The Devil's Messenger (1961)

Best movie of this year hands down!

hyped garbage

A Masterpiece!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Lon Chaney Jr. after playing Wolfman, Dracula. Mummy, Frankenstein, now takes on the Devil...with a Rolodex. Satayana (Karen Kadler) a suicide victim has the option of delivering packages to individuals or go to hell. She chooses the packages which give us three film shorts including a 50,000 year old woman frozen in ice with plucked eye brows, mascara, and eye shadow. The very ending was typical of many sci-fi films of the era. Worth a peek if you got an hour. Available on numerous multi-packs.

"The Devil's Messenger" may have been issued in 1962, carrying a 1961 copyright, but served as a feature compilation of a 1959 TV series shot in Sweden by writer/director Curt Siodmak, titled 13 DEMON STREET. Lon Chaney was imported as host, his minimal footage seen at the opening and close of all 13 half hour episodes, none of which were picked up by US television, but did play in Sweden. Producer Kenneth Herts hired director Herbert L. Strock to do what he could in providing a way for Herts to recoup his losses, and thus this feature film was born, incorporating three episodes with new wraparound scenes promoting host Chaney to Satan himself. Karen Kadler (Mrs. Kenneth Herts) had already appeared as a model in the episode "Fever," but here plays an entirely new character, appropriately named Satanya, newest arrival in Hell after a wrist slashing suicide, called upon by Chaney's Devil to carry out a special mission as recruiter for three separate characters. A camera provides the link to the first tale, "The Photograph" (reduced to 19 minutes), with veteran John Crawford as a womanizing professional photographer with a habit of bedding his models, who rapes and murders an unresponsive woman whose house was his primary subject, its image reflecting his dead victim at closer and closer intervals, one that no one else but her killer can see. Satan offers Satanya a pick, leading into the second tale, "The Girl in the Glacier" (reduced to 16 minutes), in which a mining expedition uncovers the perfectly preserved body of a naked woman in an icy tomb, transported to a Swedish museum for closer examination. One anthropologist becomes obsessed with her enticing presence (he names her Angelica), resorting to murder to prevent a rival colleague from despoiling his beloved. A crystal ball is the natural connection for story three, "Condemned in the Crystal" (reduced to 21 minutes), as Chaney's Satan proclaims: "some people say they can see things in a crystal ball, others say they can foretell the future, others say they can reconstruct the past, but they only see what we down here let them see because the crystal ball is the toy of the Devil!" Michael Hinn's John Radian, the man responsible for Satanya's despondent suicide (no connection whatsoever to the episode in question), is consumed by fears for his uncertain future, until a psychiatrist advises him to confront them head on by returning to a childhood haunt with a room he had been too scared to enter as a boy. Inside is a fortune teller, Madame Germaine (Gunnel Brostrom), who claims to know nothing of Radian but predicts that she will be the instrument of his midnight death. The newly filmed conclusion features Hinn, the only actor who repeated his series role for the added footage, joining Satanya in Hell for one final task, to deliver the ultimate weapon that Satan could devise, one that man knows only too well how to use. Lon Chaney is relaxed and confident as a smiling Devil, bringing a great deal of energetic humor to his role of genial host for a Hell he compares to being an exclusive club, one that requires more room for new members. With 10 1/2 minutes screen time, Chaney probably gets more footage than he did in all 13 episodes combined of the little seen 13 DEMON STREET, more in line with Boris Karloff's unsold THE VEIL than any actual show broadcast at the time. Some, though not all, episodes have found their way to YouTube, the entire series available in certain gray market packages. As a feature film (the only way many viewers have experienced 13 DEMON STREET), it served its successful purpose at the box office, though Curt Siodmak's name was nowhere to be found on screen, Leo Guild sole credited writer, Herbert L. Strock sole credited director. When Satanya asks what his purpose is in ruining lives, Chaney's exuberant Devil sums it up nicely: "people ruin their own lives, all we do is help them a bit!"

Lon Chaney is the devil in collection of TV episodes stitched together. The film has Chaney sending devils out to tempt people and to bring about the end of the world. Its a Twilight Zone like affair that for the most part works pretty good. probably the best of the lot is the story about a woman found frozen in a block of ice and how she causes one man's down fall. I don't know why that one story sticks with me while the others continuously fade from my memory, but thats the one I always remember. Actually I remember that story and Chaney sitting behind a table talking about his great plans. I've always liked this film and always wondered why the other episodes from the series have never really manged to materialize. Until they do I'm guessing this will have to do. Worth a look.

The Devil's Messenger was a feature film cobbled together from three episodes of a failed TV series, "13 Demon Street" and later shot footage featuring Lon Chaney as Satan. Chaney offers a woman who committed suicide a chance to escape the horrors of hell if she agrees to run a few errands for him. That is how they tie everything in the film together, as she delivers items that are used in each story and is really the catalyst for the stories.Story number one deals with a stressed out photographer in need of a break. He takes a vacation to the mountains, but lets his lustful ways get the better of him as he murders a woman he tries to make advances on. After he returns to the city, the woman suddenly appears in a photo he took. Every time he looks at the picture, the woman appears closer in the picture, as she is making her way towards him to take her revenge.The next story is about a group of scientists who discover a woman frozen in a block of ice deep in a cave. One scientist becomes obsessed with the woman and will go to any length to free her and make her his own.The final story concerns a man who has a series of dreams concerning his death. His doctor advises him to go to the building that is in his dreams, in hopes that this will bring him some sort of relief. Instead he finds a gypsy woman who has a vision regarding his death as well.The series this movie derives from was another in a long list of Twilight Zone imitators that just didn't make it. Each story itself was solid and made with good production qualities. The performances were fine, and Chaney seemed to be having a good time in his role. Pick this title up if you happen upon it, as its a fine old horror film with a lot to offer.