User reviews

By the early 60s, the Mexican film industry was beginning its slow but constant decline after the Golden Age ended. Facing economic problems and a stronger competition from foreign filmmakers, the Mexican industry found itself at its darkest hours through the decades of the 70s and the 80s. Sadly, this is the period where director Alfredo Zacarías begins his work, starting as a writer under the guidance of his father, director Miguel Zacarías, and the legendary Golden Age director Gilberto Martínez Solares. 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. At the time when Jennifer arrives, Mark is facing the refusal of his workers to go deeper as they believe the mine is haunted. Thinking it's all mere superstition, Mark and Jennifer enter the mine and discover an ancient altar to the Devil, which holds the Devil's hand as a relic. Mark takes the Hand as a trophy of man conquering superstition, but soon he'll discover that the Devil's hand is not made for fooling around. 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Zacarías' direction is technically effective, but his style is outdated and unoriginal, and in the end this makes the film look 10 years older than its true age.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. While he has proved to be good with comedy, he seems to struggle with the drama and the suspense of his film, as if he had troubles directing his cast. 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. Her character is really simple, almost typical, but she makes it likable and less two dimensional. The experienced Stuart Whitman is less successful, although overall he pulls off an acceptable performance as the Priest that helps Jennifer against the Hand. The rest of the cast ranges from mediocre to downright awful, although one can't tell if it's completely the actors' fault due to the bad way the script is written. 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. Contrived and fast packed, the story never really fulfills its main purposes (to scar and entertain), and never really goes somewhere. While the intentions of the writers were good, the plot was probably not meant to work in the first place. 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. 4/10

Okay, explain me this: the film has got an original premise, a uniquely sinister setting and immensely atmospheric scenery. So, then why on earth is it still such a boring and mildly frustrating film? "Macabra" contains all the basic ingredients of a unique horror effort, but the elaboration is so weak and amateurish all the potential and good intentions go nearly wasted. Jennifer and Mark Baines, a married couple, invest their money in a Mexican mine and hope to get rich real fast exploiting silver. The local workers still attempt to warn them about the place being haunted with an ancient demonic evil, but it's useless. 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. When Mark falls victim to the evil first, Jennifer teams up with a reluctant Vietnam veteran turned priest in order to defeat the hand. As said, the basic idea had potential, but a bit more background regarding the nature and origin of the evil would have been welcome. What exactly is it? Why a hand? How did it end up in a Mexican mine, etc? There are some moments of sheer suspense, fast pacing and creepiness, but even more boredom and absolute pointlessness. There's a reasonable amount of gore and typically 80's cheese-effects, including self-crawling hands and explicit amputations. The cinematography is too dark, but the set-pieces are admirably macabre and especially the soundtrack is far superior to any other aspect this overall mediocre effort. The theme music is creepy, and throughout the film uncanny tunes can be heard repeatedly. Bad film, but curiously compelling and still recommended to remotely tolerant genre fans.

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!...

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.

All the signs pointed to this being a bad film...but I went ahead and watched it anyway. 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. Mark and Jenifer Baines are attempting to reopen the mine, but find themselves in trouble when the workers won't go down for fear of an ancient curse. This leads the couple to go down the mine...and guess what? They release an ancient curse. I actually wish they'd listened to the locals and left the mine closed, as then there would have been no reason for this film to be made. 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'. As you might expect, I can't recommend this terrible film as there is nothing going for it.

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.

If you are going to watch a film like this I assume you have some intelligence and you have an inkling as to what the film entails. I watch a lot of Baad films / B movies ...Rare and odd movies. I found GOLD! This has everything in it to make me happy. Great music (GREAT!) Bad acting - in a good way - A scream queen - and a hand and some humour. This is why I look through films. Some last for 20 minutes. Some I watch and think it was ok. This I saw this twice in 2 days and still smiled! A fantastic entertaining movie. Forget Genre....forget horror or trash or Euro Classic. This is pure GOLD! PS.The films video cover alone deserves 6 out of 10. That too is a classic!

"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.

Samantha Eggar has to fight off a killer severed hand after her husband and his team accidentally stumble upon a cursed cave. The hand jumps from body to body, turning them into killers. The premise is silly and the film doesn't do a lot to bring any seriousness to it, but it's fun enough.

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.

A movie worse than this one, hard to find... I wanted to see it thanks to Samantha Eggar, my love from my youth, the beauty from "The Collector"(1965) and "The Walking Stick"(1970). And also because of Stuart Whitman which I liked, when I was little, in "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 minutes"(1965). There are no words to express how stupid it is this film. The only thing better is the pursuit between two cars, a white convertible and a police car, somewhere in the second half of the film.

A demonic severed hand springs to life and attacks Samantha Eggar and her husband before going on a mad killing spree, infecting and possessing anyone that comes into contact with it. It's hard to know what to make of Demonoid. Despite a handful of campy and silly moments, it's not fun enough to enjoy as a drunken party movie and it's definitely not serious or scary enough to work as a terrifying horror film either. It does decide to keep its run time fairly short so that you don't feel like you're wasting too much of your time and I appreciate that.

Explorers in Mexico discover the dismembered hand of an ancient demon in an old silver mine which a has the ability to possess people. Stuart Whitman plays a priest who teams up with Samantha Eggar (The Brood) to destroy it by performing an exorcism. Alfredo Zacarias wrote and directed this co-production between Mexico and the USA (aka Demonoid: Messenger of Death and Macabra), which for a movie about demonic possession featuring lots of killer hands running around comes across like a really boring episode of TV's Fantasy Island.

An 80's horror shined up by the good people at Vinegar Syndrome. Now I did see the 90 minute version known as Macabro but there are a few different versions . The one I seen was longer but had nudity and violence trimmed.

Miners unearth a Satanic cult site which specialized in removing left hands. The owners wife discovers a metallic hand which contains the curse. If you get the curse your left hand is taken over and it makes you kill using that hand until you cut it off. Of course who ever comes in contact with it next gets the curse.

It was campy as hell. Most of the time the actors are rolling around fighting a hand stuck on them but it was funny. You get a feel what the acting is going to be like from the first scene. You get lots of people removing there hands using trains to blow torches. Makes for a good late night flick.

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. After she is shackled, one of her assailants hacks off her left hand, the severed appendage crawling across the floor before being skewered and placed in a special metal case. It's a great way to start things off, and is just one of many fun scenes in this very daft horror. 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. Special affects are bloody but wholly unconvincing, which only adds to the charm of the piece.

The final act features a supposedly tense chase with zero sense of urgency, and sees Father Cunningham burning off his own possessed hand with a blow-torch, later scattering the ashes in the sea. 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.

Some priest and some chick with crack smoking bug eyes must track down a demonic hand before it does something. The antagonist is a hand. (Sigh) Anyways, Demonoid is the quintessential of what asinine horror movies are. I mean, who comes up with this stupid s···? A hand. Really? We are all supposed to cower in trepidation over an evil hand? Ugh! Well, what to expect is some really bad acting, severed hands and crushed faces with some blood and a little gore and an idiotic story. Okay I liked it and that's only because the idea of a lame ass demonic hand terrorizing people was hilarious. Yes, this may be the dumbest horror movie ever, but it's still entertaining in a crappy way.

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. The workers don't want to cooperate because they're superstitious, so he and she go poking around. 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. (Interestingly, this came out the same year as Oliver Stones' "The Hand".) It sets a tone early on, revealing itself to be schlock of the most priceless kind. If one were to take it seriously as a horror film, it'd be an utter failure, but if one accepts it as tongue in cheek, it's quite funny. The sheer incompetence on display is staggering. The special effects are amusing, the dialogue ridiculous, and the art direction by old pro Robert Burns is effective. 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. Whitman looks appropriately embarrassed. Lew Saunders is hilarious as the cop who pays an impromptu visit to a surgeon, in a memorable sequence. Erika Carlsson ("The Devil's Rain"), Ted White (Jason in "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter"), and Haji ("Faster, Pussycat! Kill! 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.