I once met Ulli Lommel, but I've told you about that before. This time he was in Stockholm to sign a contract for seven (I think) of his movies to be released by the notorious shitty crap-company House of Horror (later Horse Creek). I think they payed him 100 000 Swedish kronor for the distribution rights. One of those titles was The Devonsville Terror.
The owner of the distribution company, a cunning man - but also very unsympathetic - had a brilliant idea. He thought about retitle it "The Devonsville Witch Project" and by doing that earn some money from the on-going hype generated from the enormous success by The Blair Witch Project. I don't know if he really did that in the end - I didn't care for the VHS releases, but the shitty DVD that came much later have the original title.
Lommel had his glory days in the 70's and the first half of the 80's, then he lost every bit of talent he had and just became another crazy German. Far from the genius work he did with Fassbinder, or those first American horror movies he did. The Devonsville Terror is one of the films he made with Suzanna Love, the heiress of Standard Oil and wannabe-actress. I guess she put up the money for the movies and she became the star. To be fair, I think she's really good and Lommel did some of his best commercial work together with her.
What surprised me so many years after is how good The Devonsville Terror is. It's actually quite original and even if it have it's fair share of cheese, it's really not worse than some of the other movies from the same time that the fanboys seems to love. This one is instead a bit more serious and ambitious in it's storyline.
300 years ago three witches was executed by the folks in Devonsville. And now it's time for the witches to strike back. They want revenge. Oddly enough three women, all liberated, feminist, open-minded and highly intelligent have just moved in to Devonsville - all by themselves, and this causes anger among the male villagers. They want their women to stay in the kitchen, not claim that god can be a woman and other shenanigans! Slowly their rage is built up... but they obviously don't realize they're all in grave danger!
The idea of history repeating itself is intriguing and the slowly built story revolving mostly around Suzanna Love and Paul Willson, the latter as the main sleazy wife-killing antagonist is wonderful. Both actors are top-notch. The rest is a bit more loosely told, with little or zero guidance from the script - but it also makes the atmosphere even more dreamy, more surrealistic. But it's basically a good old witch-horror, just a bit more arty.
It stops being arty when the gore comes, and that's awesome. It's bloody and silly and very far from realistic. Lommel claimed he had to include the sleaze and gore to satisfy the distributors and he didn't like that at all.
In all honesty, we should be glad he was forced to do that. It makes The Devonsville Terror so much better. Without this stuff it would just be a quite good little drama, but now it's a lot more interesting for the eyes and ears, and gives a good spice to the stuff between the pretentious (but lovely) melodrama. And yeah, Donald Pleasance is in the movie to - and there's not reason at all for him to be there. Just a famous name sitting in a room, picking maggots from his arms and having some pointless dialogue scenes against the other lead actors.
But hey, that's what exploitation is all about. And I love exploitation.
"I once met Ulli Lommel, but I've told you about that before."
Yeah, I think this anecdote is on your ninja dixon blog, you should post a link to that old blog post, who knows......someone might like to read it.
"notorious shitty crap-company House of Horror (later Horse Creek)."
Never heard about that company.
"The owner of the distribution company, a cunning man - but also very unsympathetic - had a brilliant idea."
I remember you mentioning this guy before.
"The Devonsville Terror is one of the films he made with Suzanna Love, the heiress of Standard Oil and wannabe-actress. I guess she put up the money for the movies and she became the star. To be fair, I think she's really good and Lommel did some of his best commercial work together with her."
IMDB claims they were married for a while.....never heard about her, but I guess she(and many others) was a precursor to Paris Hilton.
"The idea of history repeating itself is intriguing and the slowly built story revolving mostly around Suzanna Love and Paul Willson, the latter as the main sleazy wife-killing antagonist is wonderful."
The premise sounded really good.
"And yeah, Donald Pleasance is in the movie to - and there's not reason at all for him to be there."
Ah yes......a pro like Pleasance is always welcomed.
"But hey, that's what exploitation is all about. And I love exploitation."
It does sound like cool flick though, good review and thanks Fred.
Posted by: Megatron | May 30, 2013 at 21:42
It's not a masterpiece, but it kinda works - and it's "cozy", which is very important for me :)
Posted by: Fred Anderson | June 01, 2013 at 09:56