Watch The Devil's Messenger For Free

Very Cool!!!

Best movie of this year hands down!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

No. 13 Demon Street--sounds likes a nice place to visit & maybe I would want to stay. But seriously, folks, is there anything here of note beyond the presence of Lon Chaney as Satan. As far as Satan on the big-screen, what could have more fitting during this time than Mr. Chaney--who, unfortunately at this point in his career was probably getting by more on name value than anything else. Not to say the man couldn't anymore, but I'm sure all the serious Lon fans know about the live tv drunk incident that sent his career to B-movie hell.At any rate, Chaney does make a great Satan (shocker, I know). At's that is pretty much the big draw for this film. Satanya is nice to look at, the stories in between Satan's segments passable entertainment & the closing reel is pretty good. Basically this is for the hardcore Chaney purists who will watch pretty anything the man did--even dreck like "La Casa Del Terror."

What on paper might have seemed like a good idea for a television series fortunately never made it that far, possibly playing in some second rate movie theater as part of a double bill with another piece of schlock. The premise has Satan himself (Lon Chaney Jr., that brilliant thespian of 1950's and 60's horror crap) sending the latest arrival in Hell back to earth to bring him more souls and ultimately go back one last time with the plan of obtaining more room, since hell is obviously running out. Looking like your local garbage man or mail deliverer, Chaney speaks his lines with an eternal grin, like the cat who swallowed tweetie bird with one gulp, seeming more like the prince of annoyance than the prince of darkness. The individual segments when Chaney isn't on actually rise this film's ratings up a bit and show a bit of creativity.First, there's a segment involving a camera man who is being stalked by a picture of a mysterious house with a woman he is having a strange affair with seemingly getting closer and closer. When she does appear, she's strangely obsessed, but as she realizes that he's getting nuttier and nuttier by her presence, she prepares to go. Why this premise would lead him to a life of damnation makes no sense, but the plot line surrounding her picture shows that at least someone was thinking simply beyond the shock value of having a film of people being damned.Next, is a tragic story, quite sad actually, concerning the discovery of a girl from millenniums in time found in a block of ice in a cave, and the efforts of a love-starved man to rescue her from her icy tomb. Finally, there's the story of a man who learns that he is to be murdered by a gypsy fortune teller at midnight and his efforts to prevent it from happening. Each incident has its own level of spookiness and certainly are better than any of the segments which feature Chaney at his most horrible. Chaney does of course get a twist at the end, and he overacts with relish. Filmed very cheaply, this has moments of gripping fear, but not everybody will be taken with the idea of Satan using an innocent woman (named Satana, no less...) to bring him more souls pretty much against her will.

"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!"

First of all, the use of a hell-like place is sort of fun. The problem is, it is handled so poorly and so dully by Lon Chaney, Jr. that is becomes pointless. More of a problem than that are a trio of pretty dull stories. They are highly predictable with weak endings. A decent writer could have been given these three premises and made them very scary. As it is, we start with the photographer who must be psychotic. He murders a young woman who doesn't want her picture taken. Then images keep reappearing. The second, and weakest, is about a deranged anthropologist who kills his rival so he can hook up with a woman, frozen in a chunk of ice. It doesn't get much more asinine than this. The most intriguing is about a man who is told by a fortune teller he will be killed by midnight "and by her." The setup is good. Things work their way out. But the ending is a real disappointment and fizzles. These are TV like and apparently were, originally. Chaney must have really fallen on hard times. He looks old and tired. But he does have a document for mankind at the end. They should have sent it back.