Devil Story (1986)

A couple goes on a trip, has car trouble, gets lost, and the wife wants to go home. The husband says there’s a town about ten minutes away.  Either he’s lying or there’s a continuity issue since the next scene it’s night. 

They stop outside a massive building that looks like an estate but turns out to be a hotel. The innkeepers let them in, provide them with drinks, and tell them the tale of the five brothers. This involves a shipwreck and the offspring of the brothers signing a pact with the devil.  Is it true or just a story? The innkeepers are divided.

In the middle of the night, there is a noise outside. Inexplicably the wife wanders out the door and down the massive stairway to the sidewalk while wearing only her negligée.  Curious behavior which we already know is a terrible idea.  A horse appears and the wife goes back inside to be safe. No, of course she doesn’t because that would make sense. She freaks out, runs down the down the sidewalk, and hides in the back seat of their car. A short while later puts on a raincoat and drives away.  I pity her husband.

Wherever she drives, the horse appears. She drives until the car has problems at which point she runs into the woods. Good god, why? The horse is out there. And why is she afraid of the horse? I guess it’s supposed to be possessed but it’s not really doing anything other than rearing up and making noise.

So not only is there a possessed horse on the loose, but she’s wandered into the graveyard where a gypsy and her mutant Nazi son are burying a body under cover of night. Instead of staying hidden until they leave, she falls into a hole while trying to sneak through the graveyard, which alerts them to her presence. 

There isn’t much going on after this. She goes into the hole thirty five minutes in.  For the next twenty minutes, there is barely any dialogue other than the mutant grunting and the woman screaming.  And don’t even get me started on the mummy who digs up a girl with the Roseanne Roseannadanna haircut and drools blue goo.  Or the shipwreck that was hidden in a cliff and has now broken free. Or the innkeeper obsessed with killing the horse and claiming to be the master of the ghost ship, while totally ignoring the woman obsessed with the mummy coming after them.

This movie is absurd and part of it is so ridiculous it’s entertaining. There’s people getting scared for no reason and at one point an off camera person throws a cat at someone. (It’s ridiculous rather than horrifying and the cat seems fine.) Adding a mummy into this makes no sense at all and he only serves to scare the woman now that the horse has apparently decided it’s no longer interested in her. 

The soundtrack is Bach’s Toccata in D Minor, which people will recognize from old horror movies or cartoons.  The audio is dubbed from French and you have to wonder about the accuracy. Was the dialogue really this bad?

The problem with the movie is so much of it is boring.  Long periods with no dialogue, the terrible makeup on the mutant, the lack of plot, and long shots where nothing really happens. At one point, we have a long scene with the woman pacing in her room and a cat underneath the bed. It’s pointless. Also pointless? The picture on the cover is nothing like the poorly done Nazi mutant in the film.

Ridiculous dialogue:

Husband - God damn it, you could have reminded me to get some gas!

Wife - No shit.

Wife - The mummy. I saw it. It’s coming this way.

Innkeeper - I don’t give a damn about that mummy.

This is an odd place to park. 

Why would anyone wander out of a hotel and down to
the sidewalk in the middle of the night?

The mummy is in control

our happy couple

The mummy is drooling blue foam? Sure

The ship coming out of the rock

Rainboat, boots and negligee

Who okay’d this wig?