Filmhydra
A woman wearing a raincoat, nightie, and galoshes flees through the woods

ā€œI just ran, I ran all night and day.ā€

Devil Story (1986)

šŸŽ Blood! Blood!

Devil Story is an excellent contender for one of the worst movies ever made. It is a failure on every metric. Many times movies are a swing and a miss. This movie, they walked up to home plate wielding an anchovy.

Yeah, I know. Itā€™s hard to describe how much of a miss this film is. Hereā€™s a short clip from the opening sequence to serve as an illustration.

Video clip: click to reveal
An androgynous wood-collector skips into frame, turns around, looks confused, skips out the other direction

ā€œWho am I? What am I doing here?ā€

Thereā€™s approximately ten minutes of material in this ninety-minute movie, which mostly involves extended death sequences. Thereā€™s also many shots of characters vomiting either fake blood or green foam. Oh, and an old man who spins around in circles trying to shoot a black horse thatā€™s not only in a different field, but a different time zone.

Ghost girl stares

If I shoot in all different directions around me, surely I will hit something.

Thereā€™s this guy who changes a tire and patronizes his wife but thatā€™s about it. For her part, the wife does a lot of unconvincing screaming and running through the woods in a pyjamas / raincoat ensemble. I guess sheā€™s the protagonist, or at least a neutagonist if there is such a thing. The horse rears and whinnies, the old guy shoots in random directions.

The evil family in the story consists of a witch woman, her demon-faced son, the ghost of her daughter (who spends most of the screen time trying not to corpse), and a mummy? For some reason? They donā€™t do much threatening beyond try to bury the patronized wife alive in a stone crypt.

Ghost girl stares

ā€œMustā€¦ notā€¦ laughā€¦ā€

The car has Florida plates but thereā€™s no way that hotel is in Florida.

The phrase ā€œso bad itā€™s goodā€ is overused, but I wouldnā€™t go that far on this one anyway. It is, however, so bad itā€™s interesting, and Iā€™ll be spending a fair amount of time with the Blu-Ray extras. Bernard Launois needs to explain himself.

Bonus clip: hereā€™s what counts as stuntwork.

Video clip: click to reveal
The patronized wife looks all around, then promptly trips into an open grave

ā€Eeep!ā€