‘Devil Story’ and the Case for Horror Preservation
By Dread Central
6 min read‘Devil Story,’ arguably the worst movie ever made, remains a cornerstone of horror history, and its preservation is important.
‘Devil Story,’ arguably the worst movie ever made, remains a cornerstone of horror history, and its preservation is important.
Devil Story is a 1986 Nazisploitation slasher movie, a movie I remarked to a friend “walked so In a Violent Nature could run.” It’s best described as Madman, Joe Giannone’s 1981 slasher, meets Carnival of Souls, Herk Harvey’s enduring, surreal classic. Even that descriptor sells it both too short and too high. Devil Story is much stranger, borderline incomprehensible, as it shifts from one subgenre to the next without any consideration for narrative form or filmic structure. And as a result, it’s widely considered one of the worst movies ever made.
Some context. The Library of Congress National Film Registry, as of this year’s induction ceremony in January, houses just 24 horror movies (the latest of which is John Carpenter’s The Thing) among 925 titles. That’s 2%, for those curious. While it’s wonderful to see the likes of Carrie and A Nightmare on Elm Street preserved in arguably the most prestigious of ways, it does compound a preexisting stressor among many horror fans – the longevity of the genre we love. Horror after all, is not only regularly excluded from preservation, awards, and more, but decades of censorship have stripped our most beloved titles of key scenes we’re likely never going to see again.
While it’s not perfect, it’s why the likes of Umbrella Entertainment, Arrow Video, Scream Factory, and, specifically, Vinegar Syndrome are so damn important to genre fans. 2024’s Red Rooms – one of the scariest movies ever made – is exclusively available physically via Vinegar Syndrome. Without it, the only legal way to watch Pascal Plante’s masterpiece is via Shudder. Which is great, mind you, but digital archiving and actual, tangible physical preservation are very different.
A slasher movie (sort of) about a disfigured Nazi, his witch mother, and a ton (ton) of horse in Normandy, France is otherwise never going to be broadly deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” even though my argument here is that it should be. Vinegar Syndrome thinks so, too, so there’s that, and in their listing for the 2021 4K release, they wrote, “Without a doubt one of the strangest horror films ever made in France, Bernard Launois’ Devil Story (or, Once Upon A Time…The Devil) is a mind-melting and almost indescribable, heavily gore-fueled fever dream.” Their goal is to “rescue, restore, and preserve genre cinema,” and it’s safe to say that without them, Video Ghosts and an audience of 30 wouldn’t have had the pleasure of screening the film the night before Halloween.
There’s a kicker, though, and that’s twofold. Not only is Devil Story out-of-print now (it’s on Tubi, though), it also challenges common sentiments around preservation and whether a movie of its caliber warrants posterity. I loved it, but the general reception was considerably more mixed (read: negative). Other audience members were bored. Some were incapable of sitting in silence for longer than fifteen seconds without cracking a joke about how often Véronique Renaud’s character tripped and fell. Some of the humor was intentional, and I get that, but as a whole, the modern audience perceived Devil Story as a gag, a joke to share amongst friends and then discard.
Critically, that’s broadly the case, too. There was a resurgence of interest following Vinegar Syndrome’s release (including a great retrospective from Joseph Ziemba on Bleeding Skull: “The film contains none of the gutter poetics that lurk in the corners of Jean Rollin and Jess Franco films. Bad stunts, overly enthusiastic dubbing, Florida license plates (what?!), big synths; Devil Story screams America”), but otherwise, Devil Story was shoved back into the niche annals of history where it lived for so long.
And accounting for the double-screening as a whole, that’s a shame. Physical preservation comes with its own problems, yes (see: disc rot, moldy books (!!!), film degradation), but there’s something distinct in that transfer of ownership, the bigger, broader notion of being an archivist in one’s own right. And, more importantly, it speaks to broader attitudes toward art, what warrants “saving,” and whether movies like Devil Story (or hell, even Girls Nite Out) deserve permanence.
Not surprisingly, I think they do, and I’d challenge audiences of all statures, no matter age or genre proclivity, to not only check out Devil Story (so much horse, omg, you’ve got to see it), but consider it on its own terms, not as an audition template for a stint on RiffTrax. Irony is often the death of art, and an inability to take anything seriously not only makes our cultural environment much duller, but it also (and this scares me) threatens an entire storied history of film, especially horror films, and our ability to preserve them from one generation to the next.
Because, yes, in 2126, I’d like kids to be able to watch Devil Story. Accessibly, too, and I’d like kids 100 years later to be able to do the same. Pop in a copy of Devil Story on the Nostromo (or whatever 200 years from now is going to look like), sit back, and marvel at the singular vision on display. Because, love it or hate it, there’s no denying Launois did have a vision. It was an absurd one with Schutzstaffel uniforms, mummies, and vibrant yellow galoshes, but it was a vision. Every horror movie is, and they all deserve to be preserved within the larger canon of the genre’s history.
That history ebbs and flows, sure, but I don’t think there’s a single horror movie I regret seeing, even the ones I hated. Each one has had some impact on me, heightened my own appreciation and approach to the genre, or even just scared me silly (like Álex de la Iglesia The Baby’s Room, hard to find now). So, laugh when Devil Story wants you to laugh, but also recognize it’s more than just a joke. Appreciate the efforts being made to preserve it forever, and when you get the chance, track it down. Seriously. I can’t stop thinking about it, and once you’ve seen it, I’m certain you’ll feel the same way.
