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Monday 6 April 2020

Burl reviews The Devil's Gift! (1984)



Ha ha and ching ching ching, it’s Burl! I’m here to review a little and little-known 1980s horror picture called The Devil’s Gift! Some people will know this better from the long excerpts used in a movie from the same director which was titled Merlin’s Shop of Magical Wonders and was made well-known from its mockery by the space robots! Chunks of The Devil’s Gift were cobbled together with scenes involving Ernest Borgnine and a kid, ha ha! I never watched it and I never will!
But I have seen The Devil’s Gift! It begins with some apparent but still impressive model work, taking us past an old crankly tree and into the top cupola of a dipsomaniacal medium’s house! An unwelcome ghost visits, her toys seem to come to life, a pair of miniature cymbals clang, and in short order she and her cupola are blasted to flinders by an errant bolt of lightning! Ha ha!
Then comes the main body of the picture, in which a young boy is made a present of what everyone assumes to be a wonderful and wholesome birthday gift: a sinister toy monkey! Yes, it was the same monkey we saw clang his cymbals just before the medium’s demise! And now, after many scenes designed to confirm the father’s love for his little boy, and humourous scenes involving the bearded neighbor, the artful simian sets to work! It seems that with a single clang of his cymbals, the little ape can channel the devil’s power to kill!
Only gradually does the father begin to suspect the monkey’s awful intentions! By then several plants have been dried out, a harmless fly has dropped from the sky, and the house dog has been overcome by smoke! It is then that the man’s girlfriend - responsible for bringing the scourge into the previously harmonious household, for it was she who purchased the satanic gift - plays her card! She tries to drown the boy in his bath!
But a fatal tumble off the steps takes care of her! Even as the monkey’s clang still echoes, it somehow hooks up the household shower to spray first scalding water and then sewer poo! Ha ha, this is enough for the man, who by now sees what evil is plaguing his domicile! He takes the monkey and tries to bury it, as the very ground itself opens to claim him! Only by inches does he escape the terrifying chasm! And then a tree - perhaps the same crankly tree from the opening - falls on his head!
It seems the story is over, ha ha! But the man survives his clonking by the tree, and, though he’s been battered, all seems well in the household! But then grandma arrives with a gift for the little boy, and I won’t tell you what happens, except it involves a cut to black and the sound of a house exploding! Ha ha!
The Devil’s Gift is not itself much of a gift: it goes on too long for the story it has, and even this minimal story seems largely to have been, ha ha, “borrowed” from Stephen King! (The setting, style, and atmosphere on the other hand seem purloined from Don Dohler, most specifically from Fiend!) But the attention lavished on the miniature special effects in the picture’s opening minutes, with the thunder and hoot owl sound effects and whatnot, lend an initial impression that this picture is trying harder than most of its ilk; and while the uncanny atmosphere of wholesomeness and long stretches of domestic uneventfulness undercut this impression, it never quite leaves, and is bolstered somewhat by the conclusion already described! It’s nothing to fervently hunt down, though - it’s no Blood Beach, ha ha -  and I give The Devil’s Gift one starfish medallion!

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