I enjoyed it, but the low budget was noticeable. They did good enough. It was actually creepy, but quickly became boring and unrealistic. I do appreciate the soundtrack, and the car chase scene. It is a good classic horror film to watch drunk, if you're looking for anything in the realm of reality look away.

This is actually the first horror movie that I have any recollection of watching, and I must have been between 6 and 9 years old at the time. This movie and "Poltergeist" were the two movies that started my lifelong romance with the horror genre. I have vivid memories of being scares so much of that crawling hand.And I have been looking for the movie for about 30 some years or so to revisit it again after all that time. And I happened to find it by pure luck earlier this year, and it took no persuasion or thought whether or not to watch it, as I just went to it immediately.Sometimes, you just got to let your childhood memories be just exactly that; memories. Man, was I disappointed with this movie seeing it now as an adult.The effects were horrible. Granted the movie was from 1981, just 6 years after I was born. But still, even for movies back then it was not among the higher scale of effects. Actually, when you watch it today, you just cringe at how they could get away with something like that.Which leads me to the storyline of "Demonoid: Messenger of Death". Wow! Are you kidding me? The storyline was so silly that it seemed more like a comedy than a horror movie. It was so laughable and simplistic that even a dead guy could have come up with something better than this. The story, in all its simplicity was about a mining company owner who discovered an ancient Mexican relic in one of his mines. And this artifact turned into a crawling hand and was able to possess those it attacked.Right...But on some level it was fulfilling to have seen it again after about three decades. But I know that I will not be returning to watch it ever again.And reviewing it as an adult now, with a keen love for cinema and horror, then I am forced to rate "Demonoid: Messenger of Death" an abysmal 3 out of 10 stars. And just imagine, this was the first horror movie I ever saw.

...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.

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.