'I expected you sooner.'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘We were all somewhat excited I would say and we still are.’
13 Demon Street was a TV series in the style of The Twilight Zone, created by Curt Siodmak
who wrote Universal’s The Wolf Man, and hosted by Wolf Man star, Lon Chaney jr. playing a soul in torment.
‘It’s like a big country club.’
Confirms my opinion of country clubs.
3 episodes of the series were then edited into anthology feature, The Devil’s Messenger,
in which Chaney now plays an oddly white collar devil.
The Devil’s rolodex, there.
A lost soul arrives, named…
‘Satanya’
Lesson for parents; if you name your child after Satan, this is where they end up.
But the Devil takes pity on Satanya, offering her a job.
‘You could be my messenger.’
We’re desperately short-handed down here, I mean I’m working reception!
‘I realise there’s no sense in protesting.’
Ostensibly her job is to deliver items to the living that will tempt them to sin.
In reality, it’s a tacked on framing device and Satanya only appears once in the actual episodes,
That’s it.
Anyway; episode one.
‘Why should a guy get cooped up just cos he paid 2 bucks for a marriage licence?’
Womanising photographer Donald...
‘You have a wife...’
goes on a working holiday, taking pictures of local houses and getting shot down by local girls,
‘Hello. I'd like to talk to you.’
but Donald doesn’t handle rejection well.
‘Look, I’m a professional photographer, you've got features I've never seen on another woman.’
There’s a fine line between persistent and harassment
and Donald sprints over it...
... and on into assault.
The act itself is implied using images of the destructive power of nature...
...and a stream for some reason.
but the result is murder.
Returning home, Donald is haunted by his own picture...
the dead woman seems to stalk him, progressively closing in.
Until…
What the hell?
Cool I brought her back to life.
‘His heart has stopped’
The photographic haunting I like, the ending I don’t,
but what really undercuts it is the framing device.
'It's a terrible thing the way you go around ruining people's lives.'
The implication is that poor Donald only killed that woman because he was given a new camera,
which I’m not buying, and the problem continues in episode two.
‘There’s something there.’
Miners discover a frozen body in a glacier and anthropologists are swift to arrive.
‘To think that she died thousands of years ago.’
Just after a trip to the ancient hairdressers.
The anthropologists want to extract her but one raises an issue.
‘But everyone will see her in her nakedness.’
That seems a weird attitude for an anthropologist.
‘I knew when I first saw you that we were chosen for each other’
Must be a hard job if you keep looking at the bodies of the long dead and going; nice.
‘I love you Angelica.’
And things get weirder as he buys ‘Angelica’ gifts.
‘Here are the shoes.’
But, in his desperation to meet his dream woman he turns up the heat...
‘You’re going to drown.’
and the ice, naturally, melts from the inside.
This is my favourite segment but the core issue remains;
Satanya supposedly triggers events by giving one of the miners a new pick.
'Satanya, deliver this pick to a miner.'
I feel like the girl would have been found anyway because all picks broadly do the same job,
but even if she wasn’t, Dr Seastrom clearly had some pre-existing issues.
‘I think I came up with a diabolical idea.’
The final segment links to the framing device as it involves Satanya’s ex- boyfriend.
'I could get even with him.'
John Radian, who visits a fortune teller.
‘Tonight at midnight you will be dead’
Boy, I can’t think of anything that would make that idea any less original.
'Who is it?'
‘I am the one who will take your life.’
‘What do I owe you?'
Sporting of him to pay the bill after that,
but, like everyone else who has got that prediction he has an idea how to cheat fate.
‘The predictions on the other foot now isn’t it.’
By killing her first.
Can’t kill me now can you? Ha, ha, ha.
What was the wording of the prediction again?
‘I am the one who will take your life.’
No, I don’t think that’s what happened at all. Back to hell.
Uh, there’s a line!
‘The lovers are reunited.’
Boy is that an unlikely couple,
'Uh uh, I don't want any part of it.'
'You haven't changed, you never changed, you just as rotten as the day I met you.'
'What have you got to do with all this? You never give up do you?'
Hell for them would presumably be each other.
'We have no interest in your petty arguments down here.'
but no, Satan has more non-sensical idea.
‘We’ve been overcrowded down here for years’
I’m building an extension.
‘We’ve selected both of you to help us annex earth.’
The Devil’s planning permission.
‘I needed two lve birds that had turned into fighting cocks.’
You don’t need to know why, standard infernal boilerplate.
So, Satan has one last message for Satanya.
'Deliver it to them.'
I don't think we want it.'
‘That formula is a 500 megaton bomb.’
Anthology films hinge on their twists and the ones in these stories have been rubbish,
but ending on the destruction of the human race so the devil can move into real estate, was unexpected.
‘And what happened next?’
‘Nothing. It just stops.’
And on the bright side, it limits the chance of a sequel.
That's it good girl.'
Thanks for watching. For new bad movie reviews every Monday, subscribe here.
It’s been a while since we reviewed a Lon Chaney jr film and he is the best thing in this,
in what other films does he raise the standard? Let us know in the comments below.
'Now go.'