Some demonic bureaucrat in hell (Lon Chaney, jr.) sends a young, dead woman named Satanya (Karen Kadler) back into the world of the living to deliver three items. Each item causes a different strange tale to happen.
In the first one, an agent sends his client, a famous photographer (John Powell) on a vacation. There the good man not only makes some of his best photos, but also murders a woman. As is the custom in an anthology movie of this type, her picture starts to haunt him.
In the second story, a scientist develops an obsession for a frozen girl. It nearly seems as if she might be alive! Do stories of this kind ever end well?
In the third and last of the stories, a soothsayer predicts that something terrible will happen to a man. At first, he is skeptical, but he gets more nervous with each prediction that comes true.
The Devil's Messenger is an anthology film pasted together from three episodes of a Swedish TV show called "13 Demon Street" that was, as far as I could find out, quite an strange project. The great Curt Siodmak and other Americans went to Sweden and made a little TV show in English for the Swedish market.
Later, a more or less clever American producer paid Siodmak to make an anthology movie of some of the material (I suspect Chaney's scenes were shot for the film and not for the TV show. The sources about the film I could find are divided on the point.). As did happen more than once where Siodmak was concerned, he soon broke with his producer and terrible hack Herbert L. Strock wrapped up the project. It's a nice coincidence that there wasn't much Strock could do to ruin the project, so his filmography contains at least one watchable movie.
Of course, the episodes themselves are neither original nor lavishly produced, but are still products of solid craftsmanship, something that often isn't enough to hold a full length feature together, but works out fine for three nice little horror shorts. Nothing in the movie overstays its welcome or tries for things it can't achieve, so if you don't expect to see a film of the quality of the better Amicus productions, you will have a nice time.
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