Many of you may already know the film and be aware of the story, however for the uninitiated I will run through a brief synopsis. Mark’s (Shatner’s) parents are abducted by a man named Corbis, played by Hollywood legend Ernest Borgnine. Corbis seeks the retrieval of a book stolen from him many years before by Mark’s family. Jonathan Corbis is Satan’s minister on earth and the book is register of names of those whose soul he has taken in the name of Satan, however in order to send those souls to hell he needs to recover the book.  Mark accepts a challenge from Corbis to enter his church and if he leaves unchanged he will win back the souls of his parents, however in the event that he is changed Mark is to hand over his soul and the book to Corbis, thus ensues the age-old story of the battle between God and Satan for the souls of the living. After Mark goes missing, his brother Tom, played by Tom Skerritt, and his wife arrive at the family home, subsequently making a beeline for the ghost town of Redstone where Mark was heading when last seen. What follows is like a mad western set in the 1970s with Skerritt and Borgnine fighting it out for the souls of the family, amid some of the gooiest special effects ever seen at that point. The film has an over the top bombastic style to it that seems ridiculous but only adds to the many reasons I love it.  Borgnine is wonderful as Corbis, the very image of a congenial devil, and Skerritt is particularly strong as Tom. Shatner is his usually hammy self, but this all adds to the madness that this film exudes.
The film’s imagery was obviously topical at the time, the 1960s and 70s counterculture had renewed interest in the occult and films like The Exorcist had firmly placed talk of demonianism back into mainstream culture. To top it all off Anton Szandor LaVey, the Head of the Church of Satan, was brought on board by Robert Fuest as technical advisor on the film. A role in which he had previously worked with Fuest on the Dr Phibes movies, and on the earlier Polanski classic Rosemary’s Baby.

Okay, to the disc itself, the picture is sharp and the colours are vibrant. The film’s colour palette  juxtaposes a lot of browns and earthy tones with bright reds and purples, this new restoration shows up these colour variations beautifully in HD for the first. The flashback sequences are drenched in a red light and once again the colours are rich and there is no bleed. The sound is fine, I wasn’t able to test it out as fully as I might like however there was no hiss and the soundtrack was clear and clean.

Looking at the extras, there are some fun and informative interviews, “Confessions of Tom – Interview with Actor Tom Skerritt” is thoroughly enjoyable as the actor recants some great stories about the cast and the shooting of the film. There is an archival interview with Shatner, which offers up very little about The Devil’s Rain but does give us an insight into where things were with regards to bringing Star Trek to the big screen. The interview with special effects guru Tom Burman provides one of my favourite quotes of the release when he describes William Shatner as loving “himself more than you could ever love yourself”. He does also provide some interesting stories about how he and his inexperienced team would create the melting bodies and Borgnine’s demonic makeup. The interview with script supervisor Ana Maria Quintana, is also fascinating as she managed to blag her way into the job, and she is vey candid about how she managed learn her job during the shoot. There is also an interesting interview with LaVey biographer Blanche Barton, who talks about his involvement in cinema and his popularity on set. The usual collection of trailers, TV spots and galleries of posters and stills round things up, alongside another couple of interviews from filmmaker/ horror fanatic Daniel Roebuck and another with the high priest and priestess of the Church of Satan.

Overall this makes for a great fun experience, the film itself it loads of campy over the top fun, with some pretty inventive special effects and some interesting performances from a great cast, the print looks amazing and sounds perfectly fine for a film of its age and the extras are fun, interesting and informative. All in all, a great package that will delight fans of the film and hopefully help capture a new audience of fans. All of this and I failed to mention the rather wonderful commentary from director Fuest, a man who is as congenial and interesting as Borgnine’s character is in the film, albeit less evil…perhaps.