[April 2016 Update]: Due to the unfortunate
end of the website Videotape Swapshop,
I'll have to replace certain links that I had to reviews for the site with the
whole article, unedited but possibly with footnotes if need be. For these
reviews, which were written differently, I'll have to create a
Frankenstein-like hybrid that will be structurally ugly but is the only way to
get the whole of the necessary content together in one page.]
After viewing Devil Story, it'll be possible for a
staunch hater of Jean Rollin to
appreciate his work. Even Zombie Lake (1981).
That's not to dismiss Devil Story - I can no longer say horrible things
about films, including those I hate, for their literal existence, knowing more
of how difficult it is to make films, and Devil
Story was a complete and utterly baffling hoot in hindsight. But you're
going to scratch your head wondering what the hell is going on upon viewing it.
It's impossible to create a cohesive narrative outline, so instead I'll give
you all a sketch of events that take place. A malformed man - who strangely
looks like American comedian Steve Wright
after a bad day and inexplicably in a Nazi uniform jacket - is killing people
and being hostile to camping tents, but after ten minutes or so, this is pushed
to the side, the man a side character in a different plot with his mother. A
couple end up stuck in a countryside mansion where things are amiss. You know
things are amiss because Toccata and
Fugue in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach plays whenever
something sinister is afoot; an instantly recognisable piece, it's also modest
in telling you that things are going to get spooky.
The man of the house suggests the
sinister happenings are to blame on a black horse, standing in a field and
trying to blow it's head off with a shotgun, with unlimited shells and standing
out there all night to turn it to glue. The woman of the couple wanders off in
the night, meeting Steve Wright's
unfortunate doppelganger, evoking Zombie
Lake for me in his uniform jacket and Devil
Story being a French film, striking fear in others for these reason that
remind them of Zombie Lake. He tries
to kill her along with his mother as they are in the middle of shenanigans in a
graveyard with their late sister/daughter. A mummy appears. A back-story of a
shipwrecked boat and lost treasure is brought up earlier in the running time.
The mummy brings the Steve Wright
lookalike's dead sister back from the grave, played by the same actress who
plays the main female character, but in a bed sheet and giant oversized wig. The
man of the mansion keeps missing the horse, which we see through various
rapidly edited shots galloping around in multiple directions. The mummy walks
slowly to an unknown destination - evoking John
Landis in the TV documentary The Perfect Scary Movie (2005)1
wanting a character in a mummy film to shout "Walk away! Walk away!" whenever one is in danger of the
Egyptian dead. Apparently the mummy is the bringer of pure evil, for unknown
reasons, but the man is far more concerned with lining the horse with shotgun
lead, which we don't see an onscreen conclusion of. The shipwrecked boat
suddenly appears, thus signalling a tentative final act to a film with borders
onto a narrative rather than actually have one. The film is seventy two minutes
long, a very obscure genre film from the continent that is a series of un-connecting
content. It certainly has the material within it for a film of interest -
killers, a mummy, a creepy mansion, a graveyard, a fight between a horse and
the Steve Wright lookalike where the
horse lands blows Riki-Oh would be proud of - but the combination is so intangential
altogether that it's amazing Devil Story
actually exists in its form. Even as a film from the eighties, it's far
more vague in its content than arty horror films, and far from dismissing the
film, liking it actually, it's still something I scrutinise with my brow raised
high in puzzlement.
How does one review hammy dubbing
acting? How does the same minimalist style of Jean Rollin, about mood, become this odd, vague mass of mere
scenes? Why isn't the bonus materials for a French DVD - as even an obscurity
like this that will divide many gets a cult around it, logically in its home of
origin - translated and made available so I can find out how the film came to
be and what the content means? It's clearly in the tone of dream logic horror
film, but it doesn't have the sense and mood of a dream, rather the sense
instead of floating through various events that merely happen. Bernard Launois prolongs inconsequential
moments for other films for lengthy minutes. You will see a lot of long moments
of characters groaning in pain and losing blood, even when they're already
dead, the film cutting back and forth to the groaning and bleeding as another moment
takes place around it. The gore is really a centre piece, though it feels
closer to the Herschell Gordon Lewis school
of organs plopping out or pieces dangling off. Around it are these lengthy
scenes of time passing and off juxtapositions taking place that create a
misshapen combination between the two sides of the film's personality. Openly,
I wonder what the heck I've seen, and see that this will a very unexpected film
for many to sit through, including people who watch films of this ilk.
Devil Story has an ending that repeats to the beginning, a Möbius
strip, and it's not a spoiler because it will baffle many further. Large parts
of Devil Story are repetitious. Or
characters fumbling around or trying to attack each other. Or realising they've
used all the spare gasoline to touch someone ablaze. There is a lot of
memorable moments in the film's favour. Also the entire perplexing nature of
the film is memorable in itself. And I ask myself, viewing a film like this, just
how further and obscurer I can get into European horror cinema. France's horror
output is more prolifically known for within the last decade, and through Jean Rollin and Jess Franco's occasional
co-productions. There's a great film called Baby Blood (1990) too. But there was little I knew of aside from
these originally when I was getting into European cult cinema, and now knowing
of Devil Story's existence and various films scattered throughout the country's
cinema sporadically, I wonder what low budget oddities of a French type are
hidden online or on a multi region DVD player somewhere else. I can only look
at Devil Story, writing about it
here, with perplexity and admiration for the director and everyone involved for
doing something I never expected to see.
Just because a film is random and has no plot doesn't mean it would get on this list. They could be tiresome instead. This is really an issue with films that try to be deliberately atonal and don't care about a logic to any of its content, thus leading to many films that, as I view them, I want to gouge my eyes out with a pencil. This is different for how compelling random it is with an internal logic of its own, a series of events that just happen and never becomes tedious but more compelling in its ridiculous lack of meaning to me. It's speaking in some form but I cannot understand what it's saying It's Jean Rollin if he lost his mind, which is amazing to think exists.
Now for something perverse. I am disappointed
with the direction Peter Jackson went
with his career - high budget Hollywood films that feel too clean and overdone
in design. I cannot help but look back at his early splatstick films and admire
their politically incorrect, low budget genre content more so. Meet the Feebles is the more divisive
film of the group that consists of three films - as Bad Taste (1987) and
Braindead (1992) can be enjoyed as gooey splatter horror films, Meet the
Feebles is far more rancid and coarse, a parody of the Muppets that is entirely
about the most lurid content possible. It feels grimy and for the better for
it. 
