One of the worst pieces of French fantastique cinema comes to Blu-ray in DEVIL STORY from Vinegar Syndrome.

After blowing out a tire in the middle of nowhere along the coast of Normandy, a pair of honeymooners must take shelter for the night in a massive hotel that has not only been closed for the season but pretty much for good due to the amount of disappearances in the area. The innkeeper's husband also regales them with stories about a feared gypsy woman, her unseen daughter, and her deformed son as well as the legends of a ship returning from Egypt lured to crash on the coast by wreckers. Disturbed by the strange vibes given off by the area, the bride tries to flee the hotel in the middle of the night and discovers the gypsy woman and her son burying the woman's daughter. The bride's resemblance to the dead girl causes conflict between mother and deranged son when mother orders him to kill her. Things only get worse for the bride as the ghost ship reappears amidst the chaos and a resurrected mummy is soon roaming the countryside also seemingly lusting after female company… and don't forget the literal "night mare" whose incessant galloping drives the innkeeper's already crazy husband over the edge.

Despite an insane-sounding scenario seemingly packed with incident that would be fertile ground for the likes of Jess Franco or Jean Rollin, DEVIL STORY is a rather workmanlike slog of a horror film that achieves the occasional elegant image and moment of gothic lyricism fitfully and seemingly accidentally. Appearing in the very first shot, the monster is a laughable creation stumbling about in a Nazi uniform, grunting and killing in broad daylight, and it would be easy to mistake the film to be a horror parody with director Bernard Launois himself cameoing as a motorist who tries to ask directions of the monster before getting knifed in the gut; but the rest of the film seems to want to take things seriously even as the execution of horror and gore set-pieces seems about as feeble as the even lower-budgeted French horror contemporary OGROFF: THE MAD MONSTER. The constant use of Bach's Fugue and Toccata in D Minor seems clichéd, and the film's best asset in the gothic edifice of the Palais Bénédictine for the hotel is undercut by mismatched interiors that suggest the use of the Hotel d'Angleterre where the cast and crew were staying during the production. With DEVIL STORY as an example of the state of fantastique cinema in the eighties, it is no wonder that Jean Rollin found such difficulty mounting projects during this period.

Somehow missed by Troma when they were picking up the likes of the Belgian RABID GRANNIES, DEVIL STORY first became available in English-friendly form to the curious as Japanese-subtitled and Greek-subtitled bootlegs. The film finally received a DVD release in France with an anamorphic transfer, optional English-dubbed track, and extras from boutique label Sheep Tapes followed by a German edition that retained dub track but dropped the extras for a pair of German-language commentary tracks (which presumably covered information gleaned from the French extras). Derived from a new HD scan of the original 35mm camera negatives, DEVIL STORY's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer shows off the film at its best, for better or worse. The monster make-up looks cartoonish and rubbery while the film's greatest assets in its scenery gain in texture and depth, from the green forests and rocky seaside and the gothic façade of the hotel to the quaint model shot of the ship and the mummy whose dimestore design transforms the cemetery sequence into something akin to Ed Wood's ORGY OF THE DEAD or KISS ME QUICK! English and French audio tracks are offered in DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 – as well as Dolby Digital 2.0 backup tracks – with respective English SDH and English subtitle options. The English track features dialogue in places where music is heard on the French track, but this seems to be creative liberties taken by the dubbers rather than signifying something missing on the French track.

Ported over from the French DVD is "Once Upon a Time… DEVIL STORY" 2014 making-of (34:12) featuring the likes of American exploitation filmmaker Frank Henenlotter (BASKET CASE) and various French critics Jean-François Rauger and Christophe Lemaire, actor/composer Rurik Sallé (LIVIDE) who address the assertion that the film is the "worst" ever made and comparisons to PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE Launois discusses the shoot, including the cameos of himself, his wife, and his brother, as well as his son playing both the monster and the mummy under a pseudonym. Renaud recalls being inexperienced when offered the part – her photo picked out of a registry for actors – and Launois talking the film up as being able to compete with Hollywood product and her horrified reaction to the finished film at the time and her more pleasant memories since as she revisits the locations. Also ported over is a selected scenes audio commentary by Launois (24:38) in which he both critiques some of his own choices and the nitpicking of viewers and reviewers, pointing out that the monster's costume which includes both Nazi and American army regalia is made up of trophies taken from the victims. 1984 French TV coverage (3:13) of the shoot in which Launois does seem delusional in talking up the film is included along with the film's theatrical trailer (3:49).