Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema, we are going to be talking about the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five satanic cult melt movie The Devil's Rain,
Speaker 1: a movie that I first saw, oh, I'd say, somewhere
Speaker 1: between thirteen and fifteen years ago, and I didn't remember
Speaker 1: much about it except there is a famous melting sequence
Speaker 1: at the end of this movie, and my memory was
Speaker 1: that it goes on and on and on and on,
Speaker 1: and wow, was that impression ever validated by rewatching this.
Speaker 1: This is like the godfather of melt movies. It is
Speaker 1: quite a melt movie. If you are into film homes
Speaker 1: that depict the generally unrealistic liquefacation of the flesh. The
Speaker 1: most I guess famous mainstream example of this being either
Speaker 1: The Wicked Witch of the West melting or All the
Speaker 1: Nazis melting at the end of Raiders of the Lost Art,
Speaker 1: both fine examples in their own right, but you can
Speaker 1: definitely get deeper into the weeds. I do greatly enjoy
Speaker 1: the Nazi melting in Raiders. But one difference I want
Speaker 1: to point out is that in Raiders, it seems that
Speaker 1: when like the SS agent melts and it melts like
Speaker 1: a candle, they attempted to do that in some biologically
Speaker 1: accurate color schemes, so he basically melts in like blood
Speaker 1: and viscera kind of colors. The melting in this movie
Speaker 1: is the full box of crayons. It's just whatever color
Speaker 1: you want where you know, we're green, blue, purple, pink.
Speaker 1: Everything's in there in this movie. And we may we'll
Speaker 1: probably discuss this a bit more. We made to some
Speaker 1: degree try to make sense of it, but I don't
Speaker 1: think any real sense can be made of it. But
Speaker 1: in this movie, if you are a devout Satan worshiper,
Speaker 1: you get to exchange your fleshly body for a body
Speaker 1: that is made of multi colored wax. Yeah, and like,
Speaker 1: not only does solid wax veltle liquid wax, So if
Speaker 1: you were shot with a gun, you will bleed multicolored wax.
Speaker 1: If you were melted by rain of either divine or
Speaker 1: infernal origin, I'm not sure which direction it actually is
Speaker 1: going in. At any rate, it will melt you like
Speaker 1: multi colored candles, and it's so yeah, they're not even
Speaker 1: trying to make it seem like this is an actual
Speaker 1: organic process. This is something psychedelic and weird and just
Speaker 1: straight up nineteen seventies. You know, most movies that depict
Speaker 1: people making a covenant with Satan depict more enticements. So
Speaker 1: you know, you make a deal with the devil, you
Speaker 1: get fame, power, pleasure, riches, all that stuff. In this movie,
Speaker 1: the cultists don't really seem to get much of anything
Speaker 1: in the way of power and riches and pleasure. It
Speaker 1: seems like, well, you get to become made of wax.
Speaker 1: Doesn't that sound great? Well, I think Corbus are our
Speaker 1: cult leader. He he does in the flashback to three
Speaker 1: hundred years ago. He's telling the other cultists in this
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, very pilgrimy setting. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: you've gotten to taste the pleasures of the flash you
Speaker 1: got you got your earthly pleasures out of this, and
Speaker 1: now I will take you to the hell. And that's
Speaker 1: the arrangement. So it's implied they got to have some
Speaker 1: sort of earthly pleasures, but I don't know they were.
Speaker 1: There's a pretty stuffy looking lot, so it might have
Speaker 1: been rather mundane by you know, three hundred years ago status.
Speaker 1: These were not pleasures of the flash by nineteen seventy standards. No,
Speaker 1: what what were the pleasures and power that enjoyed by
Speaker 1: like Pilgrim William Shatner that that really earned him the
Speaker 1: wax Hell of the future got to wear shorts or
Speaker 1: something probably. Also, I wanted to point out, so this
Speaker 1: movie is notable for being a seventies cheeseball satanic cult movie,
Speaker 1: but also for the melting sequences, but also for having
Speaker 1: a rather interesting cast. So we'll get into that in
Speaker 1: a moment. But one of the cast members is Tom Skarrett.
Speaker 1: He's sort of one of the heroes of the film.
Speaker 1: And I have to point out the Amazon Prime landing
Speaker 1: page for the streaming version of this movie is a
Speaker 1: picture of Tom Skarrett sort of gazing off into the
Speaker 1: distance where he looks so much like a perfect cross
Speaker 1: between Leonard Nimoy and Josh Brolin. Do you see it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a weird it's a weird image to try and
Speaker 1: sell this movie on. It's kind of like anybody else.
Speaker 1: Anybody who wanted to see this because of the movie
Speaker 1: satanism or the melting they've seen it. Now we just
Speaker 1: want to sell people on like mid seventies Tom Scarett handsomeness. Okay,
Speaker 1: Tom Scarrett is handsome, Michelle, I'll give him that. But
Speaker 1: also I don't know if that's going to get people
Speaker 1: to watch. But okay, so maybe the image doesn't get
Speaker 1: you in, you'll hook him with the plot description. Right,
Speaker 1: that's that's you're in. The plot description of the movie.
Speaker 1: Here is a man tries to save his family from
Speaker 1: a Satanic cult ruled by a powerful preacher. Somebody didn't
Speaker 1: copy at it that and it makes me wonder, what
Speaker 1: was the descriptor that started with a vowel before they
Speaker 1: changed it out too powerful? Was it originally ruled by
Speaker 1: an evil preacher? And then they're like, now that's two
Speaker 1: on the nose, let's change evil to powerful. But then
Speaker 1: they didn't change the article. Maybe it was all powerful ah,
Speaker 1: and then they're like, well that doesn't hold up. He's
Speaker 1: not quite all powerful, that's right, but reasonably powerful, intimidatingly powerful.
Speaker 1: So it seems to me like The Devil's Reign did
Speaker 1: not get very good reviews when it came out. It
Speaker 1: has since garnered some kind of retrospective appreciation, though a
Speaker 1: lot of reviewers have said it's kind of boring or dull.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say this is a good movie,
Speaker 1: because it's not. But I did not find it boring.
Speaker 1: I was I was highly entertained. Yeah, I found that
Speaker 1: it really sucked me in. It has. It's never dull
Speaker 1: on the screen. I mean, there's always some sort of
Speaker 1: interesting desert setting or strange satanic chapel, or somebody's making
Speaker 1: a strange facial expression or has been reduced to an
Speaker 1: eyeless cult member, or of course for large stretches of
Speaker 1: the movie are actively melting. There's there's a lot to
Speaker 1: keep your attention. Yeah, it's it's you look back at
Speaker 1: the reviews, and you know, nobody seemed to like it
Speaker 1: when it came out. It arguably had a very devastating
Speaker 1: effect on the career of the of the director, and
Speaker 1: we'll get into that. Um, but yeah, it's It's also
Speaker 1: unlike just about anything else, so it definitely got stuck
Speaker 1: in people's heads. It developed a cult following for my money,
Speaker 1: and part of this may have been from sort of
Speaker 1: I think I may have caught parts of it for
Speaker 1: the first time on the Sci Fi Channel back in
Speaker 1: the day. But this film feels like an episode of
Speaker 1: Night Gallery that was stretched out to feature length and
Speaker 1: then also had its plot surgically removed. It. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really has the feel of an anthology TV series, Like
Speaker 1: it feels like an episode of one of those shows
Speaker 1: that doesn't have consistent characters. It's like a self contained
Speaker 1: plot every time. And I wonder if that might have
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that it feels in some
Speaker 1: ways like the plot is really rushed, like it throws
Speaker 1: you right into the middle of the story without any
Speaker 1: explanation or introduction. So for the first I don't know,
Speaker 1: ten fifteen minutes, you're really like, what is going on?
Speaker 1: It's really confusing, But then other parts of it feel
Speaker 1: totally padded out. There's so much just driving and looking
Speaker 1: around at things. The sense of confusion, though, is sustained
Speaker 1: throughout the entire picture, given that most of the picture
Speaker 1: you spend time. If you're giving it even a halfway
Speaker 1: dedicated viewing like we did here, you're just going to
Speaker 1: find yourself continually asking questions that cannot be answered. And
Speaker 1: on one level, I feel like that's kind of accidentally
Speaker 1: fitting for a film about normal human mortals and encountering
Speaker 1: some strange cult from beyond the pale. You know, you're
Speaker 1: never you're never supposed to completely make sense of what
Speaker 1: evil wizards are up to. And and the movie itself
Speaker 1: has this strange dream like quality like it makes it does.
Speaker 1: It has dream logic. So when you try and ask
Speaker 1: like why are people made out of wax? And why
Speaker 1: or what's this about the Devil's Reign? And is this
Speaker 1: the Devil's Reign? Or is that the Devil's Rain, Like
Speaker 1: none of it really makes logical sense, and it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to even attempt to stitch it together into such
Speaker 1: a sensible construction. But it has that kind of dream
Speaker 1: logic where if you were to explain this as a dream,
Speaker 1: people wouldn't doubt that you had this experience with you,
Speaker 1: you know, your rain in pure dream mode. That being said,
Speaker 1: I don't feel like that that is an intentional result
Speaker 1: of the filmmaking here. I think I think we we
Speaker 1: wound up here maybe due to some um some errors
Speaker 1: and adequacies some what have you. I totally agree it
Speaker 1: has that feeling of each scene you're in there are
Speaker 1: suddenly kind of mechanisms in play that you're like, what
Speaker 1: what what what's this about an amulet? Now, where did
Speaker 1: that come from? And why are they calling it the
Speaker 1: Devil's Rain? And I don't know, but it just plows
Speaker 1: forward relentlessly. So yeah, it has that that dreamlike quality. Uh,
Speaker 1: should we do an elevator pitch? Go for it if
Speaker 1: you can summon one? Okay, okay? For generations, the Preston
Speaker 1: family has been pursued by an ancient evil in the
Speaker 1: form of Ernest Borg nine. Finally, the satanic Borg has
Speaker 1: captured several family members in his grip. Will Borg ninety
Speaker 1: and wickedness prevail? Or will the Preston's be able to
Speaker 1: liquefy the hooded minions of Beelzebub? Sounds pretty good? All right,
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and listen to the trailer, Audios. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty good trailer. There have been films about earthquakes,
Speaker 1: airplane disasters, and blazing infernos, but there has never been
Speaker 1: anything like The Devil's Reign. Yes, that wasn't your father?
Speaker 1: Was his face? Mother? Mark Commas? Damn? They had no
Speaker 1: faces the Devil's Reign. The three hundred year search for
Speaker 1: the power to damn mankind is over, and the towering
Speaker 1: terror of the Devil on Earth is now unleashed. Burn Burn,
Speaker 1: Burn Burn. The Devil's Reign. Hundreds of souls held captives
Speaker 1: in an eternity of hell si possessed by the Devil. You,
Speaker 1: my son, have defiled all that is holy. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. They become his worshippers and his two
Speaker 1: months all right, before we go into the rest of
Speaker 1: the episode, if you want to watch The Devil's Rain
Speaker 1: before you listen to us discuss it more, well, you
Speaker 1: can find it a number of places. Several films put
Speaker 1: out a great restored blu ray of the movie, and
Speaker 1: you'll find that wherever you get your films, as loads
Speaker 1: of extras on it. This movie is also widely available
Speaker 1: streaming in nice quality, nice quality, but with questionable metadata. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, let's get into the people who brought this
Speaker 1: film to us, starting at the top here with the
Speaker 1: director Robert Fuest, who lived nineteen twenty seven through twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: British director noted for his stylish seventies approach to genre cinema.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy he had two films out, an adaptation
Speaker 1: of Worthering Heights with Timothy Dalton in it, and a
Speaker 1: thriller called and Soon the Darkness. We previously discussed him
Speaker 1: as director of nineteen seventy ones The Abominable Doctor Fibes,
Speaker 1: which was just a delightful horror film with style for Miles.
Speaker 1: I did not realize this was the same director as
Speaker 1: Doctor Fibes. But that's interesting because Doctor five again. I mean,
Speaker 1: I greatly enjoyed the campiness of the Devil's Reign, but
Speaker 1: Doctor Fibes is leagues ahead in terms of like creativity
Speaker 1: and confidence and all that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, But he
Speaker 1: followed that up with seventy two sequel, Doctor Fibes Rises
Speaker 1: again in nineteen seventy three is The Final Program, which
Speaker 1: was based on a Michael moorecock novel and the star
Speaker 1: John Finch. And then came this film, which critics universally panned,
Speaker 1: and it may be the reason he mostly did TV
Speaker 1: after The Devil's Reign, But you know, sometimes it goes
Speaker 1: that way, all right. The writers on this a mysterious lot,
Speaker 1: as if shrouded in cultest hooding. Here we have Gabe
Speaker 1: Eso writer dates unknown, though I believe he's still alive
Speaker 1: based on just some some poking around. Screenwriter with limited
Speaker 1: credits mostly TV, and the most notable credits being for
Speaker 1: an episode of Star Trek Deep Space nine and three
Speaker 1: episodes of Policewoman. On Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki
Speaker 1: and general database. It mentions that he's also a film historian,
Speaker 1: and indeed I looked it up. He wrote nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight Tarzan of the Movies, a pictorial history of more
Speaker 1: than fifty years of Edgar Rice Burrough's legendary hero, as
Speaker 1: well as some old Hollywood biographies. The other writers are
Speaker 1: James Ashton, dates unknown. This is their only credit, and
Speaker 1: Gerald Hoptman also dates unknown. This is also their only
Speaker 1: credit for writing, but it was also an associate producer
Speaker 1: on this film and associate producer on nineteen eighty one's
Speaker 1: Evil Speak. Okay, but it's time to talk about the cast,
Speaker 1: because that is one of the real reasons people are
Speaker 1: going to tune into this movie, apart from the melting
Speaker 1: that's right and Riya. Starring in this bad Boy is
Speaker 1: Ernest borg Nine playing Jonathan Corbus. Borg Nine lived nineteen
Speaker 1: seventeen through twenty twelve. Academy Award winning actor known for
Speaker 1: such films as nineteen fifty five's Marty, nineteen eighty ones
Speaker 1: Escape from New York in nineteen seventy two is the
Speaker 1: Poseidon Adventure. You might also remember him from nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nines The Black Hole or nineteen sixty nins The Wild Bunch.
Speaker 1: I mean really, he's one of those actors who pops
Speaker 1: up in every genre, every level of budget. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: he claimed that this movie was financed by the mob
Speaker 1: and that he was never actually paid WHOA. And I
Speaker 1: was curious, like this was something he made at a
Speaker 1: like a panel late in life, So I did look
Speaker 1: it up and well in interestingly enough, The Devil's Reign
Speaker 1: was a Bryanston distributing Company film. This is a company
Speaker 1: that existed from seventy two through seventy six, which I
Speaker 1: believe was allegedly connected to the Colombo crime family. Other
Speaker 1: films include seventy four's Dark Star and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Dark Star, So that's John Carpenter Texas Chainsaw
Speaker 1: Massacer is who So this is like horror Royalty stems
Speaker 1: from at least alleged mob financing. I didn't really know
Speaker 1: laundering at all. Yeah, maybe somebody who's more informed on
Speaker 1: the history of organized crime in Cinema can write in
Speaker 1: with details or a link or something about this, but
Speaker 1: at any rate, there's no denying borg nine though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: great great career. Later in life he did a number
Speaker 1: of voiceover roles as well. He had that with that wonderful,
Speaker 1: memorable Simpsons guest role where he played a fictionalized version
Speaker 1: of himself. This was the Friday the Thirteenth parody. As
Speaker 1: I recall m Okay, one of the things about Bourg
Speaker 1: nine is I think a lot of us that came
Speaker 1: along either later in his career or more familiar with
Speaker 1: those later day pictures. We often think of him for
Speaker 1: his post Marty roles as likable every man, or his
Speaker 1: role as the lead character on the sixties television show
Speaker 1: like McHale's Navy. We think of him as like kind
Speaker 1: of a friendly, weird grandpa. As his villainous turn in
Speaker 1: this film may feel like an outlier, but you start
Speaker 1: looking around in his older films, especially his pre Marty stuff,
Speaker 1: he did play a lot of heavies. So key examples
Speaker 1: of this are fifty threes from Here to Eternity, where
Speaker 1: he gets in like a knife fight with Frank Sinatra,
Speaker 1: and then there's nineteen fifty five Bad Day at Black Rock.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is a guy who played a lot
Speaker 1: of heavies back in the day. I don't remember exactly
Speaker 1: what his character does in The Wild Bunch, but basically
Speaker 1: everybody in the Wild Bunch is bad. But yeah, So
Speaker 1: nobody's going to accuse The Devil's Reign of being a
Speaker 1: serious acting showcase. But I think sometimes it takes the
Speaker 1: context of a fairly bad movie to make you realize
Speaker 1: the raw charisma of a standout number of the cast.
Speaker 1: And for me, that's exactly what's going on with Ernest Borgnine. Here.
Speaker 1: Borg Nine carries this movie on his shoulders. I think
Speaker 1: it probably doesn't work at all without him. And even
Speaker 1: though you know, I'm sure when he did it he
Speaker 1: saw this film as ephemeral silliness. He does not phone
Speaker 1: it in. He does not pull a Michael Rennie and
Speaker 1: assignment terror and phone in a performance. He shows up,
Speaker 1: and he brings several friends, and they're all his goat familiars.
Speaker 1: Without Ernest borg Nine, I think The Devil's Reign wouldn't
Speaker 1: be ten percent as entertaining as it is. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: he's great in this. I'd read that filmmakers had at
Speaker 1: one point some interest in Vincent Price playing this role. Oh,
Speaker 1: that could have been fun too, But he could have
Speaker 1: been fun and a Price is great and and would
Speaker 1: have made this role his own. But borg nine is
Speaker 1: just an entirely different energy, you know. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's something too about And I don't know
Speaker 1: how much of this is them leaning into it once
Speaker 1: they knew borg nine was their guy. But like when
Speaker 1: we encounter Corbus and like cowboy mode, kind of like
Speaker 1: mortal mode, before we really know that he's an evil
Speaker 1: cult leader, you know, like that's there's a there's a
Speaker 1: physicality there, there's a certain um uh like rugged almost
Speaker 1: swagger that you're only going to get from somebody like
Speaker 1: borg nine. I agree, Actually, I mean I always love
Speaker 1: Vincent Price, but I think this would be a lesser
Speaker 1: movie if it were Vincent Price, because it would be
Speaker 1: more on the nose, and I think Price would have
Speaker 1: played the role more conventionally evil. Borg Nine's cult leader
Speaker 1: is very fun to watch because he is so he's
Speaker 1: just beaming that huge grin and the you know, the
Speaker 1: twinkle in his eye, and most of the time he's
Speaker 1: sounding very friendly until he edges over into absolute menace. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: Now he does famously turn into a goat man a
Speaker 1: bit in this film, and I think one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things about it is it's good looking effects. I
Speaker 1: don't want to it's not. This is not a situation
Speaker 1: where oh yeah, he turns into a goat, but it
Speaker 1: looks crappy. Now it looks really good, but it but
Speaker 1: it limits his ability to portray this natural level of unhinged.
Speaker 1: Cult leader of charisma, Ernest borgnine is biologically a cartoon character,
Speaker 1: and counterintuitively, by putting him in in devilish he goat makeup,
Speaker 1: they actually tone down his visual charisma and his his weirdness.
Speaker 1: Like he looks less exciting and less weird in the
Speaker 1: goat makeup than he does with his just normal human face. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Great eyebrows in this picture too, just crazy eyebrows. I
Speaker 1: love it to a certain extent. Our main hero is
Speaker 1: this character Eddie Albert, who plays doctor Sam Richards. He's
Speaker 1: kind of our I guess he represents fringe science, the
Speaker 1: enemy of Satanism. I think it's interesting because this guy,
Speaker 1: like at the very end, he sort of becomes the
Speaker 1: hero who defeats the cult. But up until the very end,
Speaker 1: I kept being like, Oh, yeah, this guy, what's his deal?
Speaker 1: Like he does not read for ninety five percent of
Speaker 1: the movie. As the hero. He reads as like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, he's a side guy who's hanging out with
Speaker 1: Tom Skarrett and then suddenly he's the guy who beats
Speaker 1: the bad guys at the end. Yeah yeah, and doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to really risk much personally himself. Yeah, Like he's
Speaker 1: not the one whose family is at the center of this.
Speaker 1: But anyway. Eddie Albert though Live nineteen oh six or
Speaker 1: two thousand and five Academy Award nominated actor, best known
Speaker 1: for such films as fifty three's Roman, Holiday, sixty two
Speaker 1: Is The Longest Day, seventy two is The Heartbreak Kid,
Speaker 1: and of course TV's Green Acres, on which he starred.
Speaker 1: So this is another case of a notable actor who
Speaker 1: hit He'd only just been nominated for Best Actor in
Speaker 1: seventy two, and he was in Disney's Escape to Which
Speaker 1: Mountain the same year seventy five. So you keep asking
Speaker 1: yourself with this movie, like, what are all these these
Speaker 1: these actors doing out in the middle of the Mexican
Speaker 1: desert filming? This sets satanant cult movie on perhaps mob money,
Speaker 1: maybe the money was good. I don't know, Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: And then another case of this we have Ida Lupino
Speaker 1: in this playing Emma Preston, the matriarch of the Preston
Speaker 1: family that is so cursed in this. She lived nineteen
Speaker 1: eighteen through nineteen ninety five British American actress, director, writer,
Speaker 1: and producer. She acted from the early thirties into the
Speaker 1: late seventies, perhaps most notably in such pictures from the
Speaker 1: forties as High Sierra, Ladies in Retirement, The Hard Way,
Speaker 1: and Pillowed to Post. But she's also notable as a
Speaker 1: director and writer. I've seen her described as the most
Speaker 1: prominent female filmmaker of fifties so the fifties Hollywood system,
Speaker 1: and she was the first woman, apparently to direct a
Speaker 1: noir film, nineteen fifty three's The Hitch High. She directed
Speaker 1: and starred in nineteen fifty ones on Dangerous Ground, and
Speaker 1: other directorial credits include fifty Threes, The Bigmist, nineteen fifties Outage,
Speaker 1: and she also directed a lot of TV, including two
Speaker 1: episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, nine episodes of Thriller, and
Speaker 1: one episode of the original Twilight Zone that episode being
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four's The Masks. So I was very excited
Speaker 1: about Lupino going into this, but unfortunately I just can't
Speaker 1: say much about her acting performance because for ninety percent
Speaker 1: in the movie, she's just a rubber mask. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's the rubber mask, but that we will talk more
Speaker 1: about what the cultists look like. But she's the mask
Speaker 1: with the black eyes in a black hood, just going ah,
Speaker 1: you know, join us son. But I will say she
Speaker 1: does a very good job of melting, and if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly that she melts multiple times. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: This is also a Shatner movie because William Shatner himself
Speaker 1: plays Mark Preston born nineteen thirty one. I mean what
Speaker 1: you can just quickly you say. This is, of course
Speaker 1: Captain James T. Kirk from the sixties Track series and
Speaker 1: the various film adaptations of Track. This movie is from
Speaker 1: the space between the TV show and his return to
Speaker 1: the character on screen in seventy nine. His other notable
Speaker 1: TV series include T. J. Hooker from eighty two to
Speaker 1: eighty six. Of course we have Tech War, both the
Speaker 1: novel series that has his name on and end the
Speaker 1: TV adaptation with the music by warrens Yvon. He have
Speaker 1: to learn about tech war sooner or later. Yeah, they do.
Speaker 1: He's also in two very notable Twilight Zone episodes, Nick
Speaker 1: of Time from nineteen sixty and of course, Nightmare at
Speaker 1: twenty thousand Feet from sixty three. Other pure genre film
Speaker 1: credits for Shatner include The Horror at thirty seven thousand
Speaker 1: Feet as the TV movie that I know you and
Speaker 1: I have talked about before and you may have seen
Speaker 1: in full. Is this the one where he has to
Speaker 1: go battle an ancient druid curse in part of an airplane,
Speaker 1: well just part of an airplane? Yes, yes, this is
Speaker 1: the one. Okay, there's also seventy four's Impulse nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: is Incubus in nineteen eighty two is Visiting Hours? All right?
Speaker 1: So William Shatner is one of the most goofed on
Speaker 1: actors of all time. You know, everybody loves to do
Speaker 1: gentle ribbing of his line delivery, you know, like making
Speaker 1: fun of him, but they still like him. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: in some ways stick up for Shatner as a sometimes
Speaker 1: genuinely good actor. I think, when paired with good written
Speaker 1: material and the right director, he's genuinely very good. So
Speaker 1: if you go back and watch like the Nicholas Meyers
Speaker 1: star Trek movies, you know, Wrath of Khan, Voyage Home,
Speaker 1: Undiscovered Country, I think in those Shatner is actually excellent.
Speaker 1: But when people do the parody impressions of him affecting
Speaker 1: strange dramatic pauses and choosing which word of a sentence
Speaker 1: to emphasize almost at random, you know, you know, all
Speaker 1: the weird line reading and stuff. I think, stuff like
Speaker 1: The Devil's Reign maybe exactly what they have in mind,
Speaker 1: because he's like that in this movie. Strange pauses and
Speaker 1: sentences that don't make any dramatic sense, gazing off into
Speaker 1: the distance, and moments that don't really earn that for
Speaker 1: any reason, generally odd line readings. So I defend Shatner
Speaker 1: not just as camp. I think he can sometimes be
Speaker 1: really great, but this movie is much more of a
Speaker 1: showcase of his camp side, and in my opinion, his
Speaker 1: performance is very funny. Yeah. I'm not a huge Shatner fan,
Speaker 1: but I would say I will say that I did
Speaker 1: enjoy him in this. I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's something about him playing kind of a failed
Speaker 1: hero and kind of a Satanic weasel. You know, there's
Speaker 1: this outer strength and bluster to the character, but ultimately
Speaker 1: there's this inner weakness in how in hollowness that ends
Speaker 1: up kind of devouring him. So I don't know, it
Speaker 1: felt maybe it just felt enough against type with this
Speaker 1: character that I enjoyed him more. Hard to say. I
Speaker 1: don't know if this makes any sense, but you really
Speaker 1: it just comes through that he's really enjoying his shirtless
Speaker 1: torture scenes with the Satanic Cold. He does have a
Speaker 1: lot of shirtless torture scenes in this, but I feel
Speaker 1: like any fan of Star Trek should also watch The
Speaker 1: Devil's Right. You've seen Shatner from both sides now, and
Speaker 1: so you understand from up and down. All right, let's
Speaker 1: let's mention some other folks here. Keenan Wynn plays Sheriff Owens.
Speaker 1: Not a major character, but he pops up here and there.
Speaker 1: He's the sheriff. He's the authority figure that ultimately doesn't
Speaker 1: pull through Live nineteen sixteen through nineteen eighty six American
Speaker 1: actor with tons of credits across the forty fifty sixty, seventies,
Speaker 1: and eighties. He voiced Captain Culley in nineteen eighty two
Speaker 1: Is the Last Unicorn, and he played Colonel bat Guano
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four's Doctor Strange Love, among many other roles.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to answer to the Coca Cola company.
Speaker 1: Let's see Tom Scarrett. We already mentioned he plays Tom Preston.
Speaker 1: This is Foot Shatner's brother, right, Yes, I think so that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they made that fully clear, but yes,
Speaker 1: he yeah, yeah, he's the brother. What else could he be?
Speaker 1: He's he's not William Shatner's father. There is a family
Speaker 1: photo that I guess kind of establishes things early on.
Speaker 1: But yes. Scarrett was born nineteen thirty three, TV and
Speaker 1: film actor with credits going back to sixty two. But
Speaker 1: I imagine for many of you, Hey, he's Dallas from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy Nine's Alien, He's Viper from nineteen eighty six
Speaker 1: is Top Gun. He also had roles in ninety sevens
Speaker 1: contact eighty nine Steel Magnolia's other credits include Harold and Maud,
Speaker 1: The Dead Zone, Mash Poulter Geys three, and Hey, the
Speaker 1: Christopher Lambert Chess movie Night Moves. So Scarrett is in
Speaker 1: a way the hero of this movie, I would say he's,
Speaker 1: you know, he's like the other guy there who defeats
Speaker 1: the cult at the end, alongside Eddie Albert. Nevertheless, I'd
Speaker 1: say his part does not have much to it. He
Speaker 1: does what is required of him. He's ruggedly handsome in
Speaker 1: that seventies way. He throws a good punch. But I
Speaker 1: think from what I recall, he actually has rather few lines.
Speaker 1: It seems like he's not a very dialogue oriented character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's more action. He's kind of this
Speaker 1: rugged Western kind of a hero. I guess it's funny
Speaker 1: seeing him in a role like this because I know
Speaker 1: Tom Scarrett actually did a lot. You know, he's a
Speaker 1: big star in his day. But for some reason, I
Speaker 1: primarily associate him with Space, because like the main movies
Speaker 1: I love with him in there are Alien, where he's
Speaker 1: Dallas who's doomed, and in Contact, where he plays a
Speaker 1: sort of the bureaucratically entangled scientist who you know, knows
Speaker 1: how to play politics, whereas Ellie Airway does not. And
Speaker 1: I think he's also doomed in Contact. So like he's
Speaker 1: the guy who goes to die in Space. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: in a way, it's It's kind of odd that Shatner
Speaker 1: and Scarrett don't have their roles reversed here, because yeah, interesting,
Speaker 1: it could be more doomed if he had, if he
Speaker 1: had to play the other brother all right now playing
Speaker 1: his character's wife, right, playing Julie Preston. He is the
Speaker 1: actor Joan Prather Boor nineteen fifty. She was only active
Speaker 1: from I think seventy two through eighty nine. In addition
Speaker 1: to some TV roles, he appeared in the single Girls
Speaker 1: from seventy four, Big Bad Mama from seventy four, Smile
Speaker 1: from seventy five, Rabbit Tests from seventy eight, and Take
Speaker 1: This Job and Shove It from eighty one. Allegedly, she
Speaker 1: introduced one of her co stars on this picture to scientology,
Speaker 1: that co star being John Travolta. Okay, so we can
Speaker 1: get to John Travolta in the second. But I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say I don't want to be mean, but Joan Prother
Speaker 1: feels to me like she is on another planet in
Speaker 1: the I don't know if her character is. Maybe it
Speaker 1: makes sense because she's a character who like has psychic
Speaker 1: visions and esp but she seems like she's in a
Speaker 1: trance almost the whole time, not very present. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then there's this she does have, I think, an effective
Speaker 1: screen presence of like um of great distress at times,
Speaker 1: especially in the final moments of the film. There's a
Speaker 1: real dark charisma to her that I think works and
Speaker 1: leaves leaves you on an unsettling note as you leave
Speaker 1: the theater. Yeah. But okay, So you brought up John Travolta.
Speaker 1: I knew he was in this movie, and I was
Speaker 1: looking out for him while I was watching it, and
Speaker 1: I didn't catch him. I was like, where was John Travolta.
Speaker 1: Thinking back on it and and watching some parts the
Speaker 1: second time, I think maybe he's a guy that he's
Speaker 1: the guy that Joan Prather and Tom Scarrett fight in
Speaker 1: the house. Yeah. I think by the time we encounter him,
Speaker 1: he's already cultified, right, right, So he's got mask face,
Speaker 1: so he's not as clearly recognizable as as Travolta. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I read that after Travolta rose to fame,
Speaker 1: they like they cut a scene back in that had
Speaker 1: had some uncultified John Travolta not to try and capitalize
Speaker 1: on it. But that's not present in the cut that
Speaker 1: we watch. So I can't speak to it, bummer, But yeah,
Speaker 1: John Travolta playing Danny doesn't even have a last name, Trala.
Speaker 1: Is it Zuko? No, that's his character from Grease. He's
Speaker 1: got the same first name though, Danny Zuka. Okay. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Travolta was born fifty four, and at this point in
Speaker 1: his career, Yeah, he was super young. He'd done some
Speaker 1: bit TV roles before, but this was his first film.
Speaker 1: He'd of course followed this up with some big hits.
Speaker 1: He did carry in seventy six Saturday Night Fever and
Speaker 1: seventy seven Grease and seventy eight Urban Cowboy and eighties
Speaker 1: Staying Alive in eighty three. Of course, his career took
Speaker 1: a went on a noticeable slump after this, but then
Speaker 1: he came back big and ninety four's pull Fiction and
Speaker 1: was back on top of everything for the rest of
Speaker 1: the decade. Really, for our purposes, I guess we have
Speaker 1: to mention ninety seven Face Off being ultimately a pretty
Speaker 1: weird film, and then of course there's Year two thousand,
Speaker 1: magnum Opus Battlefield Earth. I think Face Off is a classic.
Speaker 1: One thing is people, Okay, so it is an action movie,
Speaker 1: and I think It is primarily remembered as an action
Speaker 1: movie with you know, the sort of slow motion gunfight
Speaker 1: scenes and stuff, but people forget how strange the science
Speaker 1: fiction premise of that movie is. There's like a prison
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the ocean, and there's face transplants
Speaker 1: and all that. It's like a profoundly odd film Battlefield Earth.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you can even say about that.
Speaker 1: You've got to get some man animals in here to
Speaker 1: fix this. All right, Let's see who else do we
Speaker 1: need to talk about here? Um, we have a character
Speaker 1: named John that shows up. He's like the dottering old
Speaker 1: old man that just talks about it. It came here
Speaker 1: and they didn't have faces and melting yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: a fun roll character like this in a cult supernatural film.
Speaker 1: But this is played by Woodrow Chamblis, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: fourteen from nineteen eighty one. Mostly a TV actor, but
Speaker 1: he was also in the nineteen seventy desert horror film
Speaker 1: Gargoyles from seventy two. You know, I haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: but I've been interested in checking out Gargoyles for Weirdhouse.
Speaker 1: So it's a nineteen seventy two made for TV. Monster
Speaker 1: movie with creature effects by Stan Winston starring Bernie Casey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I haven't seen it forever. It's a film that
Speaker 1: when I see a clip from it, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's a film that I caught on Sci
Speaker 1: Fi or maybe A and E God help us back
Speaker 1: in the day. That it's a film that if I
Speaker 1: see a clip from it, it makes me feel like
Speaker 1: I'm watching TV indoors on a nice Sunday afternoon and
Speaker 1: I should really be outdoors. Yeah, yeah, I know what
Speaker 1: you mean. Yeah, but yeah, maybe it requires some revisiting.
Speaker 1: I recall some fabulous full body guar will shots suits
Speaker 1: that are shot just in like full light. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: was looking up because I was trying to remember who
Speaker 1: else was the actor I knew who was in it.
Speaker 1: Scott Glenn is also something. As I said, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it, but yeah, Bernie Casey plays a gargoyle apparently,
Speaker 1: and Scott Glenn's in there somewhere all right. Speaking of
Speaker 1: in there somewhere, we also have Claudio Brook in this
Speaker 1: picture playing a preacher. He's essentially a witch hunting preacher
Speaker 1: who burns the Satanist three hundred years ago in a flashback.
Speaker 1: That's right, a stern witch finder we can all look
Speaker 1: up to, except he betrays our our main character's ancestors.
Speaker 1: They're like, hey, if we bring you the Satanic cult,
Speaker 1: you'll spare us, right, And he's like sure, and then
Speaker 1: they do. He goes back on his word. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'll spare you as far as like you can go
Speaker 1: to heaven, but I still have to burn your bodies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your bodies did a lot of bad things, like wearing
Speaker 1: those shorts, so you're you're going up in flames exactly.
Speaker 1: So you never never trust a guy who has a
Speaker 1: Heinrich Kramer test too. Claudio Brook, who I think I've mentioned,
Speaker 1: even though we haven't talked about a Claudio Brook film before.
Speaker 1: Fantastic Mexican actor with varied credits extended back through the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen fifties. His credits range from art films and
Speaker 1: serious dramas to El Santo pictures and bizarre horror films.
Speaker 1: You know, we'll come back to him again some day
Speaker 1: he would. After this, though, he would go on to
Speaker 1: star in the notable Mexican satanic film Alucarda from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, Dracula backwards. Yeah, oh well, maybe it is
Speaker 1: a Dracula. Yeah, this is not the only film that
Speaker 1: has used Alucard as Dracula spelled backwards. In fact, wasn't
Speaker 1: the undercover vampire in the flashback in Santo in the
Speaker 1: Treasure of Dracula called Count Alucard? Am I wrong about that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I believe you're right on this. Now. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: Alucarda yet. It's on my list because it's it's held up.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be a very good possession film. I
Speaker 1: don't think it actually has anything to do with with vampires,
Speaker 1: so I don't know more of a satanic movie than
Speaker 1: it is a vamp movie. So one thing I read
Speaker 1: about this movie I think this might have even been
Speaker 1: on this Wikipedia page, is that some writers somewhere pointed
Speaker 1: out that this is really a cult movie because it's
Speaker 1: about a cult. It's a cult movie in the colloquial sense,
Speaker 1: you know, it has a you know, sort of ironic following,
Speaker 1: but also involved an actual cult leader. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's a correct way to categorize what
Speaker 1: Anton LaVey was. But Anton LaVey was involved in making
Speaker 1: this movie. Yes, he has a credit as playing a
Speaker 1: high priest. You see him in a golden goat helmet,
Speaker 1: and then he was also a technical advisor to like
Speaker 1: tell them how Satanic magic actually works. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: the way made up Satanic magic works. Allow me to
Speaker 1: show you so. Anton LaVey lived nineteen thirty through nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven. He was the then High Priest of the
Speaker 1: Church of Satan and then an also author of the
Speaker 1: Satanic Bible and some other books. I'd say, you know,
Speaker 1: an interesting cultural figure, a born showman with a knack
Speaker 1: of keyboards. I suppose we're yeah to infer that he
Speaker 1: advised the director on some of the finer points of
Speaker 1: fake Satan worship in this and I believes his wife
Speaker 1: at the time is also in the picture in the
Speaker 1: background as part of the main Satanic sequences. He was
Speaker 1: also an advisor on nineteen seventy four's Lucifer's Women, nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven's The Car, in which James Brolin battles the
Speaker 1: Satanic Car, nineteen eighty three's Doctor Dracula with John Carradine,
Speaker 1: and nineteen eighty nine's Charles Manson Superstar. Apparently he had
Speaker 1: no involvement with nineteen sixty eight Rosemary's Baby, despite rumors
Speaker 1: to the country. You know, I don't know much about
Speaker 1: Anton LaVey, but I maybe I'm wrong. I thought his
Speaker 1: version of Satanism was not one that like believed in
Speaker 1: in actual like the magical, like a sea of rituals
Speaker 1: or anything. So I'm a little confused about what the
Speaker 1: technical advising role would be here. Yeah, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think this film is a really an accurate depiction
Speaker 1: of Lavayan Satanism or anything. But you know, maybe it
Speaker 1: was just more a situation where he's like, Hey, I
Speaker 1: hear you're making a Satanist movie. Don't you think you
Speaker 1: should hire somebody like me to hang out on set
Speaker 1: and advise you on a couple of things. I can
Speaker 1: loan you some costumes. Yeah, yeah, maybe it's as simple
Speaker 1: as that. I've got all these ropes, all right, But
Speaker 1: this is a melt movie, and you can't talk about
Speaker 1: a melt movie without talking a little bit about the
Speaker 1: special makeup effects. And that's where Ellis Burman Junior aka
Speaker 1: Sonny Burman comes into play here. He lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: five through twenty twenty. Again, this movie is all about
Speaker 1: wax based Satanists spurting wax and melting in big puddles
Speaker 1: of wax, and the lead on all of this was
Speaker 1: Ellis Burman Junior. I've read that they were having to
Speaker 1: basically invent ways to do all these effects on the fly,
Speaker 1: but they also had days upon day is to produce them,
Speaker 1: which is why I guess we have so much compelling
Speaker 1: footage of people melting, and yeah, the end results are
Speaker 1: pretty mesmerizing. Burman's previous work included nineteen seventies Beneath the
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes, in nineteen seventy two Scargoyles, okay,
Speaker 1: and and I do have to trust that. I think
Speaker 1: it's my understanding that the work of people like Burman
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily completely reflected in like IMDb credits. A lot
Speaker 1: of times they're on crews for stuff and they're just
Speaker 1: not they're not credited for what they did. But he
Speaker 1: definitely followed this up with work on nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: Is The Man Who Fell to Earth and Return of
Speaker 1: a Man called Horse, seventy seven's Empire of the Ants
Speaker 1: and Close Encounters of the Third Kind seventy eights, Matilda,
Speaker 1: which is a boxing kangaroo movie starring Elliott Gould. Last
Speaker 1: time I checked, you could stream that via the Criterion Channel. Wait,
Speaker 1: I just really Empire of the Ants. That's Burt Eye Gordon. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so we got a mister big connection here. Seven nine, Prophecy,
Speaker 1: The Bear Movie eighty three, Space Hunter eighty four star Man.
Speaker 1: He did the He was involved in the sloth makeup
Speaker 1: for nineteen eighty five's The Goonies, and he also worked
Speaker 1: on nineteen eighty five's Howling Too and Oh and then
Speaker 1: as far as Trek goes, he worked on Star Trek's five,
Speaker 1: First Contact Insurrection, fifty episodes of Deep Space nine, Voyager, Enterprise,
Speaker 1: and Nemesis A Star Trek five. That's all you need
Speaker 1: to know. According to its not fair. I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: didn't mean that. I didn't mean that. Ellis Burman Junior,
Speaker 1: which one's five again? Five is the really bad one,
Speaker 1: the one where like they meet what is I think
Speaker 1: they meet Spok's half brother and he's like and he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, Spok is all logic and his half brother
Speaker 1: is all emotion, and he's this like empathic cult leader
Speaker 1: essentially who who you know, gets people to connect to
Speaker 1: their pain. And he's like give me your pain, and
Speaker 1: Shatner has a great monologue and it's not actually great,
Speaker 1: where he's like, by need my pain, I won't give
Speaker 1: you my pain. Our pain makes us who we are.
Speaker 1: And then at the end they go to a place
Speaker 1: in the middle of the galaxy where God lives essentially,
Speaker 1: but then it's not really God. It's like the Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz and it's revealed to just be some kind
Speaker 1: of alien. They blast him. Yeah, all right, okay, one
Speaker 1: that one does ring a bell. Now, it's not good.
Speaker 1: It's widely considered one of the worst Star Trek movies.
Speaker 1: But like you said, we can't we can't blame Berman
Speaker 1: for this. According to his obit, his company Cosmic Kinetics,
Speaker 1: also was involved in building the Terminator robot for the
Speaker 1: Terminator and the creation of alf all right. And then finally,
Speaker 1: the music credit here goes to al de Lori, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen thirty through twenty twelve. I thought the music
Speaker 1: in this film was quite effective. Kind of a general
Speaker 1: ambiance of weird, unsettling instrumental drift and occasional cacophony that's
Speaker 1: kind of fitting for that nineteen seventies nigh gallery vibe
Speaker 1: m Albalai was a sessions keyboardist who worked mostly in pop, surf, rock,
Speaker 1: and country. He was also a Grammy Award winning producer
Speaker 1: who produced a number of non satanic hits for Glenn
Speaker 1: Campbell in the nineteen sixties, including Gentle on My Mind,
Speaker 1: By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Wichita, Lineman, and Galveston.
Speaker 1: He was a sessions musician on The Beach Boys Pet
Speaker 1: Sounds in sixty six. Yeah, and then he also did
Speaker 1: this score. He has I think eleven composition credits on IMDb.
Speaker 1: But this is really the only film that stands out
Speaker 1: certainly to me, And as far as I know, this
Speaker 1: soundtrack has never been released as a as an album
Speaker 1: in any format. Hey, some boutique reissuer put it put
Speaker 1: this out on vinyl. Oh yeah, I mean the melty
Speaker 1: effects in this film. There's so many great directions you
Speaker 1: could go with that vinyl. Yeah, all right, we ready
Speaker 1: you talk about the plot. Let's do it so it
Speaker 1: begins with a bunch of you know, infernal whaling that
Speaker 1: it kind of sounds like the Siberian Well to Hell
Speaker 1: hoax tape. I think I've made that comparison on this
Speaker 1: show before. About as general audio montages of whaling. But
Speaker 1: then we fade to bosh and we start seeing scenes
Speaker 1: from the triptych of the Last Judgment, so, you know,
Speaker 1: a little hellish vignettes. There's a general survey of unpleasant
Speaker 1: imagery from paintings. You get birdmen with black eyes and
Speaker 1: cauldrons for helmets eating naked sinners along with you know more.
Speaker 1: You know now, that's what I call moaning and lamentations
Speaker 1: and people screaming let me out of here, and so forth.
Speaker 1: And then the actual action opens with an image of
Speaker 1: a crucifix. There's a painted wooden Christ hanging from the cross,
Speaker 1: and the shadow of a human hand cast across the figure,
Speaker 1: and then the sound of a rolling storm in the background,
Speaker 1: with rain and heavy thunder, and we reveal a woman
Speaker 1: looking nervously out of window into the night as the
Speaker 1: rain pours down. And this is Missus Preston, played by
Speaker 1: Ida Lupino. She clearly has tattered nerves. She's something is
Speaker 1: worrying her greatly, and a man named John brings her
Speaker 1: some tea, but she spills it. She's she's so frazzled John,
Speaker 1: Did you take John here to be like their butler?
Speaker 1: Sort of he wasn't dressed like a butler, and a
Speaker 1: Victorian said, I don't know what he was. He just
Speaker 1: brought them tea. Yeah, this is the old man. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um yeah, because he's not her husband,
Speaker 1: because we're about to meet him. So yeah, he's just
Speaker 1: kind of I don't know if he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: an uncle or what. Oh maybe he's an uncle. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know he's I don't know. He's some guy.
Speaker 1: They just call him John. Finally, somebody arrives at the
Speaker 1: door and it is Ida Lupino's son Mark, played by
Speaker 1: none other than William Shatner. So he comes in from
Speaker 1: out of the rain. As we alluded to earlier, this
Speaker 1: movie really throws you right into the middle of the
Speaker 1: action with no explanation. And I could explain with hindsight
Speaker 1: of having seen the rest of the movie what happens
Speaker 1: in this scene, but I think if I did, it
Speaker 1: would not really capture the level of randomness and confusion
Speaker 1: you feel as a first time viewer. So I kind
Speaker 1: of want to do a little beat by beat here,
Speaker 1: all right, So Shatner comes in the door, Missus Preston
Speaker 1: greets him with relief, she calls him Mark. She says well,
Speaker 1: Mark says, no sign of him, odd inflection, like was
Speaker 1: their sign of somebody else or the truck. Shatner says,
Speaker 1: I got as far as Simpson's bridge, or what's left
Speaker 1: of it. The river's about swept it away, and missus
Speaker 1: Preston says he couldn't have just disappeared. He couldn't, and
Speaker 1: Shatner says he probably pulled off someplace to wade out
Speaker 1: the storm. And Shatner lifts the telephone from the hook
Speaker 1: and he says, gazing off into the distance ponderously and
Speaker 1: with surprise, it's still dead. Missus Preston says, I know.
Speaker 1: Shatner says the winds knocked the lines down, and missus
Speaker 1: Preston says, I don't think so, and they start to argue.
Speaker 1: So Mark says it's just the storm, and she insists, no,
Speaker 1: it's my dream night after night. It always starts the
Speaker 1: same way. It starts with a storm and then your father.
Speaker 1: But Mark cuts her off. He doesn't want to hear this,
Speaker 1: He's heard it a thousand times. He insists that father
Speaker 1: is all right. He says, there's you know, there's no
Speaker 1: way he got turned into a weird makeup effect. And
Speaker 1: then the dog starts barking outside, so they go outside.
Speaker 1: John says someone's here, and they all go to look,
Speaker 1: and then a guy staggers in through the rain, his
Speaker 1: shirts torn open with frankly hilarious makeup. His eyes have
Speaker 1: been like the area around his eyes has been replaced
Speaker 1: with a rubber mask that has sort of blended in
Speaker 1: to his skin, with makeup around that, and his eyes
Speaker 1: are hollow, like there are not eyeballs in them. There's
Speaker 1: like sort of black cloth behind his eyelids. I think
Speaker 1: when I first saw this, it seemed like we were
Speaker 1: supposed to understand that he had been tortured or mutilated
Speaker 1: or something. But looking back on it now, I think
Speaker 1: maybe it's just that he has been mask faced by
Speaker 1: the coult. Yeah. I have to say I like the
Speaker 1: the the effect they did with their like weird waxy
Speaker 1: faces and no eyes, with this kind of like red
Speaker 1: swelling around where the eyes used to be. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's an obvious makeup effect, but it also it made
Speaker 1: me think about how well nowadays and certainly for decades now,
Speaker 1: the go to for this effect. He has put some
Speaker 1: black contacts in those eyeballs, right, and uh, and you
Speaker 1: know that can look really good, but it's also been
Speaker 1: so done to death, like it's it's done in so
Speaker 1: many movies of varying budgets. It's done by just teenagers
Speaker 1: at the mall, so it's it's it's kind of lost
Speaker 1: a lot of its impact. So it's kind of neat
Speaker 1: to see something that goes in a different direction. I
Speaker 1: guess before those contacts were available. I'll take that. I'll
Speaker 1: take that, okay, So uh, Shatner says, Dad, and miss
Speaker 1: Preston says Steve, and the guy staggering in says the
Speaker 1: book Corbus, and missus Preston says, oh God help us,
Speaker 1: and Mark says where is Corbus? And boy, I hope
Speaker 1: you like the word Corbus, because you're going to hear
Speaker 1: people say it about six thousand times, and especially Shatner
Speaker 1: will just punctuate every line he says with Corbus, and
Speaker 1: especially since it's one of those it's like a kind
Speaker 1: of a funny sounding name. It doesn't necessarily it might
Speaker 1: be a real name, but it doesn't sound like a
Speaker 1: real name. It sounds like the kind of name people
Speaker 1: make up for for a fictional story without checking to
Speaker 1: see if anybody's actually named that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, or
Speaker 1: something made up on the fly, and the Dungeons and
Speaker 1: Dragon session like maybe they originally named this character Corbus.
Speaker 1: And then they're like, I don't know, it sounds too
Speaker 1: too bird like and he's a goat. Yeah, now that
Speaker 1: I say, I'm sure Corpus is a real name. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It just it just doesn't have that feeling.
Speaker 1: But okay, so you know where is Corbus? So very
Speaker 1: very dramatic inquiry by William Shatner here and Steve the
Speaker 1: mask faced man says the desert redstone. He's waiting for
Speaker 1: the book. Give Corbus what belongs to him, and then
Speaker 1: he collapses on the ground and starts to melt, and
Speaker 1: Missus Preston says, don't go near him, don't touch him.
Speaker 1: But he's like, I don't even know how to describe this.
Speaker 1: He looks like he's covered in melting wax crayon tumors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's gross and and it's certainly surreal, but
Speaker 1: also feels it doesn't it doesn't. Yeah, like you say,
Speaker 1: it's not. They're not going for a realistic biological melting here,
Speaker 1: this is something else going on, and so it hits
Speaker 1: all the right notes. It doesn't. It's not one of
Speaker 1: the things where you watch it and you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: this is this is fake. I mean, you know it's
Speaker 1: not real. It's easy to suspend disbelief, but it's it's
Speaker 1: very gross. There's a strong element of body hartor here.
Speaker 1: So the melting Steve starts talking in Latin and Miss
Speaker 1: Preston repeats him. He's saying in nominee satanis in the
Speaker 1: name of Satan. That wasn't your father And they argue
Speaker 1: about this shatters like it was his face. It was
Speaker 1: his clothes, but was it his face. We'll never find out.
Speaker 1: We never will find out, that's right. So Miss Preston says,
Speaker 1: the book, the book, don't you see my dream? It
Speaker 1: was a warning they found us. So again, this is
Speaker 1: the kind of like thrown into the middle of equality
Speaker 1: that makes me think this is like an anthology TV episode,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like the cold open on Ones, the
Speaker 1: teaser to be like, what is going on and hopefully
Speaker 1: it will be explained later, Yeah, but it won't, not
Speaker 1: to any compartially. It will be partially explained. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: everybody goes inside, We're treated to a long shot of
Speaker 1: the rain splattering upon the puddle of green and blue
Speaker 1: goop that was once Steve Eve and man, they are
Speaker 1: really banking on you enjoying looking at this. Because I
Speaker 1: went back and timed it. The shot of the goop
Speaker 1: is seventeen seconds long. Yeah, they really milk there with
Speaker 1: their wax goop shots in this picture. I think Fulchi
Speaker 1: would would approved. I think he would. He would say,
Speaker 1: good notes on this. You should definitely let the camera
Speaker 1: linger over the gross things. Oh yes, the fulchy ethos
Speaker 1: is oh, oh is this? Is this a part of
Speaker 1: the body that's usually on the inside, but now it's
Speaker 1: on the outside. Let's get a look at that. Okay,
Speaker 1: So inside they arguing. The confusing arguing continues again. The
Speaker 1: viewer is like, has no idea, what's going on? Miss
Speaker 1: Preston says Corbus, has your father? I tell you it
Speaker 1: wasn't him, Mark, it wasn't him. And so the melting
Speaker 1: man had said Corbus was in Redstone, and they explained
Speaker 1: this is the old mining town, a god forsaken place.
Speaker 1: And then missus Preston pries up a loose brick from
Speaker 1: the floor and reveals a secret compartment from which she
Speaker 1: removes an old book, and then she gives it to Shatner.
Speaker 1: She begs him to take the book to Corbus, and
Speaker 1: Shatner refuses. He says, I won't give the Devil's man
Speaker 1: what he wants. And so they're, you know, they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we gotta be we gotta do something. So Mark Shatner,
Speaker 1: Mark the character, goes in. He gets a pistol out
Speaker 1: of a drawer, and he says, I'll fight him on
Speaker 1: my terms, not his. And then missus Preston says, she
Speaker 1: like pulls out something. We can't even really see what
Speaker 1: it is. It's sort of offscreen, but she's like holding
Speaker 1: something in her hands, and she says, Corbus can't harm
Speaker 1: you as long as you wear this amulet. What sounds
Speaker 1: good though, he's being he's going on a quest, all right. Yes,
Speaker 1: he has a gun. He needs a magical item as well.
Speaker 1: Magical item, so she gives him an amulet. No explanation
Speaker 1: of the amulet. Then somebody arrives in a truck outside.
Speaker 1: Mark goes out to meet him, wearing a rain jacket
Speaker 1: and a cowboy hat. So there's a shatterer in a
Speaker 1: cowboy hat, and who is this supposed to be? I
Speaker 1: think maybe it's supposed to be the father. But Mark goes,
Speaker 1: he gets out to the truck and then he finds
Speaker 1: a doll pinned to the steering wheels. So there's nobody
Speaker 1: in the truck. It's just a creepy doll. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then there's like a scream from inside. Right. This is
Speaker 1: one of the at least a couple of moments in
Speaker 1: the film where unseen cultists are just totally rolling high
Speaker 1: with their dexterity checks, with their stealth checks, because they
Speaker 1: can just move around unseen. They're like the Dwarfs and Phantasm. Yes,
Speaker 1: by the time you know they were there, they've already
Speaker 1: like blown up a car or something exactly right. So
Speaker 1: he hears commotion back at the house and he runs
Speaker 1: back in. He finds John hanging upside down from the ceiling.
Speaker 1: He's not dead, he's still like he cuts him down,
Speaker 1: but he's somehow they got him hanging upside down from
Speaker 1: the ceiling. The house is fully ransacked, his mother is missing.
Speaker 1: All in a matter of what seemed like about fifteen seconds,
Speaker 1: Like we looked at the goop in the rain longer
Speaker 1: than Chatner was outside, that's true. But the old man John,
Speaker 1: he's he's sitting there recovering from his experience, and he
Speaker 1: says they had no faces, no faces. And then I think,
Speaker 1: I think what Shatner's character goes and make sure the
Speaker 1: book is still in the in its hiding place, and yes, basically,
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, I'm going to continue my next
Speaker 1: phase of the quest. That's right. So he goes on
Speaker 1: the hunt for Corbus and we are treated here to
Speaker 1: a good amount of padding scenes of him driving around
Speaker 1: in the desert, standing next to the car and stuff,
Speaker 1: and eventually he arrives at Redstone. This is a desert
Speaker 1: ghost town with with an eerie New England style church building.
Speaker 1: It's all boarded up from the outside. And Mark drives
Speaker 1: up and he is greeted in the middle of the
Speaker 1: town by a laconical cowboy played by Ernest Borgnine, and
Speaker 1: there's there's initially almost a kind of um, you know,
Speaker 1: gospel story kind of miracle at the water pump. So
Speaker 1: Shatner is trying to work the water pumped it because
Speaker 1: he's thirsty, I guess, and nothing comes out with dust
Speaker 1: and then Ernest Borgnine walks over and he's like, hey there,
Speaker 1: and he pumps the pump and it just gushes with water. Oh,
Speaker 1: and then Shatner tastes the water, but he says it's
Speaker 1: bitter and he spits it out. And then I wonder
Speaker 1: if what you made of this? So he says it's bitter,
Speaker 1: he spits it out. Then Borgnine says sweet way to
Speaker 1: endo thirst though, isn't it? And I didn't understand what
Speaker 1: this meant, Like was he saying I don't know the
Speaker 1: water was bitter because it was poison and Borgnine is
Speaker 1: praising the exquisite embrace of death. I just kind of
Speaker 1: chalked it up to being like cowboy nothing dialogue, you
Speaker 1: know that, it's just like, oh you're thirsty, cowboy, here
Speaker 1: you go. Yeah, because the poison, that interpretation doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense because next Chatterer does drink it. Now. I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure if at this point Schattner's character knows who Corbus
Speaker 1: is or knows that this is Corbus, like it was.
Speaker 1: I found like this was a little bit vague, because
Speaker 1: that's the thing. This is our evil cult leader and
Speaker 1: his most human cowboy form. Yeah, so he I think
Speaker 1: he does he knows there is a Corbus, but he
Speaker 1: doesn't realize this is Corbus. He's like, I will speak
Speaker 1: only to Corbus, and then Corbus says, I am Corpus,
Speaker 1: speak to me, and he gets right down to business.
Speaker 1: So Shatner wants his family back. He's like, give me
Speaker 1: my mother and father, and borg nine says, did you
Speaker 1: bring the book? And Shatner says, I'm not afraid of you. Corbus.
Speaker 1: Corbus and mister you know, Corbus says, mister Preston, I'd
Speaker 1: be very disappointed if you were. So they start kind
Speaker 1: of posturing at each other, you know. Shatner is like,
Speaker 1: you're evil and Corbus is like, let me show you
Speaker 1: what I've put my faith in. And there's a great
Speaker 1: moment like Shatner angles toward the camera and points his
Speaker 1: finger out. He's pointing straight into the camera and he
Speaker 1: says Corbus. He says, I'll face whatever you have behind
Speaker 1: those doors, and I guess he's talking about the church,
Speaker 1: he says, and I'll come out exactly as I went in. So,
Speaker 1: you know, after this kind of posturing, they eventually agree
Speaker 1: on a trial, a test, a challenge. Mark will go
Speaker 1: inside Corbus's boarded up church and face whatever's in there,
Speaker 1: and it'll be a test of faith, Corbus's faith against
Speaker 1: a Marks, which I suppose is mainline Christianity. And if
Speaker 1: Mark prevails, Corbus will release his mother and father. If
Speaker 1: Corbus prevails, Mark will bring him the book. We don't again,
Speaker 1: we don't know what this book is. It's just a book. Now.
Speaker 1: Obviously it is really early in the picture. To just
Speaker 1: go all in on a bat against the chief antagonist
Speaker 1: does not bode well from Mark here where he's just like,
Speaker 1: all right, let's do it, let's go week. I think
Speaker 1: we can end this picture in the first half hour.
Speaker 1: I'm putting my soul and everything on the line. Give me,
Speaker 1: give me your worst board nine. You can imagine that
Speaker 1: the next forty five minutes are eating up with shots
Speaker 1: of them walking to the church. But anyway, so they
Speaker 1: go into the church, Okay, let's describe it. So it
Speaker 1: is a Satanic church. Is pew is full of figures
Speaker 1: in black hoods and robes and kind of an omega
Speaker 1: man ash. I don't know which movie came out first,
Speaker 1: but there are red and purple curtains, candles, a stone
Speaker 1: altar topped with an inverted cross and draped with cloth
Speaker 1: that says Reggie Satanas and it's got a big pentacle.
Speaker 1: The vibe is very incense books just weird, absolutely, but
Speaker 1: also there is there are illustrations, so like there is
Speaker 1: a big stained glass window, which okay, so this is
Speaker 1: a Satanic church with a stained glass window. They actually
Speaker 1: commissioned that. I'm gonna say the stained glass goat head
Speaker 1: needs some work. It does not look very scary. It
Speaker 1: looks like a sports mascot, like it could be the
Speaker 1: Chicago Bulls logo. It does. It does look a little
Speaker 1: sports mascotti, a little superhero ish and I don't know
Speaker 1: if the it's it's white too. Yeah, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if that has that's maybe due to the like Lavayan
Speaker 1: Satanism influence like this, you know, sort of this idea
Speaker 1: of Satan Lucifer the light Bringer or something or if.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just some sort of quirk at design,
Speaker 1: but it stands out in a way that's maybe not
Speaker 1: completely great. But but I mean, the rest of the
Speaker 1: set looks really good though. I think it's a nice dark,
Speaker 1: atmospheric Satanic chapel, like if you were part of a
Speaker 1: Satanic couple looking to get married. This is a proper venue.
Speaker 1: I'd say, go for it, I guess. So, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we commit ourselves to evil anew every day. And so
Speaker 1: oh they've even got a Satanic organ. I thought that
Speaker 1: was funny with the pipes and the nice Yeah. So
Speaker 1: Shatner goes in. You know, he's still got his magic
Speaker 1: amulet and his guns, so I think he's feeling confident.
Speaker 1: And Ernest borgnine comes out. He's changed out of his
Speaker 1: cowboy outfit into a cribson robe majestic Satanic regalia. And
Speaker 1: you know, a long story short, they both start praying
Speaker 1: for Nine is praying to Satan, Shatner is praying to Jesus.
Speaker 1: And eventually, you know that it kind of like it
Speaker 1: comes to a to a peak, and Shatner gets freaked
Speaker 1: out because he sees his mother among the Devil's congregation
Speaker 1: and she has the mask face with the with the
Speaker 1: black eyes, and you know, she she's telling, you know,
Speaker 1: it's very joy in us. She says, you will know
Speaker 1: the peace of mind that I have found. And Shatner
Speaker 1: gets scared and he starts blasting with his gun. He
Speaker 1: shoots a cultist and multicolored goop comes out of him.
Speaker 1: It's like pink and Green Goop, and borg nine has
Speaker 1: a very actually great moment again, Ernest Borgnine is just,
Speaker 1: you know, in a class above what this movie is.
Speaker 1: He has a great moment where he sort of scoffs
Speaker 1: at Shatner shooting the gun. He says, is that your faith?
Speaker 1: And Shatner runs outside. He still thinks the magical amulet
Speaker 1: will protect him, so he's holding it up and he says,
Speaker 1: I'm still free. Corbus Corbus and borg nine He's even
Speaker 1: got away around this. Bourg Nine makes him hallucinate that
Speaker 1: the amulet is actually a snake wrapped around his neck,
Speaker 1: so Shatner willingly takes it off and throws it to
Speaker 1: the ground. Whoops. Yeah, and then just he sends in
Speaker 1: the cultists to grab him and hold him down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he says, soon the family name of Preston will be
Speaker 1: no more. And then from here we cut to a
Speaker 1: different movie. Now we're in Scanners, though to be fair,
Speaker 1: this was before Scanners. Yeah, we have to go to
Speaker 1: the occult research facility at the nearest University I believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know where this what university is supposed to be,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's like an academic medical setting. And we
Speaker 1: see Joan Prather lying on a table and they say
Speaker 1: that she is consciously controlling the rate of her heartbeat.
Speaker 1: So I guess we should describe the new characters we
Speaker 1: meet in the scene. We meet Eddie Albert as doctor
Speaker 1: Sam Richards, we meet Tom Skarrett as doctor Tom Preston,
Speaker 1: and Joan Prather as Julie Preston. So they're like in
Speaker 1: a university auditorium. They're doing a demonstration of Julie's psychic powers,
Speaker 1: and there is a wonderful nonsense exchange. So the professor,
Speaker 1: Eddie Albert says, there is nothing subconscious that cannot be
Speaker 1: raised to the conscious level, and then a student goes,
Speaker 1: what about parapsychology telepathy. Professor says, yes, I include that
Speaker 1: extrasensory perception. And the student says, doctor Preston, isn't there
Speaker 1: a danger that these experiments could interfere with normal brain activity?
Speaker 1: And Tom Scritt says, no, no, no, We've studied many
Speaker 1: cases like this. There's no reason for concern. If there were,
Speaker 1: believe me, my wife would not be involved. So doctor
Speaker 1: Richard says, you know, you said, yeah, there's no danger,
Speaker 1: only discovery, and that they are finally on the verge
Speaker 1: of discovering quote the brain wave pattern that signifies esp activity,
Speaker 1: and so Julie's I don't know, she's controlling her heartbeat
Speaker 1: and stuff. And she starts reporting her experience. She says,
Speaker 1: it starts with a feeling of absolute calm, as if
Speaker 1: I were drifting into a perfect sleep. It sounds like
Speaker 1: she's kind of describing like a self hypnosis or something.
Speaker 1: And she goes on and mentions a few more things,
Speaker 1: and then eventually she starts seeing things. She says, a
Speaker 1: funny change takes place. There are images and sounds, and
Speaker 1: she sees the Chicago Bulls logo. You know it's it's
Speaker 1: the goat face on the stained glass. And then she
Speaker 1: sees shirtless William Shatner being tortured, and she sees people
Speaker 1: in robes with torches, and she sees Ernest borgnine in
Speaker 1: goat makeup, and she sees herself trapped behind glass being
Speaker 1: rained on, and she suddenly screams. She screams Tom, and
Speaker 1: then Tom Scarrett runs up to her and he says, Julie,
Speaker 1: something's happened to my family. I didn't understand this at all, Like,
Speaker 1: how does he know she's the one who's psychic and
Speaker 1: she hasn't told him yet. Yeah, this whole sequence is
Speaker 1: spawn because it's yeah, it's like, what's going on with her?
Speaker 1: How does he know it? The whole exchange that seems
Speaker 1: like she just has a general case of the paranormals
Speaker 1: and uh, and now she has been awakened some sort
Speaker 1: of insight into what's going on with the colt certainly
Speaker 1: access to scenes from the film that we haven't we
Speaker 1: haven't witnessed yet. Uh So now we have new characters
Speaker 1: in on the hunt. So we cut to the desert. Tom, Julie,
Speaker 1: and doctor Richards all go out to the desert to investigate. First,
Speaker 1: there is a scene with the sheriff played by bat
Speaker 1: Guano played by by Keenan Wynn, and uh, the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: basically like, sorry, I can't help you. There's been a
Speaker 1: storm and we're still rescuing hundreds of people and uh,
Speaker 1: your you know, your folks were probably just killed in
Speaker 1: the storm. There's no chance they were turned into wax
Speaker 1: by an evil culd. So the police are not helping,
Speaker 1: you know. The Preston's are on their They check at
Speaker 1: the house to hear the story of what happened from
Speaker 1: the old Man John. He describes the encounter from earlier,
Speaker 1: and then they find one clue on the ground. There
Speaker 1: is hardened wax out on the sidewalk. Yeah. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: just keep picking at it. Yeah, it's like, you don't
Speaker 1: know what that dripped from. Don't get your hands all
Speaker 1: over that. That's true. Yeah, So they go to Redstone. Oh, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: there is a There are scenes where William Shatner is
Speaker 1: being like sexy tortured by Ernest Borgnine. So he is
Speaker 1: shirtless and wrapped up in chains and borg Nine's taunting him, saying,
Speaker 1: tell me where the book is. You gambled and you lost,
Speaker 1: Give me the book. And then borg nine brings him, Oh,
Speaker 1: a vision of Lilith, the Queen of Delights, who's just
Speaker 1: like a lady, who comes and kisses William Shatner and
Speaker 1: then he's like, oh ha, it was actually your mother
Speaker 1: and she still doesn't have eyes. Tom Scarrett and Julie
Speaker 1: arrive in Redstone and they're looking around checking everything out.
Speaker 1: Seems deserted. They don't run into anybody at first. They
Speaker 1: go and investigate the Devil's Chapel and look all around
Speaker 1: in there, and then Finally, when they're back outside, they
Speaker 1: get attacked by a cult member in a speeding car,
Speaker 1: and there's a big chase and they run into a
Speaker 1: building and they fight and wrestle. I think this is
Speaker 1: John Travolta. Maybe, yeah, I think this is elis John
Speaker 1: Travolta that they encounter. So they beat up John Travolta,
Speaker 1: tie him up, and then then like Julie looks into
Speaker 1: his non eyes and this unlocks a long flashback. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this takes us back three hundred years and gives us
Speaker 1: the origin story of all this culting nonsense that's going on.
Speaker 1: So the short version is that Ernest borg nine Corbus
Speaker 1: once ran a Satanic cult in colonial New England, and
Speaker 1: one of his cult members betrayed him and stole a
Speaker 1: book in which they all wrote down the names of
Speaker 1: those who had pledged their souls to Satan, and Corbus
Speaker 1: wants the book back. He and there the sequence. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of very funny I don't know what
Speaker 1: felt like overuse of these, and thou was I'm not
Speaker 1: an expert on archaic grammars, so maybe they were being
Speaker 1: used correctly, but it felt weird. So borg nine is
Speaker 1: walking around this room full of people kind of cowering
Speaker 1: in fear, and he says, didst one of the fall
Speaker 1: from the favor of Lucifer. Yeah, so I get my
Speaker 1: loose understanding of all this is that he's the devil's man.
Speaker 1: He's maybe not even human. He brings satanic cultism to
Speaker 1: these various pilgrim folks. They get to enjoy the pleasures
Speaker 1: of the flash and so forth, and then he's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm going to take you to the Hell as
Speaker 1: per our original arrangement. And then at least some of
Speaker 1: the cult members were like, it would really be great
Speaker 1: to not do that. We'd rather not go to the hell.
Speaker 1: So why don't we just steal that book that he
Speaker 1: wrote our names in and then we can get buy
Speaker 1: in a technicality, Right then he won't remember which of
Speaker 1: us got the pleasures of the flesh, I guess, so
Speaker 1: he'll he just like can't recall who it was who
Speaker 1: wore shorts, or maybe he needs to produce documentary evidence too,
Speaker 1: Satan in order to fulfill this end of the bargain. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you can't produce a copy of the contract,
Speaker 1: it might as well not exist. Yeah, and a lot
Speaker 1: lawful evil. Oh, and one of these, one of these
Speaker 1: ancient colonial times guys is William Shatner, And I guess
Speaker 1: this is h was Shatner. Martin Fife, the guy who
Speaker 1: borgnine keeps saying this name without explaining what it means. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I guess it's one of these things where everyone we
Speaker 1: see here that's not Ernest borgnine, like their descendants, just
Speaker 1: happen to look like them, as this sometimes the case
Speaker 1: with movies and certainly with damned Bloodlines and so forth.
Speaker 1: And of course, as far as Williams, I mean, as
Speaker 1: far as Ernest Borgnine's Corbus is concerned, he's not really
Speaker 1: a human entity anyway, so he can come back later
Speaker 1: and look just like himself, no problem, right, So they
Speaker 1: eventually revealed that I think it was. It was Aaronnessa,
Speaker 1: the wife of Martin Fife played by Shatner. She is
Speaker 1: the one who stole the book, and she has brought
Speaker 1: an angry pitchfork mob led by the Reverend Claudio Brook Yes,
Speaker 1: and they capture all the Satanists and burn them. And
Speaker 1: so they're they're burning Ernest bourg nine and he, oh,
Speaker 1: he's great in the scene, he's like on the stake laughing.
Speaker 1: He says, think ye, to destroy something stronger than life. Oh,
Speaker 1: and there is a moment where, unless I heard this wrong,
Speaker 1: I think Claudio Brooks says um. He says, you are
Speaker 1: condemned because of your hinneous crimes that you committed. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so oh oh this is also Martin Fife and Aranessa
Speaker 1: are betrayed by Claudio Brooks. So I think she had
Speaker 1: made a deal with him. She's like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I reveal the existence of the Satanic cult. I tell
Speaker 1: you who they are and where to find him. Uh
Speaker 1: and I and I hand over the book or I
Speaker 1: don't know, I take away the book. I don't know
Speaker 1: if she gave him the book but to reveal the
Speaker 1: cult and that her husband would be spared. And nope,
Speaker 1: Claudio brook goes back on his word. He's like, you're
Speaker 1: all gonna burn. Sorry, But I think Corbus sent a
Speaker 1: kid off through a secret passage way with the book
Speaker 1: or something. The book gets away and of course and
Speaker 1: becomes this whole plotline. Why did the Preston's have the book?
Speaker 1: I forget how did they end up with the book?
Speaker 1: Why doesn't Corbus have it? I think it's like the
Speaker 1: family secret, like, hey, guess what, our entire family line,
Speaker 1: our entire bloodline going back three hundred years, is actually damned.
Speaker 1: But as long as the forces of Satan don't get
Speaker 1: this book, then it's like we're not damned. So just
Speaker 1: make sure that nobody comes walking asking around for the book.
Speaker 1: Better put it beneath the floorboards. But physically, how did
Speaker 1: the Preston family end up with it? I think they do,
Speaker 1: maybe say in the movie, but I forgot what. I
Speaker 1: don't understand how that happened. I do not know. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, so they've got the book for some and
Speaker 1: Corbus has wanted it back for hundreds of years. Finally
Speaker 1: he's got them, and he is going to sexy torture
Speaker 1: William Shatner until he gives him the book. And back
Speaker 1: in the present, so you know they've seen all this.
Speaker 1: So Tom Skirrett sends Julie off to h I don't
Speaker 1: know what, get the sheriff or something, and Tom goes back.
Speaker 1: So he's watching the procession of Satan's minions. They're like
Speaker 1: walking through the hills carrying torches. And now does he
Speaker 1: sneak in yet or is that later? No, this is
Speaker 1: where he sneaks in. He because, as we all know,
Speaker 1: to infiltrate any kind of cultic activity, all you need
Speaker 1: to do is put a robe on and nobody will notice. Right,
Speaker 1: he sneaks They don't notice that he still has eyeballs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he kind of sneaks in with them to witness the
Speaker 1: Black Mass. And this is where we see Ernest borgnine
Speaker 1: in goat makeup. So he's got shaggy hair now and
Speaker 1: a billy goat beard and big old rams horns. Uh.
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know if they're rams horns, goat
Speaker 1: horns whatever, you know, horns and uh. And I don't know.
Speaker 1: Comments on good form, oh, just that you know it's
Speaker 1: it's a good look. I like the makeup effects, but
Speaker 1: you're just you're inhibiting Ernest borgnine's acting ability by covering
Speaker 1: up that expressive face of his even a little bit. Well,
Speaker 1: they bring out shirtless Shatner and he is transformed into
Speaker 1: another mask face. They give him the black cloth eyes,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, he's one of them now against his will.
Speaker 1: And I think we see Anton Lavay in the background
Speaker 1: in the scene. He's wearing like a gold helmet that
Speaker 1: actually looks a lot like the motorcycle helmets in Psychomania.
Speaker 1: It is reminiscent of that. We should also mention when
Speaker 1: we start seeing them the hat the eyeless Shatner here.
Speaker 1: This of course will remind some folks of the mask
Speaker 1: from Halloween, and at least there I don't think it's
Speaker 1: hard to really figure this out. I don't think ultimately
Speaker 1: that people making a case that that cast originates from
Speaker 1: this film, but I think that has been claimed in
Speaker 1: the past, So I'm not exactly sure what picture the
Speaker 1: Shatner cast comes from that ultimately becomes the Michael Myers mask,
Speaker 1: but at least some folks have pointed to this film
Speaker 1: as a possible origin point. Certainly, when you see Elis
Speaker 1: William Shatner his face turned into a flesh mask, it
Speaker 1: does bring to mind Michael Myers a little bit. That's
Speaker 1: a really good point, and I can see it there. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: for some reason, Tom Scarrett gets caught, maybe he sees
Speaker 1: his mother or something, but the big fight breaks out,
Speaker 1: he kind of has to blast his way out of there.
Speaker 1: He runs off and escapes. Meanwhile, Julie is captured by
Speaker 1: the cultists, and so the final act is the showdown.
Speaker 1: Tom goes back and meets with doctor Richards and they
Speaker 1: try to figure out what's going on. They've got the
Speaker 1: book now, and they're like looking, they're like reading the
Speaker 1: book and trying to figure out the lore, and they
Speaker 1: read things like I condemn thy soul to the Devil's reign.
Speaker 1: What is the devil's reign? Don't know yet? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we might never know. We get some we get some
Speaker 1: additional evidence, but the jury is still out right. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so let's get to the part with this. So they
Speaker 1: go back to the town and they go to the
Speaker 1: chapel Julie is being inducted into the cult out in
Speaker 1: the wilderness. They go into the chapel while it's empty,
Speaker 1: they find like a like a man hole to Hell
Speaker 1: in the chapel. Is that how you understood it? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Basically they this is time Scarrets of Character has been
Speaker 1: here before and just like they didn't search anything at all.
Speaker 1: I guess this time they do uncover this weird well
Speaker 1: that I yeah, maybe goes to Hell, who knows. But
Speaker 1: in it it has this bizarre artifact that I guess
Speaker 1: looks like a ah, what is this like a large
Speaker 1: vase with a golden goat head on it. It's like
Speaker 1: an orb that contains a television and the show. There's
Speaker 1: like an oval screen that is showing you a TV show,
Speaker 1: and what's on the show is a bunch of people
Speaker 1: standing in the rain and screaming and saying let me out.
Speaker 1: And then on top of the TV, the orb shaped TV,
Speaker 1: there is a golden goat head. And then they refer
Speaker 1: to this the object as the Devil's rain. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: the best I can do is that if you become
Speaker 1: a Satanic cultist serving Corbus, your body becomes a wax
Speaker 1: body because your soul has left your real body and
Speaker 1: your soul is now in some sort of a rainy
Speaker 1: nether realm that is contained within this artifact, and it
Speaker 1: has a screen so people can like watch what's happening
Speaker 1: in that, so you can count and keep track of
Speaker 1: the souls that are inside it. I guess, yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So here's the yeah, the big showdown, so they find this.
Speaker 1: I think doctor Richards runs off with this artifact. I
Speaker 1: don't remember what he's planning to do with it, but
Speaker 1: there's a showdown in the church where Tom Scarrett confronts
Speaker 1: them and they're trying to rescue Julie, and there's a
Speaker 1: big fight, and in the end, the guy who saves
Speaker 1: the day is doctor Richards, the pseudoscientist here comes out
Speaker 1: and he's like, he's like, I've got the Devil's Rain
Speaker 1: and I defeat you, and he smashes it. Oh no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not how it goes down, okay, because he has
Speaker 1: it and he's like, I'll smash it. And then Carves
Speaker 1: is like, get that from this old fool, and so
Speaker 1: they grab it from him. The Shatner's character grabs it.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. But then the doc says, he's like,
Speaker 1: what Shatner's character's name. Mark. He's like, Mark, you don't
Speaker 1: have to do this, Mark, you can end all this suffering.
Speaker 1: And somehow he gets through to the possessed Shatner and
Speaker 1: he smashes it. And then that does I'm not exactly
Speaker 1: sure what. It releases their souls from the Devil's Rain
Speaker 1: the object and makes them susceptible to melting in the
Speaker 1: rain because it then starts to actually rain from the sky.
Speaker 1: And here we get to the most famous scene in
Speaker 1: the movie, the Great Melting, the final melt down. I
Speaker 1: think we need to do a whole little subsection here
Speaker 1: devoted to the final meltdown. So the cultists, it starts
Speaker 1: to rain when that happens, and the cultists all melt,
Speaker 1: and they melt and melt and melt and melt and
Speaker 1: melt and melt. And my memory from the last time
Speaker 1: I saw I saw this movie hold so strong and
Speaker 1: the melting is interminable in a way that took me
Speaker 1: through a whole series of reactions that went on. At first,
Speaker 1: I was like, ah, this is weird, and I was
Speaker 1: greatly enjoying it. Then I started to get bored, Then
Speaker 1: I started to get annoyed. Then I came full circle
Speaker 1: and became just just in filled with respect and admiration
Speaker 1: for the relentlessness of the great melt. Yeah. I remember
Speaker 1: basically how everything goes down pacing wise, So I knew
Speaker 1: that once people started melting, this is what the film
Speaker 1: was now, Yeah, and that I should just roll with
Speaker 1: it and find enjoyment in it. And you know, to
Speaker 1: enjoy the various details of um, you know, of robed
Speaker 1: cultists melting out of their eyeballs, falling and then melting,
Speaker 1: more of of of goat headed corbus melting as he
Speaker 1: struggles with somebody there on the altarpiece. Yeah, there's Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just melt. A melting masterpiece. If you like people
Speaker 1: melting in the multicolored goo, no other film will do
Speaker 1: it for you like this. Oh, and then there's there's
Speaker 1: sort of a stinger, right, so we think all the
Speaker 1: cultists melt, including Ernest borgnine. He melts. He kind of
Speaker 1: like retains his form somewhat as he melts, so he
Speaker 1: didn't just turn into goo. He like his face becomes
Speaker 1: huge and kind of stretches and stuff. Yeah, bulging eye
Speaker 1: looks very gross. And then kind of like topples over
Speaker 1: into the hell well and flames shoot up. So we're
Speaker 1: not we're sort of we think, Okay, I guess he's
Speaker 1: out of it. I think he's defeated. Oh, but then
Speaker 1: we see like a hand come back up. But then
Speaker 1: the church explodes, so maybe he is defeated after all.
Speaker 1: But then we at the end, Julie and Tom are
Speaker 1: hugging and it's like, oh, we've made it through. But
Speaker 1: then it's like revealed that maybe this is a glamor
Speaker 1: and in fact Julie is Ernest borg nine. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: get that. This scene where it's it's Ernest borg nine
Speaker 1: that is hugging Tom Scarrett's character, and he gives us
Speaker 1: this evil grin, and then we cut to that screen
Speaker 1: on the Devil's reigin that object, that urn or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, and who's trapped in there in the rain realm?
Speaker 1: Who's screaming? But Julie and is the credits roll. She
Speaker 1: like keeps screaming, and then there's this like really haunting
Speaker 1: moment where she stops and she's just kind of like
Speaker 1: staring out through the screen at us the viewer, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a creepy moment. Okay, do we need
Speaker 1: to do a dump of lore related questions here because
Speaker 1: we still don't know exactly what is the deal with
Speaker 1: the Devil's Reigin. Oh there's so many questions. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: what what's with the Why does your body become wax? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we do see some sort of like burning of wax affig,
Speaker 1: so I guess there's some sort of loose connection there.
Speaker 1: But I don't know why your body becomes wax. I
Speaker 1: don't know why you don't have eyes. I don't know
Speaker 1: why we call this artifact the Devil's Rain. I don't
Speaker 1: know that the rain that melts waxy satanists. Is this
Speaker 1: the devil's reign as well? Or is this like the
Speaker 1: divine rain? I'm not sure? And then even like Devil's ragin,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? I was like doing some searches,
Speaker 1: and I found some just off allusions to the devil's
Speaker 1: reign and some pre existing literature like once and some
Speaker 1: sort of religious poem and maybe as a turn of phrase,
Speaker 1: talking about like a really heavy rain. So but but
Speaker 1: nothing that where I was like, oh, well, this is
Speaker 1: clearly what one should infer from the words the Devil's ragin.
Speaker 1: So the devil's reign is the orb that has the
Speaker 1: soul TV inside it, and when they smash it, it
Speaker 1: suddenly starts raining from the sky. So like the orb
Speaker 1: is not literally rain, there is literal rain, but nobody
Speaker 1: evercalls that the devil's rain, and that rain melts the
Speaker 1: devil's devotees, right, which of course doesn't. Also it also
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense why would rain melt wax? Rain doesn't
Speaker 1: melt wax. Rain, if anything, should solidifyt wax. That's melting.
Speaker 1: And again they already have liquid wax in them, which
Speaker 1: you see when they are shot. So that's right, it's
Speaker 1: a complete dream logic. Why did the dude at the
Speaker 1: beginning melt the house? If Steve shows up at the
Speaker 1: house and he's just melting like they hadn't smashed the
Speaker 1: Devil's Rain, the object at that point, oh I can
Speaker 1: think of is like it's the ultimate Melt movie and
Speaker 1: you want to give him a taste of what they're
Speaker 1: gonna stick around for if they've watched the full film,
Speaker 1: because I think some of the trailer, I think even
Speaker 1: the trailer we listen to, they're like, you've got to
Speaker 1: see the finale to this picture. Don't leave this one early.
Speaker 1: If you can come late, but don't leave early. Okay, Rob,
Speaker 1: If I give you the job of being the cannon
Speaker 1: master of the Devil's you are now the sole editor
Speaker 1: of the Devil's Reign. Wikia, can you make sense to
Speaker 1: try to just spell out the lore for me? How
Speaker 1: does the Devil's Reign work? I mean, as best I
Speaker 1: can tell is you know we went through the part
Speaker 1: already where I guess you know Satan has a deal
Speaker 1: for you. Plage your soul to him, get those earthly delights,
Speaker 1: and then Corbus will take you to the hell. But
Speaker 1: three hundred years ago, the Coltists say, okay, well, we've
Speaker 1: had the earthly delights, we don't want to go to
Speaker 1: the hell. Let's just keep that magic book out of
Speaker 1: Corbus's hands, and then he can't take us to the hell.
Speaker 1: But then, you know, when we get the witch hunters
Speaker 1: show up, things get disrupted, and then the Preston family
Speaker 1: is able to make off with the book. So at
Speaker 1: some point though Corbus is going to catch wind of
Speaker 1: them again. He's i aided by eyelas wax servants while
Speaker 1: the souls of these people are trapped inside that kind
Speaker 1: of soul repository that we keep calling the Devil's Reign.
Speaker 1: The Coltists make another go at keeping the book from Corbus.
Speaker 1: Ultimately they end up having the opportunity to destroy the
Speaker 1: Devil's Reign object and this causes Corbus and his followers
Speaker 1: to melt in the rain. The actual weather event rain,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't completely work, as Corbus survives, takes on
Speaker 1: the guys of Joan Preston, seduces Tom Scarrett's character, and
Speaker 1: Joan winds up trapped in the Devil's Rain. And then
Speaker 1: I guess the search for the book continues, or maybe
Speaker 1: there's nobody left to search for the book. The Preston
Speaker 1: family is destroyed, but I don't know if he gets
Speaker 1: to take anybody other than Joan to Hell at this point. Wait,
Speaker 1: I think you're mixing up the actress and the character's names.
Speaker 1: Is Julie Preston, right, I'm sorry, Julie Preston? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe Julie is the only Preston that gets to
Speaker 1: go to hell. Maybe everyone else got to escape their damnation.
Speaker 1: That's my best bet. That's all I got. Ultimately, though,
Speaker 1: the real hero is parapsychology, esp and telepathy in the
Speaker 1: form of doctor Richards. Here. Yeah, the doctor Richards survived
Speaker 1: and probably published some papers on this, that's right. And
Speaker 1: uh and and I don't know, maybe maybe there's a
Speaker 1: there's a whole sequel that never was out there in
Speaker 1: which he studies, uh, the artifact the Devil's Rain. He'd like,
Speaker 1: you know, glues it back together again. Or I guess
Speaker 1: it was never destroyed because she's still stuck in it
Speaker 1: proved the existence of the Devil's Rain once and for all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I don't recommend trying to make sense of any
Speaker 1: of this but um as just a in illogical nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies weird satanic horror spectacle. Um, I think it's it's
Speaker 1: very engaging. I respect the way that the collar of
Speaker 1: Tom Skerrett's shirt is on the outside of the collar
Speaker 1: of his jacket. That's that that thumbs up from me. Well,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Do you
Speaker 1: have an analysis on what's happening in The Devil's Reign?
Speaker 1: Do you have some clarity on on the theology of
Speaker 1: this movie? We would we'd love to hear from you
Speaker 1: if you do, you have memories of seeing this in
Speaker 1: the theater and the drive in back in the day,
Speaker 1: or catching it on television and chunks like like I did,
Speaker 1: and wondering what in the world am I watching? Yeah,
Speaker 1: right in, we'd love to hear from you. Just a
Speaker 1: reminder that Weird House Cinema. That's our Friday episode when
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns and just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film. But we're primarily a science podcast with
Speaker 1: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays Core. Those are our
Speaker 1: core episodes, and then on Wednesdays we do a short
Speaker 1: form artifact or monster fact episode on Mondays. We do
Speaker 1: listener mail and if you want a complete list of
Speaker 1: all the movies that we've covered on Weird House Cinema, well,
Speaker 1: you can go to letterbox dot com. It's l tt
Speaker 1: r boxd dot com. We have a user name on there,
Speaker 1: it's weird House, and we have a list of all
Speaker 1: the movies we've covered, and sometimes there's a peak ahead
Speaker 1: at while we're covering the following week. Huge thanks to
Speaker 1: our audio producer jj Pauseway. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: intact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
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