Like nearly every other genre director in the Old Country, Amando De Ossorio had a possession movie in him and if their films feel purer than their American counterparts, it may be because they’re all true believers, raised in countries that had way more religion in their blood than the freer — and yet often more repressed — New World.
Our titular demon witch child is possessed by a witch named Mother Gautère (Kali Hansa) who starts this movie off by destroying a church, stealing a chalice and killing herself in the name of Satan by jumping out of a police station window rather than revealing where the baby she’s kidnapped is, telling the forces of law and order that the child would be dead by the time they found it. Meanwhile, young Susan (Marián Salgado), the daughter of head inspector Barnes (Angel del Pozo) is given a pendant that instantly begins her possession. Avoid all gifts from hippies as you would tanis root from old Hollywood actors.
Perhaps she can be saved by Father Juan (Julian Mateos), the priest who left behind love and condemned a good woman to a broken heart and a life on the streets? Or maybe the maid Anne (Lone Fleming) can get through to her. Well, no on either account and young Susan neatly slices off the penis of Anne’s lover and presents it to her in a napkin, along with crawling the walls like a prepubescent Dracula.
What strange coincidence that when The Exorcist came to Spain, Salgado was the voice of Linda Blair.
Homosexual fashion designer Bruce Wilson (Stephen Strucker, Johnny the air traffic controller from Airplane!), sexed up Dick Peters (Bob Minor) and Carl C. Clooney (Michael Pataki) escape the insane asylum and work their way into a girls’ school. Still, instead of this being a revengeomatic, it’s a comedy.
The Delinquent School Girls cut of this film missed the first half hour and all of George “Buck” Flower’s scenes that were in the Carnal Madness version. It was also released in the UK as Scrubbers 2 to cash in on the girl school movie Scrubbers and as Sizzlers as part of a double feature with Intimate Games.
Directed by Greg Corarito (who directed The Sadistic Hypnotist and Hard On the Trail, the adult film that sent Lash LaRue on a journey of redemption), who wrote the movie with John Lamb (Mondo Keyhole, Zodiac Killer), Maurie Smith (who wrote Recruits and Julie Darling), it starts with the men visiting the farm of Earl (George “Buck” Flower) and his wife Ellie (Julie Gant), who ends up in bed with Dick, a former baseball play r. Then, it’s off to the school where the girls end up kicking their asses more often than not, and Pataki gets to show his skill at impressions.
As for the girls, there’s Colleen Brennan (AKA Sharon Kelly, Olga Vault; she’s also in Supervixensand Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS), magazine starlet Roberta Pedon and several attractive actresses who made this their only movie. Brennan said of this movie, “I always wondered how anybody managed to pull a movie out of that reeking pile of short ends.”
September Drive-In Super Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre, September 19 and 20, 2025. Two big nights with four feature films each night include:
Friday, September 19: Mark of the Devil, The Sentinel, The Devil’s Rain and Devil Times Five
September 20: The Omega Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Grindhouse Releasing 4K restoration drive-in premiere of S.F. Brownrigg’s Scum of the Earth and Eaten Alive
Admission is $15 per person each night (children 12 and under – accompanied by an adult guardian – are admitted free). Overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $20 a person per night. Advance online tickets (highly recommended) for both movies and camping here: https://www.riversidedrivein.com/shop/
The Devil’s Rain! is a movie that could only have been made in 1975. It united old Hollywood royalty, television stars, the visionary director of The Abominable Dr. Phibes and the Church of Satan in the Mexican desert.
It is not a perfect movie. You can’t even say that it has plot holes, as that would require something of a coherent plot—a fact director Robert Fuest was all too aware of. On the sparkling commentary track that accompanies the new Blu-ray release from Severin (picked up from the Dark Sky DVD release), he speaks about discussions with the writers (Gabe Essoe, James Ashton and Gerald Hopman, whose only credit is co-producing Evilspeak, so one assumes that he is Satan) where they assured him that the script made perfect sense. While Fuest claims that he did what he could to clear up his issues with the film, a movie that effectively decimated his promising directorial career emerged.
But you know what? I embrace plot holes the way some critics hold dearly onto their Criterion collection films and back issues of Premiere. There’s no way I can be objective about The Devil’s Rain! The only box it doesn’t check for me is a disclaimer stating that it’s based on a true story.
The film begins with close-ups of Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, along with the wails of the damned as they gnash their teeth in Hell. Then, we’re dropped into the lives of the Preston family, who have suffered under a curse for hundreds of years.
Turns out that at some point in the 18th century, the family screwed over Jonathan Corbis (Ernest Borgnine, Escape from New York), a Satanist who was eventually burned at the stake. He had a book containing the souls of all he had damned, which was stolen by Martin Fyfe (William Shatner, who I don’t need to tell you anything else about). Before he dies, Corbis vows revenge on the Fyfe family, which changes its name to Preston. He’s been stealing them one by one, selling their souls to Satan and trapping them in the devil’s rain. They then become living wax figures with melting eyes and black robes.
That’s how we meet Steve Preston, the leader of the family, who has escaped Corbis to warn his wife (Ida Lupino, an actress and director known for noir classics like The Bigamist and On Dangerous Ground. She often referred to herself as the poor man’s Bette Davis, as she was usually offered the parts that Davis had turned down. She refused those parts so many times that Warner Bros. suspended her, so she used that time to learn the craft of directing on set. As roles for her slowed, she became the second female director admitted to the Director’s Guild, following Dorothy Arzner, the sole woman director of Hollywood’s “Golden Age.”) and son, Mark (also Shatner). As the old man tells them to return the Book of Souls, he melts in the rain.
So what does Mark do? He takes the book directly to Corbis, challenging him to a battle of faith in the desert. That battle quickly turns into Mark trying to escape, but Corbis’ disciples are too much for him. He shows a cross to the priest, who transforms it into a snake before using a ritual to erase Mark’s memory in preparation for a major ceremony.
Oh, the 1970s — when your main character gets wiped out minutes into a movie because he has to leave town for a three-day Star Trek convention in New York. That really happened, and I have no idea if that was why Shatner went from hero to geek in such record time.
Mark’s older brother Tom (Tom Skerritt, Alien) and his wife, Julie, must save the day. Oh yeah — they also have Dr. Sam Richards (Eddie Albert from TV’s Green Acres) along for the ride, as he’s a psychic researcher.
Finding Corbis’ church, Mark watches the ceremony that converts his brother into a wax follower. Anton LaVey shows up under a hood, and Corbis turns into a goat, which is an event that sent me scrambling through our living room in a paroxysm of glee. The Severin release also contains interviews with the Church of Satan’s High Priest Peter H. Gilmore, High Priestess Peggy Nadramia and LaVey’s wife and biographer Blanche Barton, all of whom share anecdotes of the Black Pope’s time on the set (indeed, it seems to be a madcap time by studying the photos they show, with LaVey in a jaunty leather cap smiling like a child on Walpurgisnacht) and input on the film. He’s nearly caught, but also discovers that the source of Corbis’ power is the devil’s rain, a glass bottle containing the souls that the priest has captured.
But wait — if he has the devil’s rain, why did he need the book? If he came back to life, why does he need revenge? Look — perhaps these questions will derail your enjoyment of The Devil’s Rain! But not me.
During the final battle — the film moves incredibly fast, making ninety minutes feel like half an hour — the devil’s rain is destroyed by Mark, who finds his lost humanity. Then, it starts to rain.
I love how the advertising for this film states that this is “absolutely the most incredible ending of any motion picture ever!” They aren’t lying. Corbis and his followers melt for nearly ten minutes of special effects, turning into piles of goop. It’s over the top and ridiculous and extraneous and totally awesome. I use this kind of scene to determine if I can be friends with someone. If you dismiss it, you’ll never share a beer with me.
Producer Sandy Howard (who was also responsible for Meteor, Blue Monkeyand the A Man Called Horse series) based his whole ad campaign around the end of the film, so he took over the final cut to ensure that this sequence would last and last.
Tom and his wife — whose ESP is the sole reason we can see the flashbacks to know why Corbis is doing what he does — make it out alive, but as he embraces his wife, we know that he’s really hugging Ernest Borgnine! Where’s his wife? Trapped in the devil’s rain, in a scene that comes back at the end of the credits that is harrowing as she looks out into the darkness with no hope.
Is The Devil’s Rain! a good movie? Well, that depends on your perspective. Despite the flimsy plot, Fuest succeeds at delivering plenty of pure weirdness and gorgeous visuals. And there’s so much talent on the screen — I didn’t even mention that this is one of John Travolta’s first films and that Keenan Wynn (Piranha, Laserblast) shows up as the sheriff.
Plus, like all 70s occult movies, plenty of legends are behind the film. Like Ernest Borgnine claiming that there were so many accidents on set that he’d never work on a Satanic movie again. Or he was saying that the Mafia produced the film and that he was never paid. Cinefantastique magazine even wrote that Fuest had suffered a nervous breakdown during the making of the movie, a fact he disputes on the commentary track. And LaVey claimed that he did a special success ritual for Travolta.
PS – Here’s the link to a June 1975 Argosy interview with LaVey during the filming of The Devil’s Rain! where he discusses buying the panties of “MGM’s most famous stars- from Greer Garson to Liz Taylor – with the labels still on them,” being minimized on movie sets and Ernest Borgnine accepting an honorary priesthood.
Here’s a drink:
Fell Out of Heaven
1 oz. amaretto
1 oz. Malibu rum
1 oz. Midori
6 oz. pineapple juice
Pour all ingredients over ice. Stir and say these words: “O Mighty light and burning flame of comfort, enter this body and cleanse it of its unworthy soul.” Drink.
Sept 8-14 Sketchy Comedy Week: “…plotless satires, many of which were only excuses for drug humor or gratuitous nudity sprinkled with the cheapest of gags. The typical form was a channel-changing structure, which would go from one sketch to the next under the premise that this was just another night at home watching the old boob tube. The medium is the message, baby!”
Vincent Canby said it was, “a collection of witless blackout sketches dealing with infidelity, wedding nights, impotence and masturbation, played by a small cast of not very talented actors.”
Gene Siskel called it a “sleazy, unfunny sec comedy” that was so bad that a no refunds sign was posted.
It was a dog of the week five years after it was released because it had staying power.
Yes, it’s If You Don’t Stop It…You’ll Go Blind!!!, which was followed by Can I Do It…’Til I Need Glasses? Directed by Keefe Brasselle, the star of The Eddie Cantor Story, who plays himself in this, and I. Robert Levy, the idea is that there’s the World Society of Sexual Arts and Science, and each year, they give away the World Sex Awards. You know, the Dildies.
Tallie Cochrane was out of town, and when she returned, her husband allowed producer Michael Callie to film in their home. The production crew saw her and asked who she was. She said, “I live here.” When the actress no-showed her nude scene, Tallie ended up being the woman stuck on the toilet seat. She was also in Wam Bam Thank YoU Spaceman.
A lot of reviews of this movie say that most of the cast were one-and-done actresses just in it for nudity, but they didn’t look into the depths as deep as I did. Maybe I wasted my time. You tell me.
First off, Uschi Digard is in it as “various big-breasted characters.” She’s in the king of these movies, The Kentucky Fried Movie, as one of the Catholic high school girls in trouble. She’s also one of the most recognizable softcore (and later hardcore) actresses of all time.
Then again, this does feature Becky Sharpe, who played adult roles as Joan Brooks, Mona Leasah, Holly Bridges, Dora Douche, and Mona Poll, as well as appeared in Curse of the Headless Horseman as Rebecca Pearlman. Mary Miller, one of the dancers, was in Raw Force and Tiger Commando. And Cathy Hall, one of the girls who sings the song about being a prostitute, was on the season 7, episode 13 Unsolved Mysteries, attending a seance with James Van Praagh.
Who else? Michael Flood, who was in Criminally Insane and .357 Magnum; Nancy Frechtling, who did makeup for both Supervanand The Van; Doug Frey, who was in Five Loose Women and Drop Out Wife; Brenda Fogerty from Fantasm and Trip With the Teacher; Charla Hall, who was in Vice Squad Women and Lemora; Kathy Hilton, who was in Invasion of the Bee Girls and was also Joanne Stevens, Lacy Stewart and Judy Pilot (she was shot by her boyfriend in what was claimed to be a suicide pact which she denied; it caused lifelong seizures that ended her career, but she does show up as Show-Me, the same character name she used in Heads or Tails in the 1986 adult film Honey Buns); Bebe Kelly, the schoolteacher who loves snakes in Fangs; Gary Leibman, a sound guy on The Last House On the Left; Hal Miller, the second actor to play Mr. Gordon on Sesame Street; Gene Stowell from Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? and Rod Hasne, who was The Flash on the Legends of the Super Heroes TV special.
The jokes are rough — sex is a pain in the ass for a gay man -some will absolutely leave you angry if you are too young to remember dirty joke paperbacks. Otherwise, you can watch it as a time capsule of a dirtier yet more innocent time.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Bug was on USA Up All Night, but I can’t find any info on the date. Do you know?
Directed by Jeannot Szwarc and written by William Castle and Thomas Page, based on Page’s novel The Hephaestus Plague, this is the last film Castle would make.
Bradford Dillman spent so much of the 70s at war with nature. Now he’s Professor James Parmiter, whose wife (Joanna Miles) dies spectacularly when one of these fire farting cockroaches gets into her hair and then her ear. He keeps one of the bugs alive and experiments on it. But before you know it, he can talk to the insects and breeds them with other bugs to make them more intelligent than humans. Why would you do this?
Miles was afraid of cockroaches and told Szwarc that she couldn’t do the scene. Castle told them they were harmless and put one on his arm. It then bit him.
Castle wanted a gimmick. First, he thought of putting brushes — like windshield wipers — near the seats that would rub against the audience’s legs to make them feel like bugs were crawling on them. Theater owners turned him down, so he insured the giant cockroach for $1 million.
This sets more than a woman’s head on fire. It also cooks a cat and starts a fire inside the Brady Bunch house.
Unlike every disaster movie, this starts with an earthquake and gets worse from there. Ken Middleham was the man to go to for directing insects, as he also directed Phase IV — this is like that movie, but almost relentlessly stupid, and I say that with pure love — and The Hellstrom Chronicle.
This starts with trucks and people going up in an inferno and ends with Bradford Dillman, a diving helmet and bugs who spell things. It’s so goofy yet so earnest, a movie unaware of how dumb it gets, and those are the best kinds of movies because they’re not dull – and that’s what I look for.
Iwaki (Koichi Iwaki) is a motorbike mechanic who wants to be a racer. He’s tempted by the Red Rose Gang, who are speed junkies destroying everything in their path, as well as the charms of one of their members, Mayumi (Junko Matsudaira), who doesn’t believe in monogamy, despite being the girlfriend of the gang’s leader, Mitsuda (Yusuke Natsu).
Iwaki is more interested in the more virginal Michiko (Tomoko Ai). That is, he would be, if her overprotective brother Tsugami (Sonny Chiba) weren’t in the way. And oh yeah, Mitsuda doesn’t seem like she’s letting anyone else love Iwaki.
This is the first of four movies in the BAKUHATSU! series. The others are Detonation: Violent Games, Season of Violence (both of which are also directed by Iwaki), and Detonation: 750cc Zoku, which was produced by Yutaka Kohira. It takes its name from the bosozoku motorcycle gangs, who were inspired to ride by kaminari-zoku (thunder gang), who were disaffected war vets who lived in the streets and emulated American early biker culture, like James Dean movies. I also learned — thanks to Takuma on the Kung Fu Fandom message board — that there was a female Toei biker movie, Hell’s Angels: Crimson Roar.
This film just wants to entertain you, whether that’s with rampant nudity, motorcycle racing, or just the authentic, lived-in look that it establishes.
The 88 Films Blu-ray of this movie has an audio commentary by Ashley Darrow and Jonathan Greenaway of the Horror Vanguardpodcast, a video essay by Nathan Stuart, stills and a trailer, plus original and new artwork by Ilan Sheady. You can get this movie from MVD.
Based on Catherine and Co. by Edouard de Segonzac, this is about Catherine (Jane Birkin) — are you shocked? — who becomes a sex worker and starts her own business. She also sells stock and repurchases her business.
Directed by Michel Boisrond, this was written by Catherine Breillat, whose first novel at 17, l’Homme facile (A Man for the Asking), was banned for French readers under 18. She would go on to make Romance and Anatomy of Hell, both of which feature adult actor Rocco Siffredi. She also acted in Last Tango in Paris.
She isn’t without controversy, as actress Caroline Ducey accused her of allowing actors to go too far with her sexually during Romance (not Siffredi). She has also been outspoken about actress Asia Argento, who had starred in her film The Last Mistress. She didn’t believe that Weinstein was guilty and referred to Argento as being involved in “semi-prostitution.” Argento responded by calling Breillat “the most sadistic and downright evil director she’d ever worked with.”
Directed and produced by Matt Cimber and written by Mikel Angel under the pseudonym of George Theakos, The Candy Tangerine Man presents the dual lives of businessperson Ron Lewis (John Daniels). By day, he’s a successful executive, a loving husband and a devoted father. By night, he’s the Black Baron, riding down the Sunset Strip in his yellow and red Rolls Royce to collect the money from his sex workers.
He was a GOOD FATHER by day…and a MEAN MUTHA at night!
Unlike every real pimp in the world, he treats his women right. Sure, some of them try to steal money from him and he has to deal with them, as well as organized crime, but he’s selling sex for the betterment of his family. See? He’s an alright guy. Sometimes, you just need to keep the girls in line as well as protect them from some guy going all The New York Ripperon them.
While this is derivative of every other blacksploitation movie, it does get to the hand down the garbage disposal gore scene two years before Rolling Thunder.
Git Back JACK–Give him no JIVE…He is the BAAAD’EST Cat in ’75!
I will not call this by its main title, as I’m a white person and have no right to use it. Instead, I’m going to call it Boss or The Black Bounty Killer. And despite its incendiary title, it is a major movie in black film history, as Dana M. Reemes’ wrote in Directed by Jack Arnold: “Jack Arnold seems to have been artiste exécutant on this picture; content-wise, we must regard Fred Williamson as the film’s auteur. He is like a black Clint Eastwood in a Cottafavi western. William’s bounty hunter turns the tables on the town’s White establishment with an intelligent and biting wit. He is very popular in the nearby Mexican village and is generous to its inhabitants—a kind of cinematic third-world unity. From an ideological standpoint, it is interesting to note that the only White male who turns out to be worth much is the blacksmith, a simple, honest tradesman.”
Boss and Amos (Fred Williamson and D’Urville Martin) stop a stagecoach robbery and save Clara Mae (Carmen Hayworth). They then learn that several of the bodies in the aftermath have rewards for their capture, while one was due to become the sheriff of the town of San Miguel, as recommended by Jed Clayton (William Smith). Does Mayor Griffin (R. G. Armstrong) know that this man was a criminal?
They end up becoming the lawmen of this town and Boss even romances the white Miss Pruit (Barbara Leigh), which starts off on the wrong foot when she has fond memories of the slaves her father once owned. This may not be the best way to handle things. But by the end, Boss and Amos are defending the town from Jed, who has killed Clara Mae and kidnapped the Mexican boy, Poncho, who has become friends with them. Then, the mayor shoots Boss twice, who somehow is able to kill him with a knife. He tells Amos, “Don’t let me die in a white town,” before they leave. Does Boss survive? I’d like to think he does.
Jack Arnold did so much, like The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Mouse That Roared and The Space Children. He produced this with Williamson, who wrote the script. It’s way better than you’d expect, made at the height of the Black Power movement, yet it makes the hero the outsider who is fighting the sins of white America.
Georgis (Ugo Tognazzi) has been taken by secret agents, The Investigator (Michel Piccoli) and The Manager (Mario Adolf), as they believe that he’s part of the underground. Sent to Greece to be interrogated, He remains quiet, as he’s trapped in what most people only see in movies, accused of crimes that he knows nothing about, much less has committed.
Directed by Peter Fleischmann, this feels like a nightmare out of Kafka. This has always been my worry: being trapped far from home, unsure why I’m in trouble, and wondering if I’ll ever get out. It’s tense and well-acted; yet another movie Radiance has brought to my attention that I’d not have watched otherwise.
The Radiance Films Blu-ray release of this film has a new 4K restoration from the original negative by Studio Canal. Extras include an audio commentary by critic Travis Woods, an archival TV interview with Michel Piccoli, a feature with soundtrack expert Lovely Jon discussing the Ennio Morricone score, a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters, and a limited-edition booklet featuring new writing by Kat Ellinger. It’s a limited edition of 3,000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with a removable OBI strip, allowing the packaging to remain free of certificates and markings. You can get it from MVD.
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