Tune In Tuesday: The Devonsville Terror (1983) – A Folk Horror Freakout with That Vinegar Syndrome Glow

Stack up those Blu-rays, flip off the lights, and let that warm, grainy magic roll—because *The Devonsville Terror* is the kind of late-night shocker that just *hits different* when you're knee-deep in a stack of Vinegar Syndrome discs. You know the deal: slipcase fresh, remastered menace, and the kind of deep-cut unearthed weirdness that makes you wonder how this one slipped through the cracks of your horror consciousness until now.  

On the surface, Ulli Lommel’s *The Devonsville Terror* is prime folk horror territory—Puritanical paranoia, past sins festering under the surface of a small New England town, and a supernatural reckoning centuries in the making. But this ain't some cozy autumnal *Wicker Man* riff. It’s got that early-'80s video-store murk, where dreamy soft-focus atmosphere crashes headfirst into rubbery gore and batshit tonal shifts. Lommel, best known for his *Boogeyman* schlock, gets *real* weird here, mixing small-town misogyny with supernatural revenge in a way that makes you want to shower off the moral grime by the time the credits roll.  

Donald Pleasence slithers in as a local doctor unraveling the town’s legacy of witch trials and gruesome executions (this one kicks off with a *gnarly* body bursting apart), while three modern women—outsiders, naturally—stir up the old curses lurking beneath the town’s “wholesome” surface. One by one, the town’s rotten core bubbles over, and let's just say things get *gooey* before it's all said and done.   

Watching a flick like this in a double or triple bill of Vinegar Syndrome treasures is a vibe. There’s a texture, a weight to these releases—reminders that movies like this weren’t *meant* to look this good, and yet, here they are, resurrected in crisp HD with all their quirks intact. The film itself might be uneven, but that *experience*—stacking up the discs, watching forgotten oddities in pristine condition—is what makes the whole thing magic.  

If you dig your folk horror *ugly*, *mean*, and slathered in VHS-era sleaze, *The Devonsville Terror* delivers. A little sluggish in parts, sure, but when that final act erupts into psychedelic comeuppance, you *feel* it. A perfect slab of late-night misanthropy, plucked from the depths and ready to haunt your next Vinegar Syndrome marathon.