And Soon (No, Actually Not Soon At All) the Darkness

In continuing my catchup of great daytime horror, today's featured film comes courtesy of a recommendation from one Andre Dumas (whom I assume with confidence to be the distant relation of the Mousekateer dude) over at The Horror Digest , a fine horror blog filled with an excellent assortment of reviews and musings from a talented mind.


Since this is an extremely slow film that takes its time moving, it seems fair that I should drag out this intro equally so. So. Spring eh? And how 'bout them Mets? That's a horror show to be in itself! And you know, ever listen to the lyrics of MacArthur Park? What's that about? Cake? Rain? Speaking of rain, it's April and...


Yeah that's not working. Let's just talk about the movie.

Quick Plot:

Two pretty young British nurses are on a bicycle holiday touring the French countryside. Jane, the level-headed (possibly because of her symmetrical haircut) brunette has the trip mapped and planned, but the 'bright blond' Cathy would rather relax, tan her rectangular midsection, and flirt with Frenchmen resembling what I assume the love child of Kermit the Frog and the stressed out teacher in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory would look like on a Vespa.

A cranky are-we-there-yet squabble breaks up the pair, with Jane hopping her red hot pants bum back on her bike and venturing on while Cathy hangs some damp underwear on a tree, pumps on the '70s tunes, and takes a nap on the side of the road (the world was a very different place pre-Girls Gone Wild). When she wakes up, Jane is long gone, as are one probably dry pair of panties. Far worse is the fact that her rented bicycle is now mangled and unridable. Looking on the bright side, her wedgie situation will most likely improve.

Upon pulling over for a drink, the non-French speaking Jane has an awkward exchange with a local that leaves her uneasy about the road ahead and behind. Swayed by her good girl conscience, she rides back to Cathy only to discover (gasp cue) no sign of her friend. Foreign help is fishy and hard to understand, and cell phones are further away than the end of the Cold War. 

And Soon the Darkness is filled with red herrings and careful plot twists, so I'll tread lightly here. Something is clearly amiss, but who's to blame? Is it the shady couple running a never-visited cafe? The spinstery British schoolmistress offended by sex and tourism? The slick and seemingly intentionally mysterious moped driver who works on 'impulse?' The sympathetic but evil mustache-sporting policeman? His insane elderly father who likes to make head accessories out of underpants?

I can't say how long the film keeps you guessing for, but it holds up the mystery incredibly well until its frightening reveal. While the cast--particularly Pamela Franklin as the final girl Jane--is exceptionally strong, most of the credit for And Soon the Darkness belongs to director Robert Fuest. 

Familiar name you say? Many viewers may remember him from The Abomidable Dr Phibes (still on my to-see list) but loyal readers here would know the man from the meltstravaganza of Shattitude and satanism, The Devil's Rain. On one hand, it's rather unbelievable that the same director could helm such shockingly different films in terms of quality. On the other, the few things that work in that star-studded atrocity involve Fuest's mastery of a sprawling desert landscape, something used to great effect in And Soon the Darkness.

This isn’t a film that rests on dialogue or plot. While the familiar premise of stranger-in-a-strange-land + missing person on the road draws us in, it’s Fuest’s camera that holds our attention for nearly 80 minutes before a genuine threat of violence. Many viewers probably won’t last that long, but the tense finale had me holding my breath and eventually, squirming in true discomfort and horror. The PG rating (yes, this was pre-PG13) isn’t totally unwarranted in terms of what’s on the screen, but if watched in full with the right patience, And Soon the Darkness is thoroughly unsettling.

High Points

Between the happy-go-lucky opening theme (repeated throughout to eerie effect) and some of the lighter musical cues, the score is carefully crafted and well used to full effect

I should explain that I have a personal connection to some of the fears on display here. No, I've never subjected myself to a hot pants bike tour or been teased by a lingerie-headed Frenchman, but I've lived abroad in the past without knowing much of the language. Fuest fantastically captures that discomfort one naturally has being an outsider in a foreign land. Jane probably does fine at cafes and hostels, but put her in serious danger and watch the stress and fear eat away the few French phrases she knows. The film wisely eschews any subtitles, keeping us--at least, the non-Francophiles and kids that failed French class--in the same helpless state of never knowing what others are saying about the situation. Combine that with the endless road and sparsely populated villages and you have a character in dire need of help, unable to explain why, and never sure if she can trust the man or woman who may or may not provide it.

Especially in pants like those

Low Points

Yes, there is no real kinetic plotting until the 80+ minute mark. While the suspense held my attention, this could easily dissuade a lot of viewers

I can’t really detail this plot piece without spoiling, so I’ll be vaguer than a Lost preview and say that the behavior of a major character towards the end is incredibly frustrating in hindsight. Don’t you WISH you knew what I meant by that!

Lessons Learned

In the '70s, vertically striped pants and mint green collared shirts earned you the description, "dishy"

The French countryside is home to quite a few abandoned trailer parks

Before embarking on a weeklong vacation with a casual friend, be sure you have common interests

Rent/Bury/Buy

This is the kind of film that didn’t really unnerve me until the next day, when I had some time to reflect on just how eerie the overall execution turned out to be. Because of its snail crawl pacing, I wouldn’t advise a blind buy, as many a viewer will simply be too bored. Rent And Soon the Darkness for a day when you have a solid 100 minutes and some intellectual energy to digest. The DVD includes a few extras and a filmmaker commentary, a fantastic listen for film fans with eagle eyes and open ears. As you might expect, there is indeed a remake in the works, this one starring All the Boy's Love Mandy Lane’s Amber Heard. I’m personally curious to see a modern take on this tale, especially if director Marcos Efron has the patience to let the setting (in this case, Argentina) speak for itself.

Play Clinty For Me

There are some phrases that just aren’t used enough in this day and age. Buy one get one free. Huzzah. Off with their heads. You can’t fire me, I quit. These are all well and good, but you know what three words I really want to hear more? 

Starring. Clint. Howard.

And so, upon a reader recommendation and Netflix availability, I present to you Evilspeak, a 1980 Video Nasty-listed horror starring some everybody’s favorite Ice Cream Man. 

Quick Plot: Stanley Coopersmith (or Cooperdick, as his not-very-clever schoolmates like to call him) is an orphan and outcast attending a Catholic military academy. Teased by his peers, misunderstood by his teachers, and set up for some type of major injury by his soccer coach, Stanley’s only salvation comes via a sympathetic but ineffective friend and the fun he has designing a virtual catapult on the school’s sole computer.

All those hours typing come in handy when Stanley, sentenced to clean the school’s creepily dank basement, stumbles upon a collection of Satanic skulls, bobbling jarred fetuses, and most excitingly, a leather bound book of evil invocations. Although the hardcover gets swiped by a sadistic and apparently undervalued secretary, Stanley has enough time to type in a few spells and call upon the spirit of Esteban (Nightcourt’s Richard Moll, refreshingly taking on evil following his Mormon hero in Savage Journey). 

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to summon a minion of the devil. You need blood, mandrake, consecrated host, and most inexplicable, unholy water (which I guess is like urine from a sinner?). Stanley has a few failed tries, some of which succeed in temporarily calling upon some kind of force to break a man’s neck and rile up some hogs. In the meantime, he adopts an adorably underweight puppy from the friendly and unsanitarily shirtless mess hall chef and sets the audience up for a major moment of shouting “nooooooooo!” in true Anakin Skywalker fashion.

I won’t spoil the finale, but it is vital to know that the ten minute climax of Evilspeak is pretty well worth the ride. The film is surprisingly well-paced, giving us plenty of time to follow Howard’s Stanley through his tormented days in a place he just doesn’t belong. The final act that causes the bloody ending is horrendous and makes any viewer cheer on Satanically possessed carnivorous hog chewing, while there’s also enough random camp to please a bad movie fan, like having a heavily faked German accented actor teach Latin. On the other hand, there are random plot holes that go unfilled, such as how not a single faculty member questions the disappearance of the caretaker or the inevitably discovered entrails of the devoured secretary. Still, it’s refreshing to see a geek played as an actual outcast (today, I imagine someone like Zack Efron would simply don a pair of glasses and part his hair on a less flattering side) and characters that deserve gutting and being set on fire getting gutted, set on fire, and, for a bonus, eaten alive by pigs from hell.

High Points

The opening prologue set in medieval times is less than impressive, but transition featuring a severed head turning into a soccer ball is pretty genius

A roller rink scene is included, which naturally earns the film about fifty bonus points

The start of the film’s ending involves a rather well done Jesus-on-the-cross statue coming to life and (SPOILER) shooting its nail into the head of a rather daft priest. Awesome? The word doesn’t do the death justice

Low Points

While Stanley’s build up of bullied anger is fairly well done, it would have been a far more interesting finale had we gotten a little more development of the individual tormentors so that each gruesome death had more measurable weight

Although I was fairly let down by the text epilogue, it did put a smile on my face to see a reference to “Sunnydale Asyulum,” whether Joss Whedon took any inspiration from it or not

For the most part, the score of Evilspeak is adequate and at times, haunting in a choral style. There’s one moment during the finale as Bubba (an oddly named character if ever there was one) tries to escape and is followed by an inappropriately sweet violin melody

Lessons Learned

The purpose of sports is to make us all well-rounded

The good lord prefers his young men in uniform

Computers of the 1980s were far more grammatically considerate than today’s Babblefish and freetranslation.com

Placing a satanic handbook nearby a piggy bank will connect evil forces to wild hogs

Catholic military academies have an impressive stash of Wicker Man-esque masks for its student body to play with

For an extra scoop of mashed potatoes, always inform the lunch guy that you’re an orphan

Winning Line

“I have to go...to study hall.”

If you’re trying to get out of an uncomfortable situation, at least use a more pressing engagement like “math class”, “soccer practice”, or “date with satanically enhanced Richard Moll”

Proof of Cred

According to that far too trusted Wikipedia, Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan (and consultant on a little classic called The Devil’s Rain ) considered Evilspeak to be “very Satanic”

Rent/Bury/Buy

This was a pleasant surprise and fairly un-discussed remnant of that bridge between 70s and 80s horror. It’s well worth a watch, although a tad too unpleasant to pop on so many more times to warrant a buy. The DVD includes a jovial commentary by Howard, writer/director Eric Weston (now directing the Costas Mandylor sure-to-be classic, Hyenas), and production roustabout Warren Lewis is filled with some useful film trivia and random tidbits about everybody’s favorite B-movie character actor (like how he loves horror conventions and often bids for his own memorabilia on ebay). Certainly worth a rental, and not just because it stars the first human recipient of MTV Movie Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award.

Someone Left the Satanists In the Devil's Rain

Having just started reading Brian Keene’s The Conqueror Worms, I enthusiastically queued up this month’s Final Girl Film Club pick, The Devil’s Rain, fresh in the mood for some truly terrifying precipitation.


Okay, who am I kidding? With Ernest Borgnine headlining the movie poster wearing a satanic priest’s robe and ram horns, plus the promise of a doughily shirtless, sideburn styling, prominent belt buckle wearing William Shatner, I knew exactly what I was in for. This 1974 Robert Fuest helmed horror emits a powerfully pungent odor of deliciously aged cheese from the opening credits to the gooey end. Know your limit for lactose tolerance before indulgence.


Quick Plot (if that’s what you can call it): A promisingly haunting credit sequence features creepy medievalish hell paintings, guttural moans, a set of disembodied ears holding a butcher knife, and one of the oddest listings I’ve ever seen: Technical Advisor: Anton Szandor Lavey, High Priest of the Church of Satan. I don’t know what technicalities Lavey advised on, but you Satanists should not be proud. No offense to Satanists; it’s just a really bad film.

Next, we jump into a dark and stormy night where Shatner awaits the return of his soon-to-be-melted father bearing a message to return the book to Corbus. If that makes no sense to you who haven’t seen the film, it makes about 3% more to me, and I watched the whole thing. Then again, I also missed John Travolta’s two second film debut as a waxy faced Satanist, so maybe I’m just not nearly as intelligent as Fuest’s intended audience.

Shat adjusts his cowboy hat and bravely heads into a ghost town in search of his vanished mother and to battle John Corbus (Ernest Borgnine...we’ll get to him) for the return of her soul (I think). Corbus has his sights set on a missing book once stolen by Shat’s ancestors. They have a showdown inside the “New England”-ish church (which, according to one character, does not belong in a western desert), which is actually a Satanic holy place (you can tell by the stained glass artwork straight off a metal band’s drumset). By showdown, I mean Shatner prays and shoots a few worshippers while Borgnine speaks Latin and smiles smugly.


Enter Tom Skerrit as Shat’s brother, a young doctor with a fabulous mustache and a conveniently semi-psychic wife who helps explain the history of our characters with a dreadfully lit flashback. Believe me, you haven’t seen American history until you etch into memory the image of Borgnine in full Pilgrim getup, shooting out lines like “Didst one of thee fall from the favor of Lucifer?” to what I imagine to be a group of escaped community theater actors in a dress rehearsal for The Crucible. It’s more wonderful than it sounds.


After being separated from his wife, Skerrit enlists the aid of his superhelpful mentor, Dr. Sam Richards, a parapsychologist who actually took ten minutes to read the sought after book and therefore has some semblance of what might be going on. Together they discover the world’s coolest faberge egg, complete with a television screen that displays all the lost souls trapped in hell. It also contains the titular devil’s rain, a force so powerful, it can melt any eyeless minion into a gooey pile, not unlike the result you get if you’ve ever tried to light one of those Spencer Gift Store’s novelty candles of glittery waxen wizards.

If it seems like I’m hopping through plot points like Leprechaun on a pogo stick, I do apologize, but The Devil’s Rain is simply not an easy film to summarize. It’s also not the easiest film to watch, as its grainy, dull lit action actually aggravates the eyes at times. There’s nothing frightening, clever, or particularly interesting about this satanic romp, but that’s certainly not to say The Devil’s Rain isn’t amusing.


High Points
Borgnine is kind of amazing as Corbus, and by that I mean he’s hammier than an out-of-work Miss Piggy at a French buffet


The melting effects are fairly impressive when watched on a small screen. This is vital as they take up a way too extended sequence that seems to run longer than the entire film

Low Points
Odd that the scant 86 minute run time contains such prolonged scenes as the Satanists’ desert march (which clocks in at 3 minutes) when a few quick bites of exposition could certainly have padded out the length while, you know, explaining stuff


While I didn’t exactly hunger for more Shatner (I may be a woman, but I am fairly immune to his muggy charm), the switch of protagonists at the halfway mark was a little jarring. It wasn’t that Tom Skerrit was awful or even that Shat was any good; as an audience, however, we have little to hold onto when we don’t know a thing about who we’re supposed to be rooting for

Lessons Learned
When he visits earth, Satan generally resembles any animal character played by a human on Shelly Duvall's Faery Tale Theatre

When you hear your mother screaming, it’s best to stare worriedly at the source of the sound before slowly jogging to see what the trouble is


Satanists bleed sour milk and have elegant penmanship


If when driving, an eyeless zombie creature pops up in your backseat, avoid removing both hands from the wheel to grab your hair as you scream. Sure, you may be frightened at the uninvited hitchhiker about to kill you, but that’s how accidents are caused


Winning Line
“Remember: no one knows what we’re about,” Corbus growls to his colonist clan, only to then open the door to an angry mob carrying torches and Salemnesque judgement

Rent/Bury/Buy
The Devil’s Rain is a pretty horrid film, but if conventionally horrid sounds like heaven to you, then by all means, rent it and crack open a bottle of some bitter water (because it’s so sweet). There seems to be two DVDs on the market, and unfortunately Netflix sends out the bare bones 2000 release, with mere a trailer, stills gallery, and a nice screen shot of John Travolta’s big closeup, complete with the signature chin cleft. If John Waters can record a commentary for Mommie Dearest, then surely someone with a touch of wit could put a nice audio spin on The Devil’s Rain. If nothing else, hire a grammar expert to pick apart everything from the tagling--Heaven Help Us All When The Devil’s Rain!--to Satan describing himself as “the highest, most exalted king” because a) is he not the only king? b) not the first king? and c) is there another king that was merely exalted?

Don’t forget to head over to Final Girl’s site for a roundup of other horror bloggists reviewing Borgnine’s satanic adventures. This is certainly a pick ripe for riffing, so be sure to read everyone’s reviews, then balance out your dairy intake with a hearty round exercise.


Or just by watching a better movie. Your choice.