The Devil's Rain (1975)

At some point in the mid-1970s, my memories of seeing movies at the drive-in shift from the Enid Drive-In out by the fairgrounds, to the Trail Drive-In on the south side of town.  I don’t know if it was a new facility or if both remained in operation at the same time, but I definitely remember the Trail being the “nicer” of the two.  One of the first movies I saw there was The Devil’s Rain.  I didn’t like it in the summer of 1975 and I don’t like it much now.

The Trail Drive-In circa 2007, long after closing.

The Devil’s Rain is one of the slowest, most boring horror movies I’ve ever seen.  It’s not trashy, though, like Dracula vs. Frankenstein.  Somehow, I think its intentions are better.  And it does have some excellent makeup and special effects.  For some reason, I watch it every few years, either forgetting that it’s not that great a movie or just wanting to have something on in the background while I’m doing other things.

The movie opens by throwing us right into the middle of what little plot there is.  There’s no explanation; it’s like we walked into the room in the middle of a conversation and have to figure out what’s happening.  During the first 30 minutes of The Devil’s Rain, the primary focus is a long discussion about some book, who has it, and who wants it.  Then, Mark Preston (William Shatner) confronts Jonathan Corbis (Ernest Borgnine) about it.

I guess it’s common knowledge that Corbis leads a Satanist congregation, representing evil, and Preston is a solid family man, representing good.  They agree to a “challenge of faith.”  If Preston wins, he gets to leave with his parents, who are being held captive.  If he loses, he must surrender the book to Corbis.  I guess that sounds like quite a bit of exposition, but it drags.  It’s all talk and no action.

The movie then shifts to Dr. Sam Richards (Eddie Albert), who is performing experiments to “identify ESP activity.”  His subject is Mark’s sister-in-law, Julie (Joan Prather), who is experiencing visions related to the history of Corbis and his church.  Her husband, Tom (Tom Skerritt) enters the picture from nowhere and becomes the new hero of the story because Mark has become one of Corbis’s victims.

Julie has a lengthy flashback that reveals a centuries long “feud” between Corbis and the Prestons.  In 1680, Corbis was identified as a witch and burned at the stake, swearing vengeance upon the Prestons and their ancestors.  Flash forward to the present where Corbis performs a ceremony.  He gets so into it that he transforms into a goat-like demon.  Tom, bowl haircut and all, infiltrates the ceremony, but is able to escape.  And so on, and so on…

The movie doesn’t dig any deeper for explanations of any of its nonsense.  In fact, when someone asks Dr. Richards why Corbis waited 300 years to come back, he ignores the issue by replying, “You’ll never know.”  Let’s move on.  He’s the one who has the final confrontation with Corbis, telling him he wants Tom and Judy Preston or he will destroy “the devil’s rain,” the vessel of souls that Corbis has stolen.  Richards shouts to the minions, “Without the devil’s rain, he has no hold over you.  Break the bottle!”

It may seem like I’ve told you the entire story.  I’m sorry, but I believe I have.  That’s about all that happens.  However, as I review Wikipedia for plot points, it’s as if whoever wrote their article saw a different movie than I did.  There are details in that summary that I just didn’t get by watching the movie and making my own notes.  I’d say they’re subtle points, but nothing about The Devil’s Rain seems subtle to me.

Especially the ending…  The effect of Corbis’s acolytes melting in the rain is quite spectacular.  However, there are 10 full minutes of it and that is just too much.  How many different ways can we look at people’s faces dripping off their bodies, as if a hose is washing away clay?  It’s indicative of the entire movie: what could have been done briefly is stretched out three times longer than necessary.

This is a real disappointment considering that The Devil’s Rain was directed by Robert Fuest, who also directed one of the best movies I’ve discussed this month, The Abominable Dr. Phibes.  It took three writers to come up with this mess, so let’s blame Gabe Essoe, James Ashton and Gerald Hopman.  There aren’t many credits to their names and I bet there’s a reason for that.

Tomorrow:  Godzilla vs. Megalon!

Race with the Devil (1975)

If you mixed two parts Smokey & the Bandit with one part Rosemary's Baby, and added just a pinch of Duel, you'd concoct a movie like Race with the Devil.  It's not exactly a horror movie, but has at its core a violent satanic ritual.  When two vacationing couples witness this ritual, they are subsequently terrorized on what becomes a road trip from hell.  It's not scary, per se, but is nevertheless an edge of your seat action thriller.

If there characters were written in 2014, Frank and Alice (Warren Oates, Loretta Swit) and Roger and Kelly (Peter Fonda, Lara Parker) would be stereotypical NASCAR fans.  They're good American people who enjoy their liquor and the great outdoors.  They're the kind of folks I imagine sitting under the stars with their friends, feeling more than a slight buzz and posting on Facebook, "Life is good."  They're also the kind of folks who would be more likely to believe they're watching an orgy than a human sacrifice.

In a state of the art RV (by mid-70s standards), the four travelers have everything they need.  As Frank states, "We don’t need anything from anybody.  We are self-contained."  They drive down their "own private road to seclusion", oblivious about what's at the end of it.  But they're soon speeding back up the road, with cult members in hot pursuit.  Explaining to the wives what they saw, Frank says, "Murder.  No joke, no kidding, no bullshit.  Murder."

From here through the end of the movie, everyone they encounter is a potential cult member, from the sheriff who wants to write off the incident as a result of the men's irresponsibility to the elderly patrons at the swimming pool of an RV park.  No gas station attendant or mechanic is above suspicion (and no telephone works.)  The cult is relentless, climbing all over the moving RV, planting rattlesnakes inside it and (spoiler alert) killing poor Ginger, Kelly's cute little dog.

I find great pleasure in Race with the Devil every time I watch it.  Recently, I got a smile from a particular scene between the two women.  Lara Parker played the witch Angelique in Dark Shadows.  So, when Loretta Swit asks her what a "rune" is and she is able to instantly explain, I think it's funny.  Of course, she of all people would know all about witchcraft!  (That's not part of the movie, though.  Parker's Kelly is the one most traumatized by the experience.)

The stuntmen in Race with the Devil must have had a huge payday after filming the last part of the movie.  As the RV gets pinned between a box van and a tow truck on the highway ands a detour takes our heroes to meet their fate, vehicles crash, burn and fly over bridges.  While catching their breath at the end a desolate road, Frank says, "Lighten up.  It's all over."  Famous last words, I guess.  There are two minutes left in the movie, plenty of time for a twist.

Not a great movie by any means, Race with the Devil is inexplicably entertaining for me.  There are bar fights, explosions and car chases.  Absolutely no thought is required.  Watching it makes me want to sit back, relax and crack open a Busch Lite.  Boy howdy, I mean to tell you, there ain't nothin' wrong with that.  Life is good… 

Tomorrow:  The Devil's Rain!

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975)

Here’s one of the things wrong with the United States.  Except for Sisters and The Exorcist, every movie I’ve discussed this month was rated PG (or GP, the equivalent at the time) when it was first released in theaters.  These movies contained brutal deaths by hacksaws, hatchets and knives, vicious attacks by rats, snakes and spiders, and gruesome depictions of brain surgery, vampire bites and premeditated murder.  One of them even foretold the destruction of Earth by nuclear bomb, and it was rated G!  We didn’t mind that “general audiences” watched these movies; or, at the strictest, watched them under “parental guidance.”

Throw sex into the mix, though, and the movie was automatically rated R.  Do you realize what that suggests?  It’s perfectly fine for our children to witness violence, but heaven forbid they witness the most natural act of nature.  It’s no wonder that we live in such a violent society and so many people have hang-ups about sex.  Take, for example, the 1975 movie, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud.  There’s nothing scary about it.  Oh, it’s a decent thriller, but (heaven forbid!) there’s frequent nudity, tastefully filmed scenes of mutually consensual intercourse, and a scene where Margot Kidder plays with herself in the bathtub.

This movie caused some controversy in the Owens household that lingers to this day.  I remember it being another one of those movies that, based on the TV commercials, I really wanted to see.  It was a fairly big thing for a parent to take his or her child to an R-rated movie, I guess.  My mother addressed her specific concerns with me.  They came primarily from the fact that Jennifer O’Neill, one of the stars of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, had previously starred in Summer of ’42, in a very adult, sexual role.  She eventually relented and I distinctly recall sitting with her at a weekday matinee in Oklahoma City.

My mother doesn’t remember any of the stories I’ve been telling this month; however, she remembers taking me to see The Reincarnation of Peter Proud.  She recently told me how uncomfortable she felt, especially when we left the theater and she got the evil eye from several older women in the lobby.  My brother, who would have been five years old at the time remembers the controversy over the movie and being told there was “no way” he was going to be able to see it.  All this over a little sex.  How is that so harmful?  I wonder if it’s because, in general, "we" are uncomfortable talking about sex.

So, was all the controversy worth it?  What kind of movie is The Reincarnation of Peter Proud today?  I quite like it.  I think my only issue with a child seeing it is that he or she would probably find it boring.  It’s fairly talky, there’s not a lot of action and the subject matter is a little (dare I say) intellectual.

The movie opens with a vivid dream of a man’s murder in a lake.  College professor Peter Proud (Michael Sarrazin) wakes up in a cold sweat and his girlfriend, Nora (Cornelia Sharpe) says, “Jesus, I thought I was sleeping with another man.”  Little does she know how right she is.  Peter comes to believe that he is the reincarnation of the murdered man.  Investigating the phenomenon at an occult bookstore, he asks for books on reincarnation.  The clerk points him towards Edgar Cayce and says, “Everyone’s into it these days.”

I can vouch for that.  In the mid-70s, reincarnation was a popular subject.  It wasn’t only horror movies (Audrey Rose, The Manitou, Night of Dark Shadows) that dealt with reincarnation, but also two of the decade’s most popular comedies (All of Me and Heaven Can Wait).  As a teenager, I read Cayce and became quite interested in the idea of reincarnation.  (It doesn’t seem that I hear much about it these days; I think time travel has replaced it as the fantastical pop culture “concept du jour.”)

The entire movie is about Peter discovering "who he is."  Spotting a familiar town on the local news, he travels to Massachusetts to find it.  Once there, as more memories return, the dreams go away (except for the one pestering murder in the lake dream).  He ultimately learns he is the reincarnation of Jeffrey Curtis, a philandering husband to the daughter of a rich banker.  It was his wife, Marcia (Margot Kidder) who beaned him on the head with an oar in the lake nearly 30 years ago.

Curtis apparently had a three-month old daughter at the time.  When he meets the grown woman, Ann (Jennifer O’Neill), he falls in love with her.  Here is where the primary conflict of the movie arises.  If yo think about it, as Peter becomes more in touch with his previous self, he'd actually be sleeping with his own daughter.  The movie doesn’t shy away from that awkwardness.  He acknowledges it.  Sam (Paul Hecht), the parapsychologist who’s been helping him acknowledges it.

I like the way The Reincarnation of Peter Proud handles this.  First, Peter is repulsed by kissing her; he knows it could be considered incestuous.  Then, Sam reminds him how inappropriate it is.  But the relationship is really just part of the process of Peter discovering himself.  Although he is the reincarnation of Jeffrey Curtis, that isn’t who he is now.  I think falling in love with Ann is what helps him eventually accept what is happening to him and reconcile the inner turmoil.

(Spoiler alert.)  Not that Peter is going to be around very much longer to have to reconcile anything.  Marica is alive and well, albeit an alcoholic.  Peter’s mannerisms and outbursts convince her that Jeffrey has come back to torment her.  Remember, she did kill him once.  I wonder if the ending of the movie, besides being a real downer, is making a statement that Peter’s relationship with Ann was wrong after all.  I’m certain the filmmakers wanted to take that stance, lest they be accused of saying incest is OK.

There’s one aspect I think could have elevated The Reincarnation of Peter Proud from a good movie to a great one.  It’s the dreams themselves.  Early in the movie, it’s discovered through a sleep study that Peter isn’t dreaming at all.  In fact, without the release that dreaming provides on a regular basis, he could begin to have serious psychological issues.  But this concept is not fully explored.  I think it could have been more of a reason to motivate Peter.  Instead, it’s just kind of a throwaway idea.

What about the sex?  As you can imagine, it’s very tame by today’s standards.  It is, however, very matter of fact.  Peter and Nora talk about it openly; apparently he’s a tiger in the sack.  The repeated scenes of the build-up to Jeffrey Curtis’s murder include nudity, both male and female.  When it finally happens between Peter and Ann, it’s actually the most tasteful scene in the movie.  What about Margot masturbating in the bathtub?  The scene actually goes a long way toward explaining her motivations and is not salacious or titillating in any way.

In 2014, I still think reincarnation is a fascinating subject.  Have we lived other lives?  Is our purpose on Earth to finally achieve some type of enlightenment so that we may ultimately pass to another consciousness?  Whether or not you believe in an afterlife, it’s a more comforting thought than believing we simply cease to exist.  I’m not the only one who thinks about it, it seems.  A remake of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is in development.  I don’t see how it could be as controversial as this one was forty years ago.  But I sure hope it will be as entertaining.

Tomorrow:  Race with the Devil!

The Stepford Wives (1975)

Urban Dictionary defines “Stepford Wife” as a term “used to describe a servile, compliant, submissive, spineless wife who happily does her husband’s bidding and serves his every whim dutifully.”  The 1975 movie, The Stepford Wives, based on Ira Levin’s novel, would probably add to that definition that these women also give their husbands the best sex of their lives, even (heaven forbid) in the middle of the afternoon.

The term is engrained in our society, usually with negative connotations. Nobody wants to be a Stepford Wife.  We all want to believe we have free will and can experience our own thoughts and emotions.  It’s a terrifying notion that someone could take that away from us.  If you’ve never seen the original movie (and I pray you’ve never seen the awful remake), you may not really understand how effective it was, especially in the mid-70s, at bringing this term into our consciousness.

When researching this post, I happened upon another term with which I was not familiar:  cult of domesticity.  This was a prevailing value system in the 19^th century among the upper and middle classes in the United States and Great Britain.  It maintained that “true women” should possess four virtues: piety, purity, submission and domesticity.  At various times in history, women have advocated for their rights and the cult of comesticity ceased to exist.

In the 1950s though, it rose again when television began to portray women as stay at home mothers.  The cult of domesticity shaped an idealized myth about family and the woman’s role within it.  The women’s liberation movement in the 1970s was another period of rebellion for the gender and The Stepford Wives was a brilliant satire on the phenomenon.  Annoyed by their wives, the men of a seemingly idyllic town create a literal cult of domesticity by replacing them with robots.

Where do the members of the “men’s association” come from and how did they coincidentally converge in Stepford?  I mean, one of them used to work for Disney (whom I assume designed animatronics), one of them is a famous artist (whom I assume helps create the lifelike features of the robots) and one of them is conducting a speech study (which I know for a fact is a ruse for collecting the sound files for the robots, with the exception of the word “archaic,” it seems.)

Walter Eberhart (Peter Masterson) is merely a lawyer.  But he moves his wife and two children from the hustle and bustle of New York City to a suburban community where “you don’t even have to lock your doors.”  It doesn’t take long for him to join the Men’s Association and see the potential value of replacing his wife with a robot, particularly when she is so darned independent and opinionated.  Just leave him alone and let him do his work, dammit!

And it doesn’t take his wife Joanna (Katherine Ross) very long to figure out something fishy is going on in Stepford.  When an equally independent and opinionated woman moves to town with her husband, the two women find a common bond in trying to figure out what the hell is going on.  Bobbie Markowe (Paula Prentiss) comes to the conclusion that there’s something in the water.  She’s afraid Joanna won’t believe her theory, which is funny because it’s less fantastical than the truth.

(Spoiler alert.)  What does it say about the cult of domesticity that things don’t end well for Joanna?  Not only does it provide a downer of an ending, even though I love the dark sci-fi outcome, but it may also state that no matter how much women want the same opportunities as men, their place is really just in the home.  You’d think Levin might be sexist, perhaps misogynistic, but that’s not the tone of The Stepford Wives.  It doesn’t take itself that seriously.

But it is a seriously fun movie.  I’ve already alluded that it’s terrifying and satirical, but it’s also a brilliant suspense thriller.  When Joanna and Bobbie meet Charmaine, she’s a normal, tennis-playing housewife who agrees to help them establish a women’s equivalent to the men’s association.  But a couple days later, the tennis court is being torn up to make room for her husband’s swimming pool and Charmaine is more concerned with cleaning and baking.

Joanna feels ultimate despair, though, when Bobbie is converted.  More than anyone, Bobbie represents the humanity that’s lost when these women become robots.  It’s a huge loss for a woman who feels trapped in her surroundings, and it’s a huge loss for an audience who loves this wacky woman.  (Prentiss is wonderful as Bobbie.  I became a huge fan of the actress after seeing The Stepford Wives.)  Even the fate of Bobbie’s robot is heartbreaking in the context of the movie.

 

Besides the psychological terror described, the finale of The Stepford Wives is physically scary as Joanna goes to the men’s association (which happens to be an old, dark house) on a stormy night to retrieve her children, but instead meets her fate.  Confronting the leader, she asks, “Why.”  To which he replies, not in endless, moustache-twirling villain-speak, but with a simply statement that is infinitely more effective, “Because we can.”

Firmly planted in our pop culture landscape, The Stepford Wives spawned three TV movie sequels, Revenge of the Stepford Wives, The Stepford Children, and even a gender reversed version called The Stepford Husbands.  None were nearly as enjoyable as the original.  Nor was the 2004 remake.  (Although at the time The Stepford Wives was ripe for an update, or even an all-out spoof, the remake succeeded in being neither.)  Forget all of those, but don’t forget the original.

Tomorrow:  The Reincarnation of Peter Proud!