came around to watching this the word was already out and the spoilers had hit the net.
The audience reaction was… divided and yet I intended to come into this film with an open mind.
The pace and build up was faultless and thrust the viewer headlong into the ordeal that the 3 kidnapped girls face.
James McAvoy is simply outstanding displaying so many diverse personalities, although we only ever see 8 of the 24 in the film.
Perhaps because this would have been too confusing and the audience would have been lost.
Maybe Shyalaman has learnt his lesson after all?
Also making an impact on the screen in films such as Morgan and The Witch is Anya Taylor-Joy who delivers another defining turn as one of the kidnapped girls, Cassie, who has her own skeleton in her closet which becomes integral to the closing scenes of the movie.
There are some moments that he action is a little scattered in places but overall Shyamalan delivers a solid movie with the promise of an Unbreakable / Split crossover in the near future.
This news has got fans salivating at this prospect but also has film lovers in a frothing frenzy of anger at the idea of another movie being released by the director.
Has Shyamalan burnt too many bridges in his audience trust?
Is he bouncing back from redemption? And does have what it takes to another another successful feature?
Love him or hate him, I’ve come to admire his appetite to keep challenging himself and delivering compelling stories.
Each story he produces takes him in a different direction and he seems fearless to take on his visions.
Yes he may not land with every punch, but there’s not many other directors out there in the mainstream that continue to offer something new to the scene and to produce conversation with every project that he overseas.
For good or Ill, I’m glad to see someone like Shyamalan still producing in the film industry.
And I’ll have to hang my hat on that unpopular statement.
Surgeons of Horror 