Devil Story (Il etait une fois le diable)

Name: Devil Story (Il etait une fois le diable)
Duration: 1 h 16 min

1hr 16m

2.6/5 (2.3K)

1hr 16m
2.6/5 (2.3K)

A deformed man living with his mother in the countryside roams the woods killing indiscriminately. A couple spend the night nearby, and the wife goes through a… More Details »

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Movie Info & Cast

Director:

Bernard Launois

Runtime:

1hr 16m

Synopsis

A deformed man living with his mother in the countryside roams the woods killing indiscriminately. A couple spend the night nearby, and the wife goes through a nightmarish experience involving a black horse, a mummy, and the deformed man.

Cast

Véronique Renaud
Marcel Portier
Catherine Day
Nicole Desailly
Christian Paumelle
Pascal Simon

Letterboxd User Reviews

2.6

RATINGS 4 FANS

2.6

Oct 18, 2025

Fun when the man is randomly trying to shoot the horse. Awful otherwise

517 Likes

James (Schaffrillas)

Feb 19, 2021

Things I loved: • The French countryside setting • The (at times) Rollin-like vibe • The Gothic hotel • The Egyptian mummy • The pirate ship Things I viscerally hated: All the drawn out scenes containing: • The grunting Nazi zombie* • The unkillable neighing horse* • The…

264 Likes

Lou (rhymes with wow!)

Sep 4, 2026

Complete and utter horseshit, to the degree that it actually becomes wholly oneiric. A pinprick margin away from an accurate representation of the experience of dreaming; to be more direct, the kind of abstract nightmare where you wake up in a puddle of sweat and…

99 Likes

Jay 👽
Jan 27, 2013

Adam Cook did most of the heavy lifting with his review of this film, so I'm just going to enumerate the various ways in which Devil Story is a batshit-crazy-but-still-kind-of-awesome cinematic treat. To wit: 1. The name of the film is Devil Story. However, there is no…

158 Likes

Cramer K.

Nov 1, 2021

Like a bizarro dopey cousin of Ogroff the Mad Mutilator, Devil's Story is a hazy lofi fever dream of nonsensical proportions. Incoherent visual vignettes blast the screen with little consistency or logic as we are engulfed in a thick cloud of low budget weirdery and jarring…

89 Likes

belial_carboni

Jan 29, 2024

"I gotta catch that horse. If I shoot it with this gun, I'll get the horse. Damn, I missed the horse. I gotta catch that horse. If I shoot it with this gun, I'll get the horse. Damn, I missed the horse. I gotta catch that horse. If I shoot it with this gun, I'll get the…

91 Likes

PT99
Nov 6, 2020

meandering French horror cinema that's more Rollin than Romero, despite what its marketing and synopsis would have you believe - decidedly art-house in its delivery with a laconic script and minimal reliance on gore (save for an appropriately disgusting stomach crushing);…

87 Likes

Justin LaLiberty

Apr 8, 2023

The French really get me. First my fascination with the silent, camera-trickery of Georges Méliès. Then my obsession with the new French extremity and the new, new French extremity. And now with countryside murderdrones. Devil Story (or its objectively cooler name Once…

86 Likes

SpOoky Lukey Video 👻📼🎃

Dec 15, 2017

We have a girl, wandering aimless as if in a dream, into a castle, into a graveyard, into a Jean Rollin film? What is this Devil? What is this Witch? A Ghost Horse and a Man with a Gun. The Ocean is a Pirate Hurricane of Black Water. It's ANGRY. A Sarcophagus with a Mummy…

75 Likes

Scumbalina