Watch The Devonsville Terror For Free

An Exercise In Nonsense

Admirable film.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

THE DEVONSVILLE TERROR is one of many low budget horror flicks that director Ulli Lommel was making in the early 1980s, his video nasty THE BOOGEY MAN being the best-remembered of them all. This one's a typical witchcraft story, of the kind that seems to have been filmed over and over again over the decades in America. A bunch of witches are killed by Puritans and swear vengeance; in the modern day, an innocent young woman is possessed by the spirit of one of the dead witches and the cycle of revenge begins. This is familiar small town material, with a fair bit of atmosphere but not much in the way of plotting or originality. There are nice roles for an always-reliable Donald Pleasence and Robert Walker Jr., while Suzanna Love acquits herself well as the feisty lead. However, it's all a little staid, a little forgettable, at least until the hilariously over the top climax, which rips off the ending of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK but is even more gruesome - something I really enjoyed.

Devonsville grocery store owner Walter Gibbs kills his sick wife, thus invoking the spirits of three women who were executed as witches three hundred years earlier. When the town's newest arrivals - teacher Jenny (Suzanna Love), environmentalist Chris (Mary Walden) and DJ Monica (Deanna Haas) - upset the locals with their progressive feminist thinking, the superstitious menfolk begin to believe that the women are the reincarnations of the long-dead witches.Ulli Lommel is the man responsible for the atrocious Boogeyman II (1983), but his next film, The Devonsville Terror (also '83), is surprisingly fun. The premise is trite, and the slow-burn approach might be off-putting to some, but the film is atmospheric, well acted and actually makes sense. It also features a solid supporting turn from Donald Pleasence as the town's doctor, some gratuitous nudity, and is top and tailed by gnarly violence, starting with the three executions - the first woman is eaten alive by pigs, the second is rolled down a hill strapped to a flaming cartwheel, and the third is burnt at the stake - and ending with some satisfying splatter - an axe in the head, an exploding noggin, and a Raiders of the Lost Ark style melting face - all of which goes to make it a more than reasonable time-waster.6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

This movie have some certain characteristics that kinda make you wonder a bit. "The Devonsville Terror" is a very interesting movie to watch. I saw this movie one time, and I got hooked. After seeing it again, I liked it still. Suzanna Love("The Boogeyman") plays a teacher from out of town who enters Devonsville, a town with a very dark history. 300 years ago, witches were persecuted. One of them put a curse on the town. She was wrongly perceived by the towns folks. The descendants of founding fathers still live in the town which they live their conservative ways. When Jenny Scanlon (Love), and two other women come to reside in town for the winter, the hostility between them begins to sink in. When one of the locals killed his wife, he takes interest in Jenny. The town doctor(Donald Pleasance) is inflicted with an ailment which was brought on by the curse. He is seemingly the only one who is not like the other men. When the others started to attack the other two women, Jenny is the incarnation of the wrongly accused. When they tie her up, the wife of the town leader decided to do away with him. Jenny displayed her fury on the others, and ended up moving on. Some cheese factor was shown. The scenes remind me of "Scanners" , " The Fog" and others to mention. It's not bad. I liked it! 2 out of 5 stars

One of the biggest problems I have with this film - apart from the fact that it actually exists - is that, in the hands of finer craftsmen and with a stronger budget, it could have been quite good. The premise, while familiar, could have been put to good effect: an accused witch's curse comes back to haunt the people of a small New England hamlet 300 years after she was wrongfully burnt at the stake. Ultimately however, 'The Devonsville Terror' just lays down and dies quite quickly, offering no suspense or horror whatsoever outside of a cheap play at being a bad exploitation film here and there (at the beginning and again at the end, where almost the same things happen) with a minorly repulsive 'shock' somewhere in the middle. The film is so cheap the producers don't seem to have even been able to afford to pay more than one of the female actors to go topless, blowing the budget instead on pulling unconvincing maggot stunts and a laughable torn by dogs sequence, stealing the melting head scene from 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', having a ghostly, horribly burnt face with a full head of hair float around and making the heroine shoot laser beams out of her eyes! An unintentional murder apparently releases the vengeful spirits of three women brutalised hundreds of years before; the superstituous, horribly-cliched small town hicks naturally think the spirits have taken possession of three female outsiders: a radio broadcaster, an environmentalist and the newly-appointed school teacher who hitch-hikes into town and falls foul of the townsfolk by telling her pupils that the Babylonian chief god was a woman. Eventually, after some extended film time where nothing very interesting happens, the locals decide to do them in. All the while the village doctor is trying to purge Devonsville of its curse by exposing his patients to seemingly meaningless hypnotherapy that exists only to allow more lame scenes of women being victimised. Apart from a rather nasty scene where one poor girl is dragged to death behind a pick-up, it would all be quite appalling if it wasn't so half-baked. Because it is, it's appalling for very different reasons.