True story: before watching this film, one thing lead to another and I ended up dropping the disk down the toilet. Naturally, I wasn't pleased and after drying it out, I hoped it would still work. As it happens, it did work; but ironically, it turns out that down the bog was actually the best place for it. Needless to say, The Devil's Rain is an atrociously terrible slice of Satanism that isn't even saved by some extremely trashy 'melting' scenes. The plot actually isn't that bad - at least not by trash flick standards - but it's not well used and the resulting film feels messy and like it could have been so much more. The plot focuses on a group of Satan worshippers who have the power to call for rain, which melts people. The leader of this group is a man named Jonathan Corbis. He spends all his free time looking for an old book stolen by the Preston family. After tracking down the family and killing the father (with his rain), Corbin focuses his attention on the son, Mark Preston.
The most surprising thing about this film is the cast. The Devil's Rain features a handful of performances from good, established performers...and it kind of makes you wonder what they were thinking when they signed up. Ernest Borgnine stands out the most in his role as Jonathan Corbis, but it's for all the wrong reasons. Borgnine is pure ham as the leader of the Satanic cult, and ends up looking silly with goat horns at the end! William Shatner also makes an appearance as the good guy and the rest of the cast is filled out by the likes of Tom Skerritt, Ida Lupino and John Travolta, in a small early role. The film is fairly gory and doesn't hold back with the melting scenes; but it all feels very silly and therefore doesn't make much an impact. The fact that the scenes where people aren't melting are boring doesn't exactly help things either. The plot is barely given any weight, and the tagline's claim of 'Absolutely the most incredible ending of any motion picture' seems only to be referring to Borgnine looking like a fool! Overall, this might appeal to some people...but it didn't do anything for me!