The production of The Devil’s Rain carried a distinctly underworld-colored financial rumor after its release. Ernest Borgnine, who played the satanic priest Jonathan Corbis, later claimed that the film had been financed with Mafia money and that he himself was never paid for his work. The allegation was never conclusively established in the available production record, but it was not entirely disconnected from the film’s business circumstances: its distributor, Bryanston Distributing Company, was widely reported to have close links to the Colombo crime family. Bryanston was part of the rougher, independently financed side of 1970s exploitation cinema, where low-budget horror pictures could be assembled through opaque investment arrangements and released outside the traditional studio system. Borgnine’s account therefore became part of the film’s unusually sinister legend, even though it remains a claim rather than a proven case of organized-crime financing or deliberate nonpayment. The movie’s subsequent cult reputation has kept the story alive as one of its most notorious pieces of behind-the-scenes lore.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
Ernest Borgnine’s Claim That The Devil’s Rain Was Bankrolled by the Mob
The Devil’s Rain / 1970s
The production of The Devil’s Rain carried a distinctly underworld-colored financial rumor after its release. Ernest Borgnine, who played the satanic priest Jonathan Corbis, later claimed that the film had been financed with Mafia money and that he himself was never paid for his work. The allegation was never conclusively established in the available production record, but it was not entirely disconnected from the film’s business circumstances: its distributor, Bryanston Distributing Company, was widely reported to have close links to the Colombo crime family. Bryanston was part of the rougher, independently financed side of 1970s exploitation cinema, where low-budget horror pictures could be assembled through opaque investment arrangements and released outside the traditional studio system. Borgnine’s account therefore became part of the film’s unusually sinister legend, even though it remains a claim rather than a proven case of organized-crime financing or deliberate nonpayment. The movie’s subsequent cult reputation has kept the story alive as one of its most notorious pieces of behind-the-scenes lore.
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