Weak, ponderous cheap-jack horror by Ulli Lommel that never really gets going and ends up with so many holes, unexplained details that only confuse and make things plod from one disconnected scene to another. So many questions, very little answers. The sloppy execution doesn't fair up any better, but the decent concept was never entirely realised and given minor treatment. Gladly there's an unpleasant side cooking up some hokey low-budget make-up FX with icky and over-the-top side-effects. Add a dash of gratuitous topless nudity too. There's an effectively bloody gore scene or two (and laser eyes?!) at the end, but it's all soon but forgotten with an uninspired ending. Watch as an memorizing Donald Pleasance slums about in a role, which he spends most of the time picking out maggots from his arm (due to a witch's curse) or hypnotizing patients to recall those good old times of witch-burning in Devonsville to hopefully rid him of this curse. The obscure superstitious framework manages to paint all shades of greys and help settle in a disquieting atmospheric tone. The rural country setting oozes organic creepiness and an ominously crawling score is another added addition. The alluring Suzanna Love is nothing more than sound and others such as Robert Walker and Paul Wilson are droningly okay. Far from terrible, just unwarrantably stilted modern-day (although there's reminiscent flashbacks of the past that we learn that there just might be a little more to the new teacher in town) witchcraft nonsense.
Review of The Devonsville Terror
