The chills are few and far between in this demonic possession horror film that waste the talents of Samantha Eggar and Stuart Whitman, one of many forgotten chillers of the early '80s that probably had the intended team audience running to get popcorn during the boring scenes of which there are many. The story surrounds a 300-year-old curse in the tombs of Mexico left behind by an old satanic cult where sacrificial victims had their hands cut off, set to place a curse on anybody who disturbs the tomb. That curse is let loose when Eggar and husband Roy Jenson disturb the tomb and wake up in the middle of the night to find out that the hand has followed them to their hotel room. Soon Jenson has become a victim of the curse and Eggar (who should have rushed back to where she came from) joins forces with priest Whitman to find a way to stop the curse.
Cheaply made, this only has a few moments of throws, and the flashback sequence at the beginning, showing a screaming female victim having her hand lopped off, and flashes forward to the present where the skeletal remains of the victims somehow are shown to the viewer as they looked when they were sacrificed. There are thus some clever ideas, but the film is cheap and plodding, and prints of the film indicate a lack of interest in restoring this to looking fresh. Therefore, the picture is grainy and the color is dull, and more importantly, the sound is muffled and often annoying. It would take a lot of freshening up to make it look decent, but until then, the damage is done because it's not the type of film anyway that most viewers will rush back to watch and reanalyze. Eggar is lovely, and Whitman sincere, but the two actors have had much better movies and probably would prefer that this one be avoided.
Cheaply made, this only has a few moments of throws, and the flashback sequence at the beginning, showing a screaming female victim having her hand lopped off, and flashes forward to the present where the skeletal remains of the victims somehow are shown to the viewer as they looked when they were sacrificed. There are thus some clever ideas, but the film is cheap and plodding, and prints of the film indicate a lack of interest in restoring this to looking fresh. Therefore, the picture is grainy and the color is dull, and more importantly, the sound is muffled and often annoying. It would take a lot of freshening up to make it look decent, but until then, the damage is done because it's not the type of film anyway that most viewers will rush back to watch and reanalyze. Eggar is lovely, and Whitman sincere, but the two actors have had much better movies and probably would prefer that this one be avoided.