Devil's Gift - Der Höllendämon...

I remember seeing this as a kid; I was born in 1985, so when I saw this I was like "cool" and it still is for the time it was created in. The concept was quite rare back then, a spirit possessing a doll. Back then horror was done right, with the focus on scaring the audience via emotion instead of over the top CGI. This is a gem, similar to the entity & wish master.

The movie is about a demon-possessed toy monkey with cymbals on its hands. Every time it claps its cymbals, something dies. First plants, then it moves to bigger prey. The premise is actually pretty good. You may recognize this movie because it was shoe-horned into the much worse "Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders," which was featured once on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was nice to see it as a standalone movie, which I didn't even realized existed. Granted, this movie could have been edited down to half its length and been better, but that can be said about most cheesy horror movies. I don't think it's quite as bad as a lot of people say. The acting and script are terrible, but the story as a whole isn't too bad. Sure it's bad and laughable, but If you enjoy B-horror movies, you'll get a kick out of it.

Susan (Vicki Saputo) buys a cymbal-playing toy monkey with glowing eyes at an antique store to give to her boyfriend's young son Micheal (Straun Robertson) for his birthday. It turns out to be possessed by a demon, which means the electricity goes off, the plants wilt and Charlie the goldfish and Sparkle the dog are goners. Eventually it possesses Susan which puts dad David (Bob Mendlesohn) on a quest to find out what's going on.

I think this was made by some Christian right-wing group to get back at the all the gory 80s slasher movies, because there's no violence, nudity or profanity. I can't think of a horror movie with more hugging, kissing, tickling, "knuckle sandwiches," back patting, good family values and platonic puppy-doggy lovey-dovey, and it's set in white bread middle class suburbia. David cheerfully tells his neighbor, "If there was a friend of the year award, you'd get it!" Even a psychic's home is littered with velvet paintings and statues of Jesus! Most of the running time is composed of the boring everyday events of boring everyday people, all set to bad elevator-style Muzak. It copies Stephen King's short story "The Monkey" and is pure torture from start to finish.

"The Devil's Gift" is a low budget, maybe even an amateur horror film, inspired by King's story "The Monkey." Girl of single-parenting father brings monkey-doll as a present for his son birthday. It turns out that in a monkey resides a murderous demon which is impossible to get rid of. When I saw the IMDb rating of 2.4, I was thinking whether to give it a chance at all, but I was dead set to see all the films inspired by Stephen King and not to skip anything. The first half hour is a real agony. The film shows an idyllic life in the suburbs and everything is bright and cheerful and the atmosphere is like in some Disney comedy for little children. In addition, the film is so cheap that it is difficult to classify it as B production. Rather somewhere in the range from X to Z. Literally nothing happens, not even introduction to characters so we can empathize with them later. So virtually redundant unprovoked half an hour. I was at the very edge of giving up on it when the movie finally caught my attention, until finally, I was sitting at the edge of my chair, and even stood up to go and turn the lights on. The story is great, and the film manages to be very creepy and even scary, despite the fact it is happening during the day and despite the complete absence of almost all elements typical of horror. There is no darkness, no surprises, no monsters, no gore. Even despite the terrible production. The end is quite predictable, but the fact that I knew what was going to happen did not spoil my experience at all. I was rather eager to see if I was right, and when the prediction came true, I rejoiced as a child. People resent the lack of nudity, violence, and gore typical of the B horrors of the '80s, but these objections are unfounded, since those elements do not fit into this story. Basically, the only really significant drawbacks are idling in the first half of the movie and poor production. With a decent budget, it might have been a great episode of some horror series, like "Twilight Zone" or "Tales from the Darkside". With better production and run-time between 30 and 45 minutes, this would be a strong eight, maybe more, but this way I rate it five out of ten, more for effort than objective quality.

5/10

This film begins with a woman named "Elmira Johnson" (Olwen Morgan) sitting alone in her spacious house, attempting to summon a familiar spirit using her Ouija board. To her horror, instead of contacting a spirit she recognizes from the past, she accidentally summons a homicidal demon inhabiting a toy monkey that unleashes its full power to kill her. Not long after, a young man named "David Andrews" (Bob Mendelsohn) hosts a birthday party for his son, "Michael Andrews" (Struan Robertson). During the celebration, Michael opens a present from David's girlfriend, "Susan" (Vicki Saputo), which turns out to be the same toy monkey that caused chaos in Elmira's house--and it plans to do the same here. I won't reveal what happens next, but I'll say I've never found the idea of a toy monkey as an object of evil particularly horrifying. Quite the opposite. That said, I was initially skeptical about its use in this movie. However, I found the character "Pete" (Bruce Parry) to be the weakest part of the film, as the overall suspense kept it from falling apart completely. That is, until the awful ending, at least. Nevertheless, this wasn't a movie I particularly enjoyed, and I have rated it accordingly.