This bargain-basement time-waster plagiarizes most of its premise from the Stephen King short story "The Monkey" then does it further injustice by going virtually nowhere with the concept. It's also likely that the filmmakers built on the few seconds of natural spookiness generated by a wind-up mechanical monkey and padded it out with about 100 minutes of filler. Said padding involves the lethal havoc visited upon a suburban family when the son receives the cymbal-clinking, glowing-eyed toy as a gift, unleashing the demon within -- which then exerts its evil influence on the kid's parents. Aside from a clever animated opening sequence, there is nothing to recommend this talky, scare-less yawner. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Apparently an uncredited adaption of Stephen King's story "The Monkey", this low budget release is about an evil demon that inhabits a young boy's monkey doll and takes over the mind of his suburban mother. "I saw a guy selling wind-up monkeys on the street", King recalled in Skeleton Crew, "They looked really scary to me, and I spent the rest of my walk to the hotel wondering why". It's said that Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Woman in the Room, The Green Mile) is planning an official adaption King's story, probably for cable TV. ~ Stephen Jones

Kenneth J. Berton went on to use scenes from The Devil's Gift in his 1996 TV movie "Merlin's Shop Of Mystical Wonders". A boy is watching TV when a power outage forces him to talk to his grandpa for entertainment. His grandpa (Ernest Borgnine), a former screenwriter, re-tells an old screenplay about Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders. In it, Merlin sets up an enchanting store in a modern-day strip mall, accompanied by his gleeful wife and gnomes, snakes, dragons, etc. From this framing device, we then see two stories about people's encounters with items from the shop. The first sequence (created for this film but looking like an episode of "Tales From The Darkside") involves a pompous, cranky newspaper critic who begins casting spells using Merlin's spell book. The second story is obviously a short version of "The Devil's Gift" in which an evil monkey doll kills every time his cymbals clap.