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...<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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!<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.