Steve Preston (George Sawaya) and his wife (Ida Lupino) are kidnapped
by a group of Satanists led by Corbis (Ernest Borgnine), because he wants
to get his hands on a Satanist book that's in the Prestons'
possession for over 300 years.
The son of the Prestons', Mark (William Shatner), follows their
trail to a ghost town in the middle of the desert, where the
Satanists manage to capture him and try to torture the whereabouts of the
book out of him - with no success.
Mark's sister Julie (Joan Prather), who lives away in the city, has a
weird premonition, so she and her brother Tom (Tom Skerritt) go home to
find their family gone. Soon enough they also find a trail leading to the
ghost town, and soon enough, the Satanists have taken Julie prisoner as
well.
Tom on the other hand waits for reinforcements in the form of Doctor
Richards (Eddie Albert), a scientist of some sort or another, and the next
morning the two take the Satanist book to the ghost town as a lure , and
with the help of the book thy find the Devil's Rain, sort of the
Satanists' Holy of Holies, and eventually, when the Satanists have
captured Tom, Doc Richards threatens to smash the Devil's Rain -
but none other than Mark, who has since been turned into a faceless
Satanist himself, manages to take possession of the Devil's Rain
before it can be smashed and wants to give it to Corbis, his new master
... when Doc Richards and Tom make him remember who he once was and what
the Satanists have done to his family ... and in the end, Mark smashes the
Devil's Rain himself, causing the Satanists (including himself) to
melt, Corbis to show his true form (that of Lucifer), and the Satanic
church to blow to Kingdom Come.
Only Tom, Julie and Doc Richards manage to escape ... but wait, has
Corbis taken over Julie's body ...
The Hieronymus Bosch paintings shown in the credits at the beginning of
the film promise a bizarre ride through the netherworlds of Satanism ...
but unfortunately, the rest of the film is never quite able to live up to
this promise, instead The Devil's Rain is a very conventional
shocker with rather few shocks and quite a few loose ends and silly plot
elements (e.g. why are all the Satanists made of wax ?) - and despite
having Anton LaVey, the High Priest of the Church of Satan, as
technical advisor, the film paints a rather tilly picture of Satanism as
such ...
By the way, if you want to watch this movie because it was John
Travolta's first theatrical feature - don't bother, his role is very small
and insignificant and you'll probably not even notice him ...
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