Demonoid (1980)

The first and last time I got stitches was before I hit double digits.  I was bitten by a dog (which wouldn’t be the last time), and had to get four sutures in my right bicep (when you’re that age, it’s not a lot, but it sure as hell feels like it).  Since then, I’ve had injuries to my hands that I probably should have had stitched and didn’t, because that first time was more than enough for me.  While working at a fast food restaurant in my teens, I was hauling a box of shortening up from the basement, and my hand got caught on the hook end of an electrical junction box cover.  While working on a dryer, I split a knuckle open.  While removing a water valve from a washer, I gouged another knuckle on the same hand.  To this day, I maintain that the actual bone was bifurcated, but since no doctor was consulted, I guess we’ll never know.  Needless to say, I’m sure these injuries will come back to haunt me in short order, as I can already feel how arthritis is and will set in on my joints (not good for someone who works with their hands).  If you’ve ever stared at your hands for any length of time (like Felix Unger did in the “Odd Monks” episode of The Odd Couple), you really do discover what a marvel these appendages are.  They are one of the hardest parts of the human body to draw, too.  The things we can do with them are amazing, and, more often than not, we truly do take them for granted (until, of course, we are without their use, partially or in total).  I wonder, then, why, for as “important” a purpose as he has and as much work as he has to accomplish in a given day, Satan would cut off his left hand and send it to Guanajuato, Mexico, as he does in Alfredo Zacarias’ Demonoid (aka La Mano Del Diablo aka Macabra aka Demonoid: Messenger of Death)?  You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone. 

Visiting her husband Mark (Roy Cameron Jenson) at their Mexican mine, Jennifer Baines (Samantha Eggar) uncovers a chamber previously used for Satanic rites.  She and her husband remove a tiny “coffin” shaped like a human hand from which escapes the titular Demonoid (no one calls it that in the film; it just sounds neat).  The avaricious anatomical appurtenance proceeds to wend its way through a series of victims, all the while setting its sights on the woman who freed it (this becomes a rather perplexing point, as the entire film could have been about thirty minutes long, realistically).

Aside from telepathic/telekinetic heads/brains-in-tanks, the most filmed disembodied human limb has to be the hand (I know of no film where an evil foot attacks people, and even the penis got its own cinematic sojourn in Doris Wishman’s The Amazing Transplant).  Whether they are grafted onto some hapless sap or scuttling about under their own steam, hands just have a greater visual appeal than any other body part.  Plus, they’re really good for strangling (and crushing skulls from the evidence presented here; I had to resist saying “on hand”).  What the idea of a lone hand causing malfeasance does is brings up a discussion about accountability.  If the hand is attached to a person who then turns to evil (Mad Love, Hands of the Ripper, The Hands of Orlac, etcetera), we, as an audience, have to consider whether the flagitiousness is located in the hand or in the person it wields.  If it’s all in the hand, then the person abrogates their role in any villainy.  They are no more than another victim or a fall guy.  This additionally raises the question of where consciousness resides; in the mind, in the spirit, or in every part of the body (the last two being easily tied together)?  Like the alien in John Carpenter’s The Thing, maybe every microbe has an instinct for survival.  This is fine for straight forward horror/monster movies.  You have the good guys, you have the bad creature.  You don’t need any more.  

However, if we deem that the evil is inside the person and not the part, we have more possibilities to work with, a more nuanced premise.  Now, it’s the person struggling with the evil within them, the transplanted appendage being just an excuse for them to exercise their darkest desires.  We can even postulate that, even if the hand or whatever is, indeed, evil, its influence brings out the worst in its host rather than working strictly toward its own purposes.  In this sense, the chicken and the egg come into existence at the same time.  In Demonoid, we can say that Mark always wanted to blow up his mine with all his workers in it.  We can say that he always wanted to run away from his wife and head out to Vegas.  We can say that Father Cunningham (Stuart Whitman) always wanted to attack a woman.  They simply never had the stones/opportunity to do it.  Even when the Demonoid does things after its host has apparently died or is moribund, we can still say that the person’s psychosis is so deep-seated that they do these things subconsciously in order to keep their mental narrative going.  Bear in mind, I am in no way saying that the hand in this film isn’t its own thing.  We see it do plenty while unattached to anyone, and it clearly has an agenda (though said agenda is unclear; does it want to rule the world?  To just get joined up with Jennifer?  To play Craps until it runs out of money and credit?).  But we can still consider its host’s responsibility in the proceedings, the same as if they were being controlled by the “injecto-pods” in Zontar: The Thing from Venus or somesuch.  Just something to think about, I suppose.

What I find special about this film is not that it’s especially well-written or well-shot or well-acted (though all three jobs are performed competently enough).  Rather, Demonoid is mindful of its mindlessness.  It knows that the premise is silly, but it plays it straight.  It disregards the common theme in films like this of a crisis of faith (sure, Father Cunningham has a few scenes regarding this dilemma, but they never develop into anything all that important, and the idea of the power of God defeating in the power of Satan never plays out except on a surface level).  The filmmakers understand that all they have to do is say that this is Satan’s hand without any other background information and let it ride.  There is a gleefully grimy aura on the film.  It is utterly unafraid to go for the gore, and said gore is usually accompanied by/women with copious amounts of cleavage.  The big “shock” ending is as predictable as that of an EC Comic.  The film stands there in front of the viewer, warts and all (but especially warts), and it couldn’t care less if you believe in it.  It believes in itself.

MVT:  The serious/not serious attitude allows the film to keep going and drag you along with it.

Make or Break:  The vague prologue that kind of sets up the story but is really just a small showcase for some tits and blood.

Score:  7/10      

Don't Panic (1988)

I honestly have no idea why Ruben Galindo Jr’s film is titled Don’t Panic (aka Dimensiones Ocultas, which sounds suspiciously more accurate to me) outside of the fact that it’s also the title of the steadfastly Eighties song sung by the film’s lead, Jon Michael Bischof.  When Michael’s (Bischof) jerkwad pals show up after his seventeenth birthday party is already over, he panics.  His drunk mother might hear them.  When his helmet-haired bestie Tony (Juan Ignacio Aranda) starts playing with the Ouija board that he and the rest of the gang gifted to Michael, he panics.  Don’t they believe in the Devil?!  When Michael starts having visions of a demonic killer picking off his buddies and his eyes turn red (not bloodshot, but red), he panics.  That last one, at least, I can understand.

It can certainly be argued that just about any (if not every) film involving teenagers being either stalked by monsters/slashers or turning into monsters/slashers is actually a film dealing with sexual frustration/awakening (I suppose the argument could be made to encompass all films involving teens, period).  Don’t Panic is no different.  Michael, we are lead to believe, is a virgin.  He has a “golly gee” sense of puppy love, and this is directed toward Alexandra (Gabriela Hassel).  The two play hooky from school and enjoy a light, pleasant dating montage that’s as syrupy as it is superficial.  Alexandra is also a virgin, but she seems to handle it better than Michael (even though she expresses her vast love for him after knowing him for one day).  Michael is coded as so nascently pubescent (despite his actual age), he wears children’s pajamas (they have little, colorful dinosaurs on them; everything but the footies), he doesn’t bat an eye about wearing them out in public, and strangest of all, no one ever comments on this.  He has no car, riding a bike everywhere.  He gives Alexandra a “Magic Rose” that will never wither “as long as love exists between [the] two.”  Michael is a child doing childish things, and the concept of love in this film is just as simplistic.  Pretty in Pink this ain’t.  

All of Michael’s sexual frustrations start after messing with the Ouija board, which is also the night he is introduced to Alexandra.  Many times, his visions happen at night when he’s sleeping, and they typically end with him springing out of bed, a reference to the dreaded wet dreams of teenaged boys everywhere (with blood being dripped on his face, a substitute for ejaculate).  The blood red eyes that he gets at the most inopportune times is the equivalent of the erections boys get when sitting in class, idly considering sex with all of the women in their lives, or bouncing around on just the right seat on the school bus (or, let’s be honest, for absolutely no reason at all other than for their dicks to make them aware that they’re awake and have had a full pot of coffee).  The visions of Virgil (did I forget to mention that, according to this film, the Devil uses the alias of Virgil?) slaying other young teens (with a giant dagger; get it?) is the peristaltic contraction of Michael’s sexual vexation.  Even after Michael and Alexandra have sex, Michael can’t deal with the relationship maturely, because the whole of his being is subsumed by hormones, and the killings and visions continue.  He has a hard time even facing Alexandra, perhaps embarrassed by the intimacy they shared.  Michael’s maturity (or what maturity this film will allow any of its characters to attain) is shown in a scene where he throws his toys around his room and tears down the car posters from his walls (the act itself is still immature, however; it’s the realization that maturity needs to happen, whether Michael likes it or not).  Virgil continues to stalk Michael and his friends, an omnipresent avatar of the sexual spark that has been ignited in Michael, one over which he still has no control.

Similarly, Virgil is a metaphor for the domestic stress in Michael’s life.  His mother is an alcoholic.  We assume that this addiction kicked in after her husband left her or was part of the reason why he did.  Michael’s dad is absent from his life, sending money on occasion, never having time to see his son.  Naturally, these are the things Michael’s folks argue about whenever they speak.  In this sense, the murders are a means for Michael to vent about the tensions at home.  Note that Virgil doesn’t stalk adults, because they hold authority over Michael.  His targeted victims are Michael’s peers, a means of becoming king of the heap, as it were, to mirror the beastliness of the adults in Michael’s life and gain control over some aspect of his life.  In other words, to become an adult.  This also ties in with Michael’s sense of sexual frustration, because his mother is the only woman he has had in his life for some time.  She saunters around the house in silky robes and negligees, constantly trying to touch and comfort him, while still convinced he’s going crazy.  Since sex with his mother would be transgressive, Virgil gives Michael an equally satisfying (and somehow less transgressive) outlet for the Oedipal feelings he may be harboring.

Let me be clear; this film is a mess.  Its story is as vanilla as a bean, the characters are, by turns, stultifyingly bland and obnoxious, and the effects work floats along at about sea level.  And yet, there is an otherworldly dementia at play that makes it kind of enjoyable.  This is the sort of cinematic world where a character stops to buy smokes while he’s supposed to be sitting watch over an intended victim, where a character thinks that a Ouija board is THE FUNNIEST THING EVER, where a character shoots up his girlfriend’s house after being the most dreadful, uninvited dinner guest in the history of cinema (and that’s okay in the end).  The film can’t really decide if it wants to be more of a domestic melodrama or a supernatural slasher (and in either capacity it’s a fairly rote, drab affair), so it splits the difference and gifts the audience with these surreal bits and character traits.  It’s essential viewing in the same way that P.T. Barnum’s “Feejee Mermaid” is: you don’t believe a lick of it, but you’re drawn in by its horrific mishmash of oddball pieces.

MVT:  Michael’s petulant man-child persona is truly one for the ages.

Make or Break:  The opening birthday/post-birthday party sequence cements the full flavor of this particular dish: simultaneously mundane and arch.

Score: 6.5/10 

Sorceress (1982)

The Corsican Brothers is a story by Alexandre Dumas which first saw print in 1844.  In it, the brothers de Franchi, Louis and Lucien, are former conjoined twins who still share a bond that allows (you could argue suffers) them to feel each other’s pain.  If this sounds familiar, it should.  The idea has been adapted to numerous ends over the years.  Of course, there is the eponymous 1941 film starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr (and it should be stated, cinematic adaptations of the novella go back as far as 1898 according to my research), as well as the comedic reworking from Cheech & Chong (of these two, this is the one I’ve watched, for better or worse).  Then there are the maleficent twins Tomax and Xamot from the G.I. Joe cartoons, comics, et cetera.  Even the classic children’s educational show The Electric Company got into the act, though the brothers were renamed Miguel and Ramon and taught us how to form words using sounds like “ow.”  Outside of the obvious comic appeal of the concept, the conceit is intriguing.  It shows us, quite dramatically, that the bonds of family, of blood, are stronger than anything else, and this connection can never be severed, despite our possible desire to do so.  Jack Hill’s (aka Brian Stuart, a pseudonym used after a falling out between the director and Roger Corman, the film’s producer; if memory serves, it’s the name of Corman’s nephew, but don’t quote me on that) Sorceress also deals with the core of The Corsican Brothers, though one would be hard-pressed to say that it handles it even half as carefully or intelligently as Messrs. Chong and Marin.

On a sultry, fog-shrouded night, Traigon (Roberto Ballesteros) and his cronies hunt down Traigon’s wife, who has fled with their newborn twin daughters.  Unable to tell which of the two is the first born (this is crucial for Traigon’s sacrificial plans, though not nearly as crucial as you’d think, as we will learn later), the nefarious sorcerer is thwarted by aged magician and martial artist Krona (Martin LaSalle), who spirits the girls away, gives them some ill-defined superpowers, and spouts some prophetic gunk about them being “the two who are one.”  Fast forward to Mara and Mira’s (Lynette and Leigh Harris, respectively) voluptuous young adulthood, where they inevitably find themselves on the path to slay Traigon and stop his plan along with a small group of disparate allies (Baldar, a Viking [Bruno Rey], Pando, a satyr [David Millbern], and Erlick, a barbarian [Roberto Nelson]).

I know I made a big deal about the Corsican Brothers angle, but aside from the constant reference to “the two who are one” (a phrase which characters spout as if it had been drilled into their heads from birth but without any other context than that it’s important; it’s not), there is only one allusion to the psychic/sensual bond that the sisters share.  Of course, it takes place when one of the twins is having sex, and it gives the filmmakers the impetus to have the other sibling writhe on the ground in orgasmic ecstasy (it should be stated that screenwriter Jim Wynorski’s fingerprints are all over this film, this being one of the larger marks left on it).  So, why make the girls be cosmically/mystically conjoined?  Outside of the standard prophecy angle of the Sword and Sorcery genre, the answer is novelty.  More precisely, it’s the novelty of having two beautiful twins who aren’t afraid to doff their clothes in this milieu.  There is nothing going on in this story that in any way expands on this idea of bonding (at least not that I could see).  Fair play, since the film was a financial hit for Corman and New World Pictures, so the absolute minimum you can say is that one, it is distinguished from other efforts in this genre in this regard, and two, the producers certainly knew their target demographic.

To no one’s surprise, I’m about to labor a point, so bear with me.  There is a heavy religious angle at work in Sorceress, and it all starts at the opening.  The twins are being spirited away from religious zealots who would kill them, shades of the story of Moses (no floating them off down a river, however).  Krona is a Judeo-Christian God parallel with his long beard and mane of hair, his simple attire, and his invulnerability to things like fire.  Krona gives the twins to a couple of lowly goat herders to raise, and these two form a correlation to Joseph and Mary, the lowly carpenter and his wife who reared Jesus to adulthood at the request of God.  Naturally, this being a Sword and Sorcery film, Traigon’s religion is considered evil, calling as it does for the sacrifice of a human being in order to attain some nefarious end.  This also circles back around to more Christian references (are you tired of them yet?).  The face of Kalghara (Germaine Simiens), Traigon’s bad deity, is half serpentine, a Satan reference.  The good deity, Vital (Vitara?  I couldn’t tell completely), is a winged, lion-esque creature.  In combination with the sacrificial element of the film, he and the twins symbolize the duology of Jesus, who was referred to at one point as both the “conquering Lion” and “the Lamb who was slain.”  These are not exactly straight lines I’m drawing between this picture and its biblical references (and I would be shocked as all hell if they were overtly intended, but I believe this is likely one of those times when themes and motifs appear unconsciously in a piece of work for any number of reasons).  After all, the film has to satisfy its generic requirements.  But they seemed pretty obvious to me (and I haven’t opened a Bible in decades).  Nevertheless, I don’t recall horny satyrs or horny ape creatures in the Bible, so I could be wrong about all of it.    

Sorceress has enough interesting things going on, at least from a visual angle to make it worth seeing.  Unfortunately, it’s also pretty slapdash in a lot of ways, and there are dollops of broad humor that make a pie in the face look like a Lenny Bruce monologue (an ape gets shot in the ass with an arrow, a troop of zombies molest a gaggle of vestal virgins to a “what can you do?” aside from Baldar).  This is the type of film wherein every character will believe absolutely anything they’re told.  Mara and Mira believe they are boys, despite the obvious physical differences (even if they had never seen a man in their entire lives, did they never notice or question the differences between their parents?), and don’t know quite what to make of Pando’s engorged penis (okay, that was actually kind of funny).  Worse, the other characters believe the twins are boys up until they disrobe in front of them.  No one is that naïve.  No one.  Traigon’s whole scheme calls for the virginal sacrifice of the first born of the twins but after she’s been impregnated (huh?!).  One of Traigon’s soldiers commands the girls be taken alive and then commands their deaths not even a minute later.  

Still and all, there are things to enjoy, as well (one could argue that the things I just mentioned are some of them).  You get a medieval set of nunchucks.  You get a decent amount of female nudity (and even some male butt).  But more than that, you get a movie that feels like a rollicking, carefree adventure, not so much because you’re glued to your seat following its progression in peaks and valleys, but because you can enjoy the gleefully madcap, thrown-in-a-blender nuttiness that occurs constantly throughout it.  Yes, Sorceress is a mud puddle of a film, but it’s a mud puddle that’s kind of fun to slop around in from time to time.

MVT:  John Carl Buechler’s creature and makeup effects are imaginative and skillfully done.

Make or Break:  Honestly, for this film I have to go with the skinnydipping scene.  It has a little nudity, a little creature effects work, and a little juvenile humor that just about works.  Something for everyone.

Score: 6/10