13 Demon Street

"Number 13 Demon Street. I am condemned to live here. To suffer on this earth eternally as a punishment for my sin. It is said that no greater outrage was ever committed by any mortal. But should I find a crime more heinous, my terrible punishment will end." -- LON CHANEY JR.


Somewhere between One Step Beyond and Thriller lies 13 Demon Street, a thirteen episode shot-in-Sweden television show created and directed by CURT SIODMAK (the Hollywood horror vet who scripted The Wolfman and wrote Donovan’s Brain). After directing the pilot for Hammer’s unsold Tales of Frankenstein (’58), Siodmak made a deal with LEO GUILD and KENNETH HERTS to shoot a supernatural horror anthology, 13 Demon Street, in Stockholm’s Nordisk Tonefilm studio in 1960. As host -- and caretaker of the titular address -- a disheveled Lon Chaney Jr. briefly intros each episode, often looking like he wants to punch the camera and start a brawl instead. Moody, atmospheric, and hilariously hokey, the series was nevertheless unable to find a buyer. Herts then salvaged some of the footage by bringing in HERBERT L STROCK to stitch together a feature comprised of three episodes as well as a new framing device that replaced all of Chaney’s TV footage with scenes of him playing Satan, and released it as The Devil’s Messenger in 1962. Though the shows were never aired anywhere they have been released on video by Something Weird Video.

Brief episode synopses: THE BLACK HAND - When his car is hit by a speeding driver, Dr. Heinz Schloss, a brilliant surgeon, removes his pinned hand by severing it with a scalpel. Since the driver of the other car, Erich Münster, was killed in the crash, Schloss replaces his missing hand with one of Erich’s: "He’s dead and does not need both of his hands!" Oops! Turns out that Mr. Münster was a psychopathic strangler of five, and before you can say, "The Hands of Orlac," the new hand of Heinz is taking on a homicidal life all its own: "It wasn’t me! It was it!" FEVER - During a flu epidemic, Dr. Franz makes a housecall to crazed artist Otto Szegety, whose dingy flat is covered with paintings of the same beautiful woman. Asked who the model is, Szegety hisses, "She’s mine!" But when the doctor looks out Szegety’s window, he’s startled to see the woman from the paintings smiling seductively at him from her house across the courtyard. A house which, apparently, doesn’t really exist... CONDEMNED IN THE CRYSTAL - "It would be awful to learn one’s future," says John Radian, a man with a "fear of the future,"who’s suffering from a recurring nightmare in which he’s drawn to a dilapidated building in a fog-shrouded alley and wakes up screaming. On the advice of his shrink, he locates the building while awake and discoversit’s occupied by Madame Germaine, a fortune teller who looks into her crystal ball and tells him that he willdie at midnight. How? She will be his killer... GREEN ARE THE LEAVES - A television crew arrives at Sweden’s Stafsholm’s Castle in the hopes of broadcasting a murderous ghost who dwells in one of thebedrooms: "This will be the first attempt to catch the image of an authentic ghost on the television screen!" But when a crew member is found choked to death in the room, TV host Henry Waller and his girlfriend, Denise, foolishly decide to spend the night in the haunted bedroom. Sure enough, they too find themselves being suffocated as the dapper ghost of Erik Kirsten strolls out from an ancient painting... THE GIRL IN THE GLACIER - A chunk of glacier is struck in a mine shaft with the figure of a nude woman, guessed to be 50,000 years old, frozen in the ice. Bringing the chunk of ice to a museum, Dr. Sven Sjöström immediately falls in love with the woman entombed in it (whom he calls Angelica) and gets upset when Olsen, a rival scientist, suggests melting the ice: "But everybody will see her in her nakedness!" Wanting her all to himself, Sven kills Olsen, buys his girlfriend-on-ice a dress and pair of shoes (!), and is shocked when she suddenly opens her eyes... THE BOOK OF GHOULS  -  Finding a ritual that guarantees "untold wealth" in an old tome, Anton Lupesco goes on a bizarre scavenger hunt in which he must bury the beak of a raven in the oldest grave in the cemetery, steal "an omen of death" from antique shopkeeper Curt Siodmak in a silent cameo, and seek out a man who does evil and kill him. But -- surprise! -- there’s a tiny detail he’s overlooked...THE PHOTOGRAPH  - After hot shot photographer Donald Powell takes a photo of a farmhouse in snowy Maine, a beautiful woman emerges from it. He tries to embrace her but ends up strangling the woman instead. Back in New York, the photo holds a macabre surprise for him: every time he looks at it, he sees the murdered woman coming closer and closer... And watch for director Curt Siodmak in a cameo ("I came for my dog!") that was cut when this episode was included in The Devil’s Messenger. THE VINE OF DEATH -  Museum curator Frank Dylan is thrilled to acquire the bulbs of the ancient Mirada "death vine," puts a bulb in his pocket, and rushes home to plant it. Instead, he stumbles in on Wally, his slimy neighbor, putting the moves on his wife. After a struggle ends up in Frank being killed, his body is buried in the hot house and the death vine quickly sprouts. But as Wally soon learns, the vine is "attracted by the heat of a human body" which it wraps around and strangles... As Chaney neatly explains, "I want you to see a man who wanted to plant a flower, instead of which he dug his own grave..." A GIFT OF MURDER - At an anniversary party, Jim and Betty Duncan receive a Haitian voodoo doll as an anonymous present, complete with instructions on how to kill one’s enemies. After using the doll to eliminate two rivals at work, Jim falls in love with a secretary and decides to get rid of his wife. But as he sticks the pin in the doll’s face, he doesn’t notice that it’s been tampered with...THE SECRET OF THE TELESCOPE - Paul Kessler buys an antique telescope at an auction. It seems ordinary enough until he looks out the window with it and sees a vision of his dead self. Convinced that his death could only be the result of his alcoholic wife murdering him, he decides to off her first by putting rat poison in her decanter of booze... (The wrap-up shows Chaney inexplicably cackling at the contents of a malignant dollhouse!) NEVER STEAL A WARLOCK’S WIFE - Milksop banker Hubert Ames can’t afford to provide his sultry wife the wealth, clothing, and jewelry she demands, so he tries to acquire them via witchcraft. She’s unimpressed: "You do the incantations and I’ll do the dishes." But when he discovers that she’s running away with her illicit boyfriend, Hubert reads from The Science of Necromancy, takes advice from a witch’s cat, and conjures up a road full of flames for the fleeing lovers... MURDER IN THE MIRROR - Hired by creepy Count Ottocar Potosi to find a specific antique mirror, Antonio Martinelli is horrified when the mirror shows him a vision of the Count suffocating Mario, his wife’s lover -- a murder that occurred thirty years earlier and created by the victim’s "energy engraved on the glass..." BLACK NEMESIS - Phony medium "Monsieur" Aramit kills Dr. Robert Standish in order to scam his bereaved widow for some quick cash to pay off a gambling debt. All goes well until the doctor unexpectedly materializes when he isn’t supposed to...

THE DEVIL'S MESSENGER is the film compilation made from three episodes. Underneath modern-day Los Angeles (and we do mean WAY UNDERNEATH) we find The Devil (the wonderful Lon Chaney Jr. looking jovial down there) sitting at a desk, wearing a dark short sleeved shirt and dark tie. Presumably his rolodex contains the names of the "catch of the day" -- the incoming souls headed for the infernal depths. One of these souls is a most attractive brunette named -- get this -- Satanya! Hers is a special case as she was a suicide and therefore a special tribunal can reconsider her case. Immediately Old' Nick gets his horns going and promises her another chance at life way up there if she will act as his messenger. Some of the devilish dialogue is hysterically funny here and must be heard to be believed! Satanya (Karen Kadler) must reappear on earth to enlist other souls to come and join the infernal country club. Since eternity is a timeless and relentless bummer down there, why not have some fun with it?  The film contains the episodes “The Photograph,” “Gil in the Glacier” and “Condemned in Crystal.”