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. The local workers refuse to go down in a mine due to their superstition so of course our two people do. Before long the curse of a severed hand has struck them and before long more and more people are coming under the curse, which requires them to cut their hand off.
In 1981 who didn't want what is basically a remake of THE CRAWLING HAND? 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. As one person gets "possessed" with the hand, it eventually requires them to cut the hand off so we get several scenes where people have to be creative to try and get the hand off. 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. At least she showed up and did the job unlike so many who usually just cash their paychecks with movies 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. There's certainly no tension to be found anywhere, although the ending itself is quite nice.
