Devil Story, also known as Il était une fois... le diable (lit.'Once upon a time... the devil'), is a 1986 French Nazisploitation[1] horror film written and directed by Bernard Launois. It is his seventh and last feature film.[2] An uneven mixture of the slasher and Euro-gothic genres, it was largely condemned by critics for its incoherent script and technical incompetence.[3] It has since gained a cult following because of its reputation as one of the worst films in history.[2][4]
A seemingly deranged murderer in a Schutzstaffel uniform with a disfigured spine and pig-like[3] face terrorises a rural area of Normandy and slaughters whomever he encounters on random—first a couple of campers, then a man asking for directions to the nearest gas station.
A couple's car breaks down on the road, and they decide to stay at a nearby hotel until they repair their car. The hotel is a modified old castle run by an elderly man and woman. The nervous couple learn from their hosts that the place is cursed.
After initially released in 1986 in only a small number of theatres in French provinces, the film was shown in Paris as a double featureatLe Brady [fr], under the title Il était une fois... le diable.[2]
InSpinegrinder: The Movies Most Critics Won't Write About, author and critic Clive Davies described the film as "75 mins [sic] of near-catatonic nonsense" with "a dumb, circular ending".[5] Scott Aaron Stine wrote in his The Gorehound's Guide to Splatter Films of the 1980s: "Despite the charming contrivances, [Devil Story] is just one more reason why French cinema rarely ventures or strays into splatter territory".[3]Lexikon des internationalen Films [de; fr], a German-language reference work on all theatrical films and many television films released in Germany since 1945, noted the film's homages to John Carpenter's 1980 film The Fog.[6]
^"Devil Story". Lexikon des internationalen Films (in German). Filmdienst. Archived from the original on 24 September 2020. Retrieved 25 April 2023. (...) dessen Orientierung an John Carpenters Kultfilm "The Fog - Nebel des Grauens" unübersehbar ist.