Badasses, Boobs and Body Counts
Your source for exploitation film discussion of B movies.

When A Cult Leader Put His Faith On The Big Screen

Few exploitation films carry as much occult baggage as The Devil’s Rain. Released in 1975, this lurid supernatural shocker promised Satanic ceremonies, melting bodies, demonic bargains and a cast far more respectable than its grimy reputation suggested. It also featured Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, which helped turn an ordinary horror production into a piece of supposed religious evidence.

The popular version of the story says LaVey financed a film about his own beliefs and used Hollywood to recruit followers. The reality is stranger, but less straightforward. He was a consultant, performer, publicist and ideological presence around the film, while the production itself came from conventional movie investors. That distinction matters, especially when separating cult mythology from documented film history.

The Satanic Figure Behind The Headlines

Anton LaVey was born Howard Stanton Levey in Chicago in 1930 and later built a theatrical public identity around the Church of Satan, founded in San Francisco in 1966. He shaved his head, wore black, staged ritual events and presented Satanism as a celebration of individualism, sensuality and worldly ambition rather than belief in a literal horned devil.

His approach was calculated for the media. LaVey understood that a strange costume, a provocative ceremony and a memorable slogan could travel further than a dense theological argument. During the late 1960s and 1970s, newspapers and television programs treated him as a sinister curiosity, while curious outsiders treated his organisation as a rebellious alternative to conventional Christianity.

That made him valuable to film producers looking for publicity. A horror movie did not need a genuine supernatural expert; it needed someone who looked as if he belonged in the shadows. LaVey provided the image, the vocabulary and the suggestion of forbidden authenticity.

The important correction is financial. There is no solid evidence that LaVey personally bankrolled The Devil’s Rain as a cinematic statement of Church of Satan doctrine. The film was produced through the normal commercial system, with Hollywood names, distribution arrangements and a script built for the supernatural horror market. His involvement was real, but the claim that he paid for a feature about his own religion has been inflated over time.

What The Film Actually Shows

Directed by Robert Fuest, The Devil’s Rain follows a family caught in a conflict with Jonathan Corbis, a Satanic leader played by Ernest Borgnine. Corbis wants a mysterious book containing the names of people who have surrendered their souls. The plot moves through curses, rural isolation, possession and a climactic ritual in which the boundary between human flesh and demonic punishment collapses.

The film’s religion is a patchwork of gothic imagery, occult props and Christian ideas about damnation. It is closer to a feverish comic-book nightmare than a filmed explanation of LaVeyan Satanism. The Church of Satan’s philosophy is largely absent, replaced by the familiar horror formula of evil priests, stolen souls and supernatural revenge.

LaVey did appear in the film as a high priest and served as a technical adviser. His role helped the production advertise itself as something more than fictional nonsense. Publicity could imply that the rituals had been checked by an authentic Satanist, even though the movie’s theology was designed for spectacle rather than doctrinal accuracy.

For Australian viewers, the film’s old-school atmosphere can feel especially vivid on a late-night screening after the household has gone quiet. Its dusty locations, theatrical make-up and slow-burning menace belong to the same era as drive-in horror, video-store discoveries and films encountered on television well after a sensible bedtime.

The Hollywood Machine Behind The Occult Image

The cast gave The Devil’s Rain a curious credibility. William Shatner played Mark Preston, a man searching for his missing father and confronting the family’s buried history. Tom Skerritt, Eddie Albert and Ida Lupino added familiar faces, while a young John Travolta appeared before Saturday Night Fever made him a major star.

That mixture was common in 1970s genre cinema. A production could use one or two established performers to reassure distributors, then surround them with lurid material that promised audiences something more extreme. The result sat between mainstream entertainment and exploitation: polished enough for cinemas, strange enough to attract horror fans.

LaVey’s presence worked in the same way. He gave the film a marketing hook, but his celebrity was built on performance as much as belief. The high priest of the Church of Satan understood that film publicity, magazine interviews and television appearances could turn a minor horror release into a cultural event.

The production also benefits from the era’s loose relationship with authenticity. Audiences were fascinated by reports of secret ceremonies, haunted houses and hidden cults, yet few viewers had access to reliable information. A credit as “technical adviser” could therefore sound like a guarantee that the screen’s Satanic rituals were genuine.

Why The Funding Story Keeps Growing

Stories about controversial films become more dramatic when money, belief and deception are mixed together. Saying that a cult leader helped a movie get made is intriguing. Saying that he secretly funded a cinematic sermon about his own religion is even better. That version offers a neat narrative: the manipulator uses Hollywood to spread his creed, and the audience watches propaganda disguised as horror.

The surviving evidence supports a narrower account. LaVey was involved in the film’s occult presentation and appeared on screen, but the production was not a Church of Satan feature. It was a commercial horror movie that used his reputation to increase its sense of danger. The distinction does not make the story dull; it reveals how publicity manufactures legends.

Useful details for separating history from folklore include:

This pattern appears throughout cult cinema. A director’s rumoured beliefs become part of a film’s identity; a performer’s private life is folded into a character; a production accident becomes a supernatural story. For listeners of a genre podcast, the gap between what happened and what people want to believe is often the most entertaining part.

Satanism, Exploitation And The Australian Lens

Australia received American horror through a mixture of cinemas, television programming, imported videotapes and, later, specialist DVD and streaming catalogues. Classification rules shaped what audiences could see. The Australian Classification Board can require cuts, refuse classification or restrict access, meaning an extreme American release may arrive in a different form from the one screened in the United States.

That history matters for The Devil’s Rain, whose appeal depends on atmosphere as much as explicit violence. A midnight audience in Melbourne or Brisbane may encounter it through a restored stream, while older viewers may remember a censored broadcast or a rental copy with a faded cover promising forbidden knowledge. The film’s reputation often travelled further than the film itself.

The local market has also changed. Australian genre fans are used to shopping across boutique labels, second-hand media stores and global streaming services because many obscure exploitation titles receive limited domestic distribution. A film can be unavailable on one platform in Sydney and easily found through another service in Perth, depending on licensing and classification.

That scarcity encourages a collector’s mindset. Viewers compare cuts, censorship histories, bonus features and regional releases, treating the search for a movie as part of the experience. In that environment, a rumour about a real cult leader funding a real religious film can become almost as valuable as the picture on the disc.

Where It Sits In Cult Film History

The Devil’s Rain is best understood as a collision between occult celebrity and commercial horror. LaVey did not need to control the production for his presence to matter. He supplied the aura of forbidden expertise, while the filmmakers supplied the melting faces, thunderous rituals and doomed families that audiences expected from a Satanic shocker.

Its craft also connects with the international genre cinema that circulated through Australian exploitation culture. Hong Kong stunt performers, Italian horror technicians and American producers frequently crossed paths in films that were marketed under different titles in different territories. The story of Hong Kong stunt specialists working on Italian productions shows how porous those boundaries could be.

The same cross-pollination shaped how audiences judged authenticity. A film could borrow ritual imagery from European gothic cinema, action rhythms from Asian martial arts and publicity language from American religious scandals. What looked like a single cultural phenomenon was often an international mixture assembled for a particular market.

That is why the film remains useful beyond its plot. It shows how a public figure can become a genre ingredient, how a religion can be transformed into visual shorthand and how exploitation cinema turns real-world controversy into saleable entertainment.

The People Who Made The Myth Last

The movie’s reputation survived because several kinds of performers fed it. LaVey supplied real-world controversy, Borgnine supplied volcanic theatricality and the younger cast supplied a bridge to mainstream entertainment. Viewers could therefore approach the film as either an occult curiosity or a strange piece of 1970s star cinema.

Cult classics often gain a second life through unexpected casting stories. A local broadcaster, television personality or respected public figure can appear in a genre movie and permanently alter how it is remembered. That kind of career detour is explored in a cult casting story, where the distance between respectable media work and cult cinema becomes part of the fascination.

For Australian audiences, that contrast feels familiar. The same person may be recognised from breakfast television, commercial radio or a regional news desk before turning up in a horror film at a suburban cinema. Genre movies thrive on those collisions because they make the unreal feel briefly connected to everyday life.

The final lesson is simple: Anton LaVey helped give The Devil’s Rain its identity, but the film was not a secret Church of Satan production funded as a direct statement of his faith. It was a commercial horror movie that borrowed the authority of a controversial religious figure. That truth is less sensational than the legend, and far more revealing about how cult cinema actually works.

For more episodes, film background and conversations about the wild corners of exploitation history, explore the podcast archive and contact the show. Put the film on with the lights low, check which version you are watching, and listen for the moment publicity starts sounding like theology.