Excellent, Without a doubt!!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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.

"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.

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. Cut to the present in a town called Guanajato in Mexico where Jennifer Baines (Samantha Eggar) has just arrived to join her husband Mark (Roy Jenson) who has recently brought the mine & intends to reopen it, once at the mine Jennifer causes a wall to collapse & reveal a mummified body, women eh? The local workers start bricking themselves & refuse to enter the mine due to ancient legends about the 'Devil's Hand', soon after while in the mine together on they're own Mark & Jennifer stumble across a room with the glove shaped casket in it & Mark decides to take it. Later that night Mark opens the casket & finds nothing but dust, however a hand reforms itself from the dust & possesses Mark. 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 feel Demonoid, Messenger of Death is an ambassador for the much neglected, maligned & under-appreciated sub-genre of possessed killer hand films, I mean there are literally 100's of films featuring evil aliens, indestructible homicidal maniacs, giant bugs, ghosts, Dinosaurs, genetic mutated monsters, zombies & scientific experiments gone bad but how many possessed killer hand films can you name? Not many & that my friends must be addressed... Sorry, I got carried away there. Anyway, the script by Zacarias, David Lee Fein & F. Amos Powell really is as crazy & bizarre as it sounds, at least it shows a lot of imagination & it clearly has the intention of trying to fill every last second of screen time with some bizarre situation. Overall Demonoid, Messenger of Death doesn't make that much sense & you can't take it seriously but that's all part of the fun. 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. There are plenty of dumb & downright silly moments in it but god damn I had fun with it. It has that cheap & sleazy early 80's horror film vibe to it & there's some decent gore as well. There are, of course, lots of severed hands but also some decent severing methods like one guy who puts his hand under the wheels of a moving train, ouch! There are surgical removals & one is severed by repeatedly shutting it in a car door & the hands preferred method of murder is to attach itself to someone's face & then squeeze it until the person dies!Technically the film is OK, it's a little rough around the edges but I doubt the filmmakers had much money to work with. The special effects vary from really bad to just bad. I thought the music sounded very familiar & I was right because most of it is stolen from The Incredible Melting Man (1977). 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. I can't really recommend it as most sane people would probably hate it but if your a fan of obscure exploitation then this is an absolute must. Mr Zacarias, the film-making world needs more people like you, I mean they just don't, won't or simply can't make 'em like this anymore which is not a good thing in my book.

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.