Demonoid: Messenger of Death (1981)

Best movie ever!

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

DEMONOID is a cheapo Mexican horror movie, shot south-of-the-border with a couple of notable Hollywood performers as the leads. The plot is about a demonic presence which is uncovered in an old mine and proceeds to unleash itself upon the unsuspecting populace. In actuality, this turns out to be an addition to the 'possessed hand' cycle of filmmaking, with ample opportunity for lots of gory moments and various demonic possessions and amputations. Samantha Eggar plays the wild-eyed protagonist, required to constantly tear out her hair and react to supernatural nastiness, and she's given solid support from a boozy Stuart Whitman playing a crusading priest who helps her fight the demon. It's simplistic stuff, but fast-paced and occasionally frightening, so you could do worse.

Jennifer Baines (the always classy Samantha Egger), the wife of industrialist Mark Baines (a sturdy portrayal by Roy Jensen), joins forces with renegade boxing Irish priest Father Cunningham (a gloriously hammy portrayal by Stuart Whitman) to combat a lethal ancient evil force that has taken on the form of a deadly severed crawling hand.Director/co-writer Alfredo Zacarias keeps the entertainingly absurd story zipping along at a brisk pace, treats the ridiculous premise with utmost misguided seriousness, and delivers many jaw-dropping moments of inspired lunacy. The crude (not so) special effects further add to this film's considerable infectiously clunky charm. Buxom Russ Meyer starlet Haji pops up (and out) in a small role as a cheap floozy. The sharp cinematography by Alex Phillips Jr. makes this low-grade schlock look more polished than it deserves. The funky pulsating score by Richard Gillis hits the get-down groovy spot. A deliciously tacky hoot and a half.

...there's not much point in watching "Demonoid: Messenger of Death". Had they gone deeper into the history of how the first hand became a killer hand, maybe the movie would have been better. But just showing one scene of a cult, and then showing a husband and wife going into a Mexican mine and finding the remains of a temple, thereby releasing an evil hand? Not good enough.Anyway, this isn't the worst movie (it's easily more interesting than "Baryshnya-Krestyanka" or "Everyone Says I Love You"). But they could have easily developed it further. I suspect that Samantha Eggar and Stuart Whitman don't try to stress this on their resumes. Pretty lame.

A severed hand found in a Mexican mine causes all sorts of trouble for the couple (Samantha Eggar and Roy Cameron) when the hand takes over Cameron and forces him onto a massive killing spree and the hand's main target appears to be Eggar. Fast paced, sometimes scary, sometimes unintentionally funny horror flick features some rather nasty special effects. Rated R.