Macabra: la mano del diablo

DEMONOID is about a demonized left hand that creeps, crawls, leaps, and kills! It also possesses those it chooses and uses them to further its agenda of eeevil!

Jennifer Baines (Samantha Eggar) tracks the horrid hand after it destroys her husband. Stuart Whitman co-stars as a priest with all the personality of soggy communion wafers! Much maligned, this movie may be absurd, but at least its fun to watch!...

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.

Whitman's acting is suitably over-the-top and Eggar gives the low-budget production more class than it deserves. Russ Meyer starlet Haji has a small role as a gangster's girl and 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 ways of removing their left hands. Of course as soon as the hand has been removed it scurries off in search of a new victim and the process begins again.

Unlike Alfredo Zacharias' other opus "The Bees" (1978) it appears the makers really were attempting to make a good film this time. 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.

This Mexican flick with international actors is still unavailable up to this writing on DVD. You can find it easily on NTSC VHS. And I was glad that I found it. It starts of immediately with a woman being hunted by some KKK lookalikes in a cave. It appears that she has some superhuman powers in her left hand. Finally they can capture her and while she's stripped naked they cut off her hand. And from there on this movie gets going. 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. What happens next is a must see for drive-in or turkey flick freaks. The car chase is really laughable especially with the police car involved but still it do has his moments. Some find the ending a bit of overacting but I really enjoyed it. The effects are good enough to watch and it never bored me. Glad I tracked it down and shipped it from the US.

...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 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. And poor Eggar gives it her all even though she is in such an unispired production. Some of the effects are incredibly grotsque though. My rating: 5 out of 10.

Rated R; contains Graphic Violence, Nudity, and Language.