Picture it: Devonsville, 1683. Some puritanical dickbagels burn three women at the stake. Why oh why did they do this? They think that these totally innocent people are witches! Here comes your fact-filled history lesson, so buckle up, kiddos. Puritans were somewhat anti-witch back in the day. That’s it. Three hundred years later, the same community are “threatened” by three newcomers who just happen to be women. The same dumb crapola is about to happen all over again, but Dr. Donald Pleasence is there and (sort of) tries to set things to right in order to lift the curse on Devonsville (but mostly on himself). Do these ladies even need him to wreck some shit in this garbage town? No, they don’t.
1983 was a big year for director Ulli Lommel. Both The Devonsville Terror and Olivia were released that year, but more importantly, he dropped his magnum opus called Boogeyman II on an unsuspecting world. But I’ll discuss that later. Much, much later. The Devonsville Terror is an odd little sleeper. When I say “sleeper” I don’t mean that this movie eventually found its audience and became a hit. I mean that it induces sleep. This is slow, weird, and occasionally dumb, but works for me on every level. Its setting is Wisconsin doubling not very convincingly as autumn in New England, but everything is filmed with a cold, quiet, and isolating menace that makes me [chef’s kiss GIF].
The cast features awesome character actor Paul Wilson, who I know best as Grimsdyke from My Best Friend is a Vampire (1987), as a wife-murdering freako that gets obsessed with Suzanna Love’s character. Oh, Suzanna (AKA Sukey) Love! She plays Jenny Scanlon, the new schoolteacher in Devonsville. To me, Love always seems to have this haunted sadness in her performances. I won’t go so far as to call her underrated or anything, but she seems to have been a perfect muse for Lommel. Donald Pleasence is doing another one of his work-for-one-day wonders and was either tired or sick that day. Or he’s just playing a man who’s tired of his genetic condition called Worms in the Arms Syndrome.
In all of the bizarre plot details and meandering pacing, The Devonsville terror also has some explosive and melty gore setpieces to go along with all of the sleazy male townsfolk and past life regression. I’ve never been hypnotized (that I know of), but I’ll be darned if hypnotism scenes aren’t my new favorite bits in movies. I’m also on the lookout for scenes of characters sleeping in full makeup. The frisson of white pillowcases paired with Suzanna Love’s blood red lipstick is truly thrilling. In the end, I don’t think The Devonsville Terror is going to work for everybody, but its eccentric take on a story we’ve seen over and over again -see also: Mark of the Witch (1970)- is one that really burns me up… at the stake… like a witch!
Good old Vinegar Syndrome really did wonders with The Devonsville Terror. The old Anchor Bay DVD wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but this disc looks just grand. VS has a disclaimer before the films starts about how they did the best they could with the available elements. And I was like, “Yeah, you did!” As for extras, I am blown away with the interviews on this release. Suzanna Love talks extensively about the shooting of the film and her thoughts on the story. Paul Wilson discusses how he got into acting and has lots of juicy details about making Devonsville. There’s an interview with special effects artist Matthew W. Mungle and camera operator Jürg V. Walther, who both talk about what it was like to work with Lommel. There’s also an archival interview with the director himself, who passed away in 2017, and he’s exactly as strange as I thought he’d be. Great stuff. The disc also has the film’s trailer and production photos of the gore sequences.