31 DAYS OF HORROR SCENES THAT STICK. DAY 21: THE DEVIL'S RAIN
/“THE EYES HAVE IT”
I am 99.9 percent sure that I'm not educating anyone when I say there is something very important about our eyes.. Windows to the soul it's said...I'm not so sure that they aren't THE soul. When the eyes seemed glazed over, when there is damage to the iris, if the cornea is milky or cloudy, or if the eyes are simply missing, the body seems like a hollowed out shell, some part of our brain assumes a lacking in empathy in any number of known human conditions and expressions of emotion. A Person can appear robotic, and historically, as well as in horror, these various conditions of the eye are associated with the demonic, otherworldly, or supernatural.
David Cronenberg's “Scanners”, Nicolas Roeg's “ Don't Look Now”, Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Sam Raimi’s “Drag me to Hell” all represent different aspects of the ways in which the eyes can be used to demonstrate other worldliness.
In horror, as in life, I don't think there's any other extremity that is as terrifying as horrifying, as conducive to producing an empathetic nervous response as is watching someone's eyes be popped out, pushed in, burned out, or injected with some sort of needle. In a great deal of horror films these phenomena, and our cultural unease with them has been used to effectively produce a mood, or quite simply to frighten us. A character in possession of these characteristics maybe presented as some sort of gateway as in communication with some supernatural power or possessed by some demon, as is any person whose eyes have some of unique discoloration, or whose eyes are completely missing. I had and still have this feeling of the eerie when watching this scene in 1975's The Devil's rain. I first stumbled upon this movie when I was younger up later than I was normally allowed watching those Saturday night late night movies that would come on on local networks. Needless to say this did not go very well, cheesy effects and all I saw those hollowed out eyes and I was done. Those final minutes of cavernous eyes, and a goat like Ernest Borgnine, and melting skin produced quite a few nightmares, for weeks after, but I was also very intrigued, and weirdly excited.
Much later on when I saw it again on the AMC in my 30's I found myself thoroughly enjoying it. It's cheesy, pretty poorly acted, and camou as hell, but it's also fun, and the scene in question were William, Shatner is awakened now a disciple like all the others, his eyes hollowed out of his head is still like the ultimate creep factor for me, I know what's going on, I know it's going to happen, and I can't stop myself from feeling that eeriness. If you're looking to take a rest from having your nerves rattled by ACTUALLY scary films or psychological thriller films where your mental endurance is tested I highly recommend popping in the devil's rain and just enjoying seeing a silly, ridiculously bad in all the best ways B movie horror film featuring the likes of John Travolta, Ernest Borgnine, Tom Skerritt and William Shatner. Oh and don't cover your eyes.
