Devil Story is an optimistic title for this no-budget fever dream. (1986)

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. It’s hard to describe how much of a miss this film is. Here’s a short clip from the opening sequence to serve as an illustration.

Video clip: click to reveal

There’s approximately ten minutes of material in this ninety-minute movie, which mostly involves extended death sequences. There’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 that’s not only in a different field, but a different time zone.

There’s this guy who changes a tire and patronizes his wife but that’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 she’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 don’t do much threatening beyond try to bury the patronized wife alive in a stone crypt.

The car has Florida plates but there’s no way that hotel is in Florida.

The phrase “so bad it’s good” is overused, but I wouldn’t go that far on this one anyway. It is, however, so bad it’s interesting, and I’ll be spending a fair amount of time with the Blu-Ray extras. Bernard Launois needs to explain himself.

Bonus clip: here’s what counts as stuntwork.

Video clip: click to reveal

Published Jun 22, 2022