Demonoid: Messenger of Death

Plot synopsis:
300 years ago, in a mine located in Guanajuato, Mexico. A satanic cult built a temple where they sacrificed humans to the Devil by cutting off the left hand of their victims. In the present day, couple Mark and Jennifer Baines explore the temple where they find a small casket containing a severed hand which they take back to their hotel room. Later that night Mark opens the casket and is attacked and possessed by the hand. Fleeing to Las Vegas, he wins a fortune by gambling. Hating being possessed, Mark attempts to sever his left hand but is burned to death by his possessed hand. Mark's body is shipped to Los Angeles for burial. Jennifer arrives at Father Cunningham’s church where her husband is to be buried and warns the priest that her husband might still be possessed and requests that an autopsy be performed on the body.
As they talk on the matter, Mark’s severely charred corpse reanimates and bursts from his coffin and escapes. When Police Sergeant Leo Matson arrives to investigate the turn of events he is attacked by Mark who then severs his left hand by slamming it in a door, after which Mark falls dead and the hand immediately possesses the Matson. Horrified, Matson forces plastic surgeon Dr. Julian Rivkin to sever the hand at gunpoint after which the hand shoots a nurse with Matson’s discarded handgun, and murders Matson by brutally ripping the Sergeant’s face off. The hand then possesses Rivken who severs his hand on a train track. The hand later finds and corners Jennifer at her motel and attempts to possess her as well but is saved by Father Cunningham and they both flee to the church. There the hand cuts the power and phone lines and stalks the group, the hand manages to possess Cunningham who then attacks Jennifer with a knife. However he is eventually able to overcome the hand’s influence and stabs his own hand and has Jennifer burn his hand off with a blowtorch and scatter the hands ashes in the harbor. Later, Jennifer is back home, the hand, which somehow survived attacks and kills her.

Tags: paranormal, murder

Review:
Ghastly high-camp Mexican horrors with Stuart Whitman as a Priest attempting to help Samantha Eggar in her battle against a murderous demon which possesses people's left hands.
Russ Meyer starlet Haji has a small role as a gangster's moll while Mexican superstar Erika Carlsson receives prominent billing for her challenging role of "Nurse Morgan": a sexy blonde cleavage-revealing nurse who has about 45 seconds of screen time and who's only dialogue is screaming out "NOOOOOO!!!" (See Alicia Encinas' role in "The Bees".)Infinitely compelling and enjoyable in its badness, the film is enlivened by several grisly/hilarious horror sequences and quite a few genuinely suspenseful situations.
The funniest sequences involve assorted possessed people finding various imaginative methods of removing their left hands.
They almost made it but fortunately there is enough terrible acting, laughable dialogue (possessed cop to a plastic surgeon: "cut my hand off or I'll kill you!") and high-camp hilarity to keep any bad-movie buff enthralled.The film apparently sat on the shelf for three years; release of "The Hand" starring Michael Caine undoubtedly encouraged distributors to finally release this to cash-in on the living-hand craze..
*Note: Like many of my reviews, this is taken from my blog, which is called "Talk of Horrors." This one comes from the last entry of "Not on DVD Week." The workers at a Mexican mine don't exactly want to go there because of a curse.
Well, Jennifer (Samantha Eggar) and Mark Baines (Roy Jones) go in anyways, and accidentally unleash a demonic force that has a fondness for possessing people's left hands.
I guess Ned Flanders was wrong when he said "Lord Love a Leftie." Anyways, the only way a person can free themselves from committing acts of evil is severing said hand-which will then go after someone else and kill or possess them.
The highlight of those goofy moments is a police officer demanding "cut my hand off or you die!" In spite of it's problems, I found myself kind of enjoying this movie.
Apart from that, Eggar and Whitman aren't great, but do their best carrying the material, and there's something perversely amusing about seeing people finding different ways of getting their hands severed, providing some fun bloody moments.
Soon Alfredo Zacarías started making films on his own and found success directing the comedies of GAspar Henaine "Capulina", however, Zacarías had big plans in mind and by the end of the 70s, he directed two ambitious horror films co-produced with the U.S.A. and starring somewhat famous American actors: 1978's "The Bees" and this film, "Demonoid, Messenger of Death".Also known as "Macabra, la Mano del Diablo", the film stars Samantha Eggar as Jennifer Baines, who is visiting the mining city of Guanajuato in Mexico as his husband, Mark (Roy Jenson) owns an important mine there that seems to be very rich.
The Hand begins to possess people transforming them in psycho killers, and only Jennifer knows the truth.While the movie is written by Amos Powell (of Croman's "Tower of London" fame) and David Lee Fein (who later would write "Cheerleader Camp"), the film is obviously the brainchild of Zacarías himself, as he wrote the source story the script was based on.
Unlike in "The Bees", Zacarías really attempts this time to create an interesting horror piece, and while he unashamedly lifts some ideas from Oliver Stone's "The Hand" (released previously that same year), it could be said that he succeeds in making a somewhat original tale of horror.
Sadly, the plot lacks the coherency and the sense to put all the elements together and the bizarre story never really takes off.Zacarías' direction is technically effective, but his style is outdated and unoriginal, and in the end this makes the film look 10 years older than its true age.
To Zacarías' credit, he makes really original set-pieces aided by some good special effects and a somewhat effective musical score; however, the bad cinematography, together with the low-budget and the contrived plot, would diminish the power of those scenes.
The various action sequences of the film are really good for the budget, although again, with a notoriously anachronistic look in the execution.Samantha Eggar does her best with what she has to work and manages to carry the film despite the movie's obvious problems.
However, to tell the truth, Roy Jenson did give an effective performance in his short screen time.It's true that at first sight, one could blame the movie's flaws to it's low budget, it's bad special effects or to its director, however, I think that the real problem lays on the poor way the script was built.
Zacarías has done better films when he has a good script to work with, but in "Demonoid", the lack of coherency of the plot simply make the film boring and tedious.It's kind of sad that Zacarías had the chance to make this film when the Mexican film industry was at its lowest point, as the very ambitious idea (that without a doubt looked good on paper) simply couldn't work well on film.
Fortunately, he finally would make a movie the way he wanted in 1989, with "Crime of Crimes", in the meantime, "Demonoid, Messenger of Death", ends up as another good idea that was just badly executed.
Instead of winning silver, Jennifer and Mark unleash pure evil in the shape of a mummified hand that takes control over the people it possesses.
"Demonoid:The Messenger of Death" is an entertaining and bizarre Mexican horror flick about a mine proprietor(Roy C.
Jensen),his gorgeous wife (Samantha Eggar) and the hand case found by them in an underground mine chamber.During the night the dust turns back into a flying hand,which promptly starts possessing people.Admittedly this crazy horror flick is really bad,but I had lots of fun watching it.Its premise is similar to Oliver Stone's "The Hand":a possessed severed hand is stalking people.The possession of the left hand creates the opportunities for many bizarre scenes:a hand literally catching the train,fortune hunter dynamites his own mine- with his entire crew still inside it and a policeman pulls his pistol on a surgeon and insists the MD amputate the cop's arm sans anesthesia to name only a few.Watch "Demonoid" as soon as possible.7 out of 10..
Jennifer Baines, played by the lovely Samantha Eggar, joins her husband Mark (character actor Roy Jenson, in one of the bigger roles of his career) as he attempts to open a Mexican mine.
They mess around with the artifacts laying around, and a cursed severed hand takes possession of him, making him do odd (and profitable) things.
The hand is soon free to control a succession of hapless victims, while she teams up with a priest (a grim looking Stuart Whitman) who's having a crisis of faith.Director Alfredo Zacarias ("The Bees") co-scripted this one, based on his own story, an update of "The Beast with Five Fingers" type stories.
Zacarias tries to spice things up a bit with breast shots (in the opening few minutes) and an action scene, but his bumbling misdirection is simply laughable.Fortunately, Eggar doesn't look *too* serious.
Kill!") co-star.Good fun for people who want to see characters devise ways to rid themselves of their left hands.Five out of 10..
The hand possesses the next victim whom possesses the next one, it goes on and on and of course the hand is being hunted by Jennifer Barnes (Samantha Eggar; CURTAINS) after she looses her husband being killed by the hand.
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?
There had been 'living' severed hand movies before (The Beast With Five Fingers, The Crawling Hand, Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, And Now The Screaming Starts), and there have been a few since (The Hand, Evil Dead II and Idle Hands), but none of them have been as wonderfully schlocky and unintentionally funny as Demonoid, an inept slice of z-grade Mexican horror made all the more laughable by earnest performances from leads Samantha Eggar and Stuart Whitman, and direction from Alfredo Zacarías that shows no sign of intentional humour.
Eggar plays Jennifer Baines, who attempts to track down and destroy an ancient evil force that possesses people's left hands (starting with her husband Mark, played by Roy Jenson).
Whitman is Father Cunningham, the initially sceptical priest who eventually helps her on her mission.Demonoid immediately displays its trash credentials with a marvellous pre-credits sequence that delivers both gratuitous nudity and gore: a woman wearing cult robes fights against several men, but is overpowered, her clothing torn open in the process, exposing her ample breasts.
Each time someone is possessed, they are driven to remove their hand, which results in some truly memorable moments: Mark's badly burnt reanimated corpse slams his wrist in a car door, a gun-toting cop tells a plastic surgeon 'either you cut my hand off or I'll kill you!', while the very same surgeon severs his own hand by placing his arm on a railway track.
It looks like the 'devil's hand' has been vanquished once and for all, but a delightfully silly epilogue sees Jennifer attacked by the five-fingered horror, which has somehow returned from the ocean..
This is actually the first horror movie that I have any recollection of watching, and I must have been between 6 and 9 years old at the time.
I have vivid memories of being scares so much of that crawling hand.And I have been looking for the movie for about 30 some years or so to revisit it again after all that time.
But I know that I will not be returning to watch it ever again.And reviewing it as an adult now, with a keen love for cinema and horror, then I am forced to rate "Demonoid: Messenger of Death" an abysmal 3 out of 10 stars.
To its credit; Demonoid is very fast paced, but the credit ends there as despite the plot playing out quickly, the film is still very boring and the swiftness in the story's movement seems to be a lame attempt to mask this.
The plot has something to do with a Mexican mine and a possessed demonic hand.
The idea of someone's hand becoming possessed and developing a life of it's own was very well used in classic horror Evil Dead II, but here the idea is sadly squandered and unfortunately the best way to describe Demonoid is simply 'damp squib'.
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.
A couple (Samantha Eggar and Roy Cameron) while working in a Mexican mine discover a severed hand.
The hand becomes one with Cameron and possesses him, causing him to commit all kinds of nasty murders.Not as bad as other people make it out to be, but nowhere near good.
Demonoid: Messenger of Death (1981) * 1/2 (out of 4) Ultra bizarre horror film has Jennifer Baines (Samantha Eggar) traveling to Mexico with her husband.
In all seriousness, there have been countless horror films going back to the silent era that have dealt with a possessed hand coming back for some sort of revenge.
This film pretty much takes elements of THE EXORCIST and mixes it with one of these movies and the end result is pretty bad but mildly entertaining.The best thing going for this film is the fact that it offers up quite a bit of violence and some silly death scenes.
There are also a few scenes where skulls get crushed by one of the hands, which adds some red stuff.Eggar turns in a good performance but you can't help but feel she's wasting it on a picture like this.
I also thought Stuart Whitman was good in his role of the Father trying to help the woman destroy the hand.The biggest problem with this movie is that it just doesn't contain too much plot or characters that we actually like.
We basically just get a bunch of short scenes where people get possessed, kill and then cut the hand.
Samantha Eggar's husband owns a Mexican mine which contains within it an ancient tomb housing a metal box with a severed demonic hand possibly possessed by the Devil himself.
The hand's ultimate choice for an owner is Eggar herself who joins forces with a priest(Stuart Whitman)to try and stop it.
Whitman and others doing battle with a severed hand trying to smother them is hard to watch without shaking your head in disbelief, and Eggar's fate at the end, the screaming, the swirling camera, broken glass table, it's the tip of the iceberg.
It is an absolute slog to get to the end as a lot of nothing, other than the infamous severed hand crawling about, happens for long periods, but there are a series of decapitations which might amuse lovers of rancid cinema: a laser, train on railroad tracks, and a car door among other things.
Whitman, who I like a lot, doesn't have a prayer(pun intended)in this movie as the heroic man of the cloth who must use the power of Christ to combat the evil demonic hand.
The funniest scene could be when the severed hand helps Eggar's husband Mr. Bain win at throwing dice in a Las Vegas casino--who knew a demonic hand had such luck..
"Demonoid: Messenger of Death" is a moderately flawed and entertaining effort.**SPOILERS**In a newly-discovered mine in Mexico, Jennifer Baines, (Samantha Eggar) discovers a long-sealed burial chamber that the locals are fearful of.
Finally seeking help from Father Cunningham, (Stuart Whitman) on help with dealing with the situation, they try to put an end to the reign of terror.The Good News: There's some really fun stuff here when it tries to.
One of the greatest is the sequence in the doctor's office, where a cop forces a doctor at gunpoint to surgically remove his left hand, and is shown in full detail, which is quite bloody and messy in and of itself, then it shows the resulting chaos which really gets the best out of the scene.
There's also some nice creepy scenes in here at the end, when the disembodied hand chases them around the church, and at one point even cutting both the phone and power, making for some really nice atmosphere at times.
These here are the film's few bad points.The Final Verdict: With some stuff that's actually pretty good and a couple of flaws to drag it down, this one is actually somewhat watchable.
To wit: if your mine is over a Satanic temple where left hands were severed to honor demons and every single worker refuses to go any deeper, perhaps it's time to find a new mine.
Here, he plays a battling Catholic priest who we just know could win over Ms. Eggar if he didn't have that pesky collar and angel on his shoulder to worry about.Maybe they weren't watching the Mexican cut (Macabra!), which has more dialogue, more death and a different ending?
Give me Demonoid or give me a severed left hand!.
Demonoid, Messenger of Death starts some 300 years ago in a Mexican mine where some ancient demon or other possesses the left hand of a woman, she is chained to a wall by robed religious fanatics & her left hand is cut off with an axe the disembodied hand then tries to scuttle away but a guy stabs it & places it into a silver hand shaped casket.
The ancient left hand possessing demon is free & goes about doing what it does best, possessing people's hands with the ultimate aim of possessing Jennifer's for some reason I'm not sure of...This Mexican American co-production was co-written, produced & directed by Alfredo Zacarias & is one zany, crazy & at times gob-smacking exploitation film that provides terrific entertainment for it's slight running time of 78 minutes.
I absolutely love the scene in which a policeman walks into a Doctor's surgery & demands at gunpoint that the Doctor cut his hand off or he'll kill him, this part is played 100% straight & the ridiculousness doesn't end there.
There are numerous flying severed hands, satanic rituals, dodgy gamblers, disbelieving priest's, mummy's, re-animated corpses, ancient demons, gore, nudity, bad Mexican actor's, a car chase, a woman who thinks walking into a pitch black cavernous mine 100's of years old wearing high heels is a good idea & a pace which never lets up.
I have to admit I really liked this goofy film, it was just so entertaining for all the wrong reasons.Director Zacarias creates some pretty decent moments, the sequence where the hand reforms & is inter-cut with footage of real mummified bodies is particularly effective.
The acting was OK & you have to consider the fact that it's very hard to convincingly fight your own hand while it's still attached to your arm, isn't it?Demonoid, Messenger of Death is a pretty unique film, it's certainly something a bit different & overall I was throughly entertained by it.
DEMONOID is a cheapo Mexican horror movie, shot south-of-the-border with a couple of notable Hollywood performers as the leads.
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.
It starts a killing spree while possessing, then, it hides under Samantha Eggar's sheets (dirty hand!), and if it wasn't enough, it jumps over a moving car without a stunt double.