Opening Curse: A Salem Knockoff Without the Fire
There are bad movies, and then there are movies that feel like a dare. The Devonsville Terror falls into the latter, a film that asks: how much empty space, wooden acting, and soggy folklore can you endure before your brain mutinies? Directed by Ulli Lommel—who never met a premise he couldn’t drain of life—the film wants to be a feminist horror about reincarnated witches settling scores in small-town America. What it delivers is a mix of tepid supernatural posturing, high-school-theater production values, and Donald Pleasence cashing a paycheck with the glazed eyes of a man trapped in a contract he forgot to read.
The premise has promise: three women wrongly executed in 1683 return centuries later, reincarnated in a conservative New England hamlet, to wreak vengeance on the descendants of the men who killed them. It could’ve been a fiery screed about misogyny, or at least a campy witchploitation romp. Instead, it’s a movie about women with vague jobs (teacher, DJ, environmentalist) being ogled, threatened, and tied to stakes while the townsmen chew scenery like underpaid dinner-theater extras.
Donald Pleasence and the Worms
Let’s start with poor Donald Pleasence. Here he plays Dr. Warley, a town physician slowly being eaten alive by worms crawling out of his skin—a metaphor so blunt it might as well come with footnotes. Pleasence spends most of his scenes muttering pseudo-scientific gobbledygook while peeling latex worms off his cheeks, looking less like a cursed man than an actor wondering why he agreed to shoot in rural Wisconsin in November.
This is the same Donald Pleasence who once went toe-to-toe with Michael Myers, the same man who chewed through The Great Escape. Here, he’s reduced to whispering about ancestral guilt while his face looks like a bad meatloaf left out in the sun. If you ever needed proof that a legendary actor can’t save a movie that’s already drowning, The Devonsville Terror is your Exhibit A.
The “Modern” Women and Their Fates
Our trio of reincarnated witches—Jenny the schoolteacher (Suzanna Love), Monica the radio DJ, and Chris the scientist—arrive in Devonsville with all the subtlety of martyrs-in-waiting. Jenny lectures her students that God was once female in Babylonian times, which sends the PTA into cardiac arrest. Monica dares to tell women not to put up with abusive husbands on her call-in show. Chris wants to test the water supply, which apparently is as offensive in Devonsville as public nudity.
The townsmen respond to these radical acts with the collective energy of a lynch mob, muttering about the “old ways” before deciding to re-enact their ancestor’s witch-burning hobbies. For the viewer, it’s less horror than tedium: you know exactly what’s coming, and it takes the film forever to get there. The only suspense is wondering which actress will forget her lines first.
When the murders finally happen, they’re both absurd and lifeless. Chris is torn apart by dogs (which we barely see). Monica is dragged behind a truck in a scene so clumsily shot it feels like an outtake. Jenny ends up on the stake, of course, but by then you’re too numb to care.
Lommel’s “Feminist” Horror, or How Not to Make a Statement
Some scholars have generously called The Devonsville Terror an “early feminist horror film.” That’s a stretch so wide it belongs in a yoga class. Yes, the film centers on women resisting a patriarchal small-town cabal. But resistance in Lommel’s hands means standing around in turtlenecks until you’re kidnapped, then getting your revenge in the final reel through vague lightning bolts and cheap optical effects.
Feminism in horror can be sharp (Carrie), unsettling (The Stepford Wives), or even camp (The Witch Who Came from the Sea). Here it’s flat, like watching someone photocopy the Salem Witch Trials until all the ink runs out. Lommel wants credit for a message movie but delivers one where women exist mostly as sermonizing stand-ins until the special effects guy finally gets his turn.
Small-Town Evil, Shot in Dairyland
The film was shot in Wisconsin, and boy, does it look it. Instead of gothic forests or windswept colonial ruins, we get endless gray fields, muddy roads, and clapboard houses that wouldn’t scare a trick-or-treater. When the film cuts to its 1683 prologue, you expect eerie torchlight and spectral shadows. What you get looks like a Renaissance fair put on in a church parking lot.
Cinematographer Jürgen Baumann seems allergic to atmosphere. Day scenes are lit like insurance commercials, and the night scenes are so murky you wonder if the projector bulb blew out. The “spectral visions” are achieved by superimposing actors’ faces over clouds, which looks less like a curse from beyond the grave and more like a weather report gone wrong.
The Hag Mask’s Forgotten Cousin
Every slasher worth its salt needs a memorable image—the hag mask in Curtains, the glove in Nightmare on Elm Street, the blank face of Michael Myers. The Devonsville Terror gives us… worms and a bad wig. There’s no iconography, no central menace. Just a bunch of angry farmers yelling about witches like they’re late to choir practice.
Even when Jenny finally unleashes her powers, it’s a limp spectacle: a few men flung around by invisible forces, some bargain-bin fire effects, and Pleasence staring into the middle distance. If revenge is supposed to be sweet, here it tastes like expired milk.
Bukowski Would’ve Laughed
If Bukowski had reviewed this film, he’d probably say something like: “It’s not horror, it’s indigestion. Men who can’t handle women, women who can’t handle the script, and Donald Pleasence handling worms. That’s not a movie, that’s a hangover with subtitles.”
And he’d be right. The film’s greatest terror is its dullness, its refusal to either embrace the sleaze of exploitation or the intensity of real horror. It just sits there, half-dead, like a barfly waiting for last call.
Epilogue: The Terror Ends, So Does the Patience
By the time Jenny boards a bus out of Devonsville, having vanquished her tormentors, you’re left with one overwhelming thought: thank God it’s over. Not because justice has been served, but because the VHS can finally eject.
Lommel would go on to make other low-budget oddities, but The Devonsville Terror remains one of those films remembered more for its title and its box art than anything it actually does onscreen. It promised witchcraft, vengeance, maybe even empowerment. What it delivered was 86 minutes of sluggish pacing, uninspired gore, and Donald Pleasence looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.
Final Verdict
The Devonsville Terror is less a horror film than a cinematic nap. A film about witches that forgets to be wicked, about vengeance that forgets to be fun. It’s a limp, confused slog, occasionally enlivened by accidental camp. If you’re a completist for 1980s horror curiosities, it might be worth one ironic viewing. For everyone else: save your sanity, and let this curse stay buried.
Verdict: A horror film that’s neither horrific nor particularly filmic. The real terror is realizing you sat through it.
