Reviews

The Devonsville Terror starts 300 years before the movie proper with the persecution of some witches for things like brewing something in a cauldron, reading Tarot cards and seducing men. They are all dispatched while the men folk look on lasciviously. The leader is played by the ugly guy who played "Cousin Billy from the rock shop" in The Giant Spider Invasion along with small roles in other films by Bill Rebane. We get some close ups of his hideous visage as he licks his lips lustfully. The three women are all killed in different ways- one is eaten alive by hogs, another is put on a big wooden wheel and rolled down a hill while it's set ablaze and the third is killed more traditionally by burning at the stake. After about ten minutes the movie continues in the present. The location is a small town in Wisconsin, we learn that it's both very religious and conservative, with the men dominate. This mostly quiet, uneventful town is about to be disrupted by the most destructive force in the entire universe- women. Three women arrive in the town at the same time who may or may not be witches. They bring with them things much more calamitous than any plague or blight- feminism, environmentalism and the most destructive force of all, female sexuality and beauty. This comes in the form of director Ulli Lommel's muse and wife at the time the foxy Suzanne Love. She's a school teacher who despite her conservative dress and demure nature informs her students that God may have been a woman. In this community it would be better to say God didn't even exist than to state such a blasphemy. She catches the eye of many of the town's men including one who has just murdered his wife with a pillow. He's played by the jowly, always dejected looking Paul Willson. He had a decent career both before and especially after this most notably in Office Space a film I find highly overrated despite only having half-watched it on regular TV with all the unnecessary swears cut out. He's very good here coming off as both loathsome and somewhat sympathetically pathetic as he tries to woo the pretty young teacher. These scenes are pure agony as he blathers on and on while she sits/stands there silently while still able to seem compassionate and expertly hiding her contempt for this disgusting (both physically and morally) creature.

The other new arrivals are a young student who wants to test the water for pollutants despite the town having dumped the same stuff in the river for 50 years with seemingly no ill effects. The town really doesn't need nor want someone interfering with what is probably the only industry there. There's also a femme-Marxist female radio DJ spreading women's lib propaganda in a town that is doing just fine with women in their servile place. She's no fun-loving Stevie Wayne but sour and unlikable with bad teeth and an attitude to match. Donald Pleasence shows up in an extended cameo as a doctor infested with worms trying to break the curse put upon his ancestors before he is consumed slowly and painfully by the wriggly little monsters. He may be the towns only hope for true salvation while the rest of the men are about to repeat the mistakes of their forefathers, the execution of these modern day witches. The methods are similar but updated somewhat with one being eaten alive by dogs, another dragged behind a car to her death and the good old reliable burning at the stake saved for Suzanna Love's character. It turns out she is actually all that they fear a woman might be and this leads to an exciting sequence towards the end that completely rips off the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark, only the people getting killed here are more loathsome. This is the gruesome highlight of the movie with an axe to the skull, an exploding head and an extended meltdown of Paul Willson's ugly head which isn't very realistic but still awesome. She accomplishes all three of these unique kills while tied to a stake and by shooting lasers out of her eyes. The movie ends with her boarding a bus to presumably travel onto other towns to use her feminine wiles and sexuality to destroy even more lives and communities. While trendy destructive fads like environmentalism (now know as the cult of Climate Change which has been expertly and easily debunked by Tony Heller) and more modern ones like transgenderism will eventually fade and lose their power, female beauty and sexuality will always be a destructive force so long as men are still able to obtain an erection. I'm sure you've read that a nation/kingdom/empire is more likely to be in turmoil and at a war with a woman in charge. For a good 20 to 30 years most women will have an upper hand in the battle of the sexes but once they hit that certain point I hope they didn't buy into the modern lies of feminism and women's liberation and pursued a family instead of wasting their good years on a career that will never bring real fulfillment only ever decreasing in value monetary gain, wasted years and deep regret. I doubt this film was trying to express anything like my interpretation 40! Years later and most likely Lommel just went along with his wife who co-wrote it to give her an ego boost by portraying her as a strong, sexy woman who brutally destroys all the men who have transcended against her kind.

The Devonsville Terror isn't a horror film packed with fright and gore with most of the runtime rather slow paced and building up to the final conflagration. Fortunately it does a solid job of building up a feeling of autumnal horror and looming dread. The location is perfect being made in Gleason, Wisconsin where Bill Rebane set up shop to make most of his regional classics. Rebane is a producer here with a couple of other Rebanes along for the ride. The main cast is pretty solid here and while Suzanna Love isn't a stellar actress she's very good here in a role that requires her to be mostly cold and unemotional. Donald Pleasence is in his typical aloof, eccentric role he would play around this time in his career even getting to pull worms out of his skin. Paul Willson is easily the best actor here playing a character you'll mostly hate but at times feel sorry for. There's also a number of too brief topless scenes from Suzanna and most of the bloody parts are confined to the beginning and ending. Overall I think The Devonsville Terror is a fun, borderline classic of "folk" rural horror being both atmospheric, sexy, bloody and possessing a very fun plot about the eternal battle of the sexes.

This was made on the same set with the same director and most of the principal cast of SS Experiment Love Camp. The actor who plays the sadistic Lieutenant here (Sergeant in the other film) looks strikingly like Julius Streicher, publisher of Der Sturmer and so anti-Semitic fellow party members condemned him. The blonde haired doctor returns as does the self-righteous, objecting older doctor in a similar role as the last film. A new actress with a big role is introduced here as one of the prisoners, a sassy, Jamaica woman who looks like a low rent Pam Grier. Unfortunately her annoying character survives the entire movie.

Like the companion film this has lots of female nudity and even some shower scenes (the cleansing kind). Male nudity is once again limited to backsides without a single dangle-down swinging about. The women here once again are average looking at best and once again most with unimpressive chests. There's some decent experimentation scenes involving burns with women's legs set ablaze which look realistic and painful. The women are topless of course during these procedures because these men are so evil they like to ogle boobs while doing their painful procedures. There's also scenes of women burned alive in homicidal "gas ovens". One of these scenes shows seemingly dead women put in the ovens and when the fire starts it appears to revive them and they do a brief interpretive dance bit. This film also manages to combine the brothel and experimentation genres of NSploitation films.

The films best and "redeeming" part is an extended torture sequence of nude women by the Streicher dude. He pulls out fingernails, puts lit matches under nails, punches a woman with a spiked fist in the stomach so her guts come out and squeeze a woman's skull with a strap and vise until blood pours out. The highlight is a tongue torn out of a pretty redhead's mouth. Ironically Streicher himself was tortured at Nurnberg including being whipped, spat upon, burned with cigarettes and having his genitals beaten. This film is notorious for featuring real concentration camp photos/footage. This includes the infamous footage of a British bulldozer pushing emaciated corpses into a mass grave. This is from after the British liberation of Bergen-Belsen where tens of thousands died from disease mostly typhus as the camp became vastly overcrowded towards the end of the war. Typhus took the lives of 13,000-15,000 more prisoners while under British Administration. The two most famous inmates to die of disease here were Margot and Anne Frank after being evacuated from Oswiecim. SS Camp: Women's Hell is unpardonable sleaze, mean-spirited and ugly. It's bleak and mostly hopeless with the only hope of "salvation" for the prisoners being the rape-hungry, marauding Soviet army attacking the camp towards the end. This provides a little action for a film that is sometimes lifeless. These two films are passable sleaze but lack the outrageous over the top and often hilariousness of NS classics like The Beast in Heat and my favorite the Gestapo's Last Orgy.

"Who knows the truth and does not speak it out, is a deplorable coward!"- Julius Streicher.

Reap of Evil (1994) is the feature length debut of the current undisputed splatter-master, Brian Paulin. It starts out with what will be the first of many dream sequences in the film with the character waking up terrified, there's a bit of gore here, which looks cool though it's hard to determine what's going on exactly. This is SOV and the low quality continually hampers the generous creature and gore effects here. The credits role with some generic but decent "horror" music. The soundtrack throughout is solid, about what you expect in a low budget horror and there's a few killer extreme metal tunes. The film proper starts with a group of friends playing poker, this includes Brian Paulin and his frequent collaborator, Rich George. Eventually they start talking about their horrible dreams, an omen of horrors to come.

For the next 20 minutes or so we get to see the main characters daily lives while the crescendo of creepiness builds up. A group of priests discuss the horrible dreams both they and the main characters are having and how it's a harbinger of something very, very bad on the horizon but they want to cover it up. The main priest has some pretty cool make up that either makes him look old or horribly scarred, once again the unfortunate low quality makes it hard to tell. There's some sparse but solid gore in this first part including a head torn straight off and the flesh of a breast being cut off and then a character molesting and cutting the heart, this is only a dream though. Brian gets covered in a flood of blood and then is drowning in it which is filmed effectively in slow motion.

At this point we are treated to what I thought was real disaster footage but it's actually footage from a disaster drill in the area Brian was privy to film. There's some injury gore that you won't be able to tell is only effects work. This is a good inclusion and is a way to show that not only are the main characters experiencing something terrible but it's spreading, possibly worldwide. Things break down for the characters further as a woman in her kitchen is attacked by a pretty cool looking demon. I'll probably mention this again but the low quality here makes it hard to tell just how awesome this full body make up job is but I definitely appreciate the hard work Brian surely put it. Another character is attacked by a creature briefly rendered with stop motion. I don't remember Brian using any in his other films but it's cool to see here. It sprays him in the face with an acidic liquid. His face proceeds to melt in a grotesque and profuse way, a splatter sequence that puts most gore scenes in 99% of low budget horror to shame.

Brian isn't just a gore guy as there's quite a few explosions here of miniatures, the low picture quality and darkness making it not so obvious. The remaining characters either opt out or try to make a run for it. There's a very quick face removal that is pretty nifty. We get some brief stop motion footage of what I think was a creature that rose above the tree tops but it was too dark to tell for certain. Next there's a nasty arm-ripping with some sinews still attached to make the pain more palatable.

Around the 55 minute mark one of the characters appears in a Hellish realm. I think it's Rich George but it's pretty dark so I can't be 100% sure. He can't speak because a narrator demon has taken out his vocal chords. He also eats them. You'll be able to tell almost immediately that the demon is Brain Paulin in make up. Most of the small cast here plays multiple characters/demons. As he's escorted through this nightmarish place he encounters many strange/gory scenes and a variety of demonic entities. There's even one that looks like a Grey alien which is shown way too briefly. At one point he's fed demon turds which I have to imagine is much, much worse than Human feces. A pedophile rapist that looks like Jesus has his penis bitten off. Brian's not a big fan of religion. One demon has a needle like protrusion that is inserted into the man's eye. This actually looks pretty realistic and the low quality may actually help here. Explosions go off including amongst large model skyscrapers with a giant stop motion demon. It appears that they have been freed from their purgatory and are ready to conquer the Earth for themselves. The guy makes it out of Hell but has he escaped to someplace even worse?

Reap of Evil has a couple of major drawbacks- the low picture quality and it's way too dark at times to see what's going on. This is especially annoying considering how much hard work went into the gore and demon effects here. There had to be at least a dozen different creatures/demons in the movie. This film was not lacking in ambition and is worth seeing for the effects work alone. I bet more effort was put into this than most horror films even ones with a reasonable budget. Brian of course handled much of the work himself with the assist of a small crew. His devotion to gore, monsters and horror is astonishing. Acting here is about what you expect, not really worth slandering though there's some thick New England accents. Had I known about this in my tape trading days back in the 90s it would have been a longtime favorite along with the German splatter classics. I'm pretty sure this was influenced by Ittenbach as it reminds of both The Burning Moon and Black Past (hell sequence/gory dream sequences) without feeling redundant of either one. Also, it made me think of Stanze's Savage Harvest but that came out the same year. Not sure what else I think could have influenced it as it feels pretty unique. I don't want to overhype this but for a first major work by a filmmaker probably working with the money you'd get for recycling a bunch of soda cans in Michigan it's pretty remarkable and the ambition and hard work put forth here should be appreciated by any and all low budget horror fans/filmmakers.

Camp Hideaway Massacre is the kind of cheap, gory, pointless trash that makes me smile. It starts with a topless woman running, bouncing through a field. That's it as we get text that says Two Months Earlier. We are introduced to a group of foul-mouthed metalhead friends. The soundtrack throughout is mostly decent extreme metal tracks. It turns out one of the friends is a machete-wielding killer. A random couple is briefly introduced before getting offed by him including a really fake and goofy looking but exuberantly bloody decapitation. This film is a bit like Don't Go in the Woods as people are introduced randomly with little character development just to get gorily killed off. That film is an all time slasher classic so I'm glad to see that format utilized here.

The people bumped off here are lured in by the promise of renting a stinky tent in the woods for $10. A mother and daughter are duped into this irresistible offer and are brutally murdered with the daughter's death being especially bloody. There's lots of scenes of the friends sitting around, smoking the devil's parsley and talking about nothing of note. A third couplet of people rents the smelly tent and the girl is quickly killed. The man has a gun though and threatens to use it, this is for wimps though so he takes on the dude with a machete bare-handed. Another of the friends shows up and gives him a well deserved gunshot to the head with his own handgun. More insipid dialogue. We then get a bit of a change as one of the other dudes procures the machete to gruesomely hack off the head of a guy he had a minor disagreement with. The gore effects aren't great here but bloody and frequent enough to add significant value to the film.

Tina Krause is looking for her friends asking people about town and handing out flyers. Another couple is introduced, being possible sapphists but this is never confirmed as they just talk about absolute nonsense like they are completely braindead and there's no carpet-munching or anything. The one girl is kind of cute in a Claire Boucher kind of way. They complain a lot about the stench of the tent but end up in it anyways. Is hiring a tent for $10 in a clearing really that appealing and that great of a deal? They both get slaughtered with the machete and there's some nice gushing wounds on display. Tina Krause shows up to her hotel room and proves that despite approaching 50 when this film was made she still isn't shy. She has a shower scene lasting about 3 minutes including full frontal. She still looks good but her brother Brian should probably have a talk with her about getting some self respect in her advanced age. Two women are standing by a camp fire and get messily killed by a machete and gun. I'm not sure if they paid the $10 for the odiferous tent or not. Tina now rents the noxious tent and is smoking mooster as she gets attacked by the machete dude. He doesn't kill her yet but manages to pull her shirt off. It turns out she's the girl from the beginning! We are treated to even more footage of her almost 5 decade old mammaries bouncing about and it's not unenjoyable.

Tina is caught at night and tied to a tree with barbed wire. They put a jacket on her but make sure to expose her breasts a little. She delivers some truly awful dialogue while tied up. Not that any of the other dialogue in this film is worthwhile outside of comedic value. We now found out that the friends have been killing people to feed to a demon. What you thought was a simple stupid slasher is now an idiotic demonic horror/thriller! Tina is murdered with lingering shots of blood pouring across her ample bosom. It's day now and we get some more poor and hard to hear dialogue from the three friends. A pregnant mother and her hot, young daughter have now rented the pungent tent. They wisely sit outside of it in chairs. The guys show up and the mother is gunned down. The daughter bounces away and being possible jailbait leaves her shirt on. Her throat is slashed with the machete. It's night now and the mother or possibly another pregnant woman is attacked by the demon. It's just a guy in a mask but still pretty cool looking. In a very graphic scene sure to make abortionists either hard or wet as it rips the fetus out of her still alive and screaming. The machete killer screams "no!" as blood splatters on his face. Fade to black as the still alive newborn cries.

Camp Hideaway Massacre is recommended for people with no taste, no life, no dreams and no future. The Hideaway title is a just a rancid tent in a clearing not very deep in the woods. The plot is almost non-existent. The dialogue is risible and often hard to make out. The acting is as bad as you expect with even Tina Krause being awful. If you just want mindless gore, stupid people dying and middle aged but still quality nudity this is highly recommended. It at least delivers more bloodshed than a majority of slashers now and I found it a lot of trashy fun. Alpha Video has released it on DVD and as with many of their releases you run the risk of it crapping out on you, fortunately mine only did that during the end credits. Most others will wish it happened after the first five minutes but for a select few this will prove a fun, mindless, rotgut classic.