The Devil’s Rain achieved an unusually strange collision of real-world occultism and future religious celebrity. Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, was credited as the film’s technical adviser and also appeared in a minor role, giving the production an authentic association with the Satanic movement it was exploiting for horror spectacle. During filming in Mexico in late 1974, young actor John Travolta—making his first credited film appearance—was introduced to Scientology by co-star Joan Prather, who gave him a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics. Travolta would later become one of Scientology’s most prominent celebrity advocates, making the episode retrospectively appear almost uncannily appropriate to a movie centered on a secretive cult recruiting and controlling souls. There is no evidence that the production itself was a Scientology or Satanist recruitment operation; the connections were personal and coincidental. Nevertheless, the film’s involvement with LaVey and Travolta’s first exposure to Scientology helped turn an already lurid satanic picture into a favorite subject of cult-cinema historians.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
The Satanist Adviser, the Future Scientologist, and The Devil’s Rain’s Bizarre Cult Legacy
The Devil’s Rain / 1970s
The Devil’s Rain achieved an unusually strange collision of real-world occultism and future religious celebrity. Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, was credited as the film’s technical adviser and also appeared in a minor role, giving the production an authentic association with the Satanic movement it was exploiting for horror spectacle. During filming in Mexico in late 1974, young actor John Travolta—making his first credited film appearance—was introduced to Scientology by co-star Joan Prather, who gave him a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics. Travolta would later become one of Scientology’s most prominent celebrity advocates, making the episode retrospectively appear almost uncannily appropriate to a movie centered on a secretive cult recruiting and controlling souls. There is no evidence that the production itself was a Scientology or Satanist recruitment operation; the connections were personal and coincidental. Nevertheless, the film’s involvement with LaVey and Travolta’s first exposure to Scientology helped turn an already lurid satanic picture into a favorite subject of cult-cinema historians.
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