Movie review of Messiah of Evil

Horrorphile

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Messiah of Evil

March 22nd 2007 03:19

A few years ago my girlfriend and I saw a sensational documentary at the Sydney Film Festival called Los Angeles Plays Itself, about how the City of Angels has been featured and portrayed in movies over the decades. There was a very creepy and resonant film clip which stayed in our minds for days and nights after set in and around a shopping mall. The movie was Messiah of Evil (1973), a horror about the undead in a small Californian coastal town.
I tracked the movie down and found an el cheapo DVD edition (coupled with another obscure B-horror) from the States. I’d kill to find a decently transferred version in its original 2.35:1 ratio (director’s commentary would be fantastic!) This is one rare blood-red gem.

Originally titled Dead People, but more commonly known as Messiah of Evil (and a better title too), it was written and directed by the husband and wife team of Williard Huyck and Gloria Katz (who co-wrote American Graffiti). It’s a low-budget arthouse horror from the 70s instilled with the psychotronic allure of the late 60s. They certainly don’t make films like this anymore.

an empty blood-red cinema ... now that's creepy

Arletty (mannequin-like beauty Marianna Hill) arrives in the eerie town of Point Dune looking for her artist father. We’ve already had a prologue which suggests she ends up in an institution, so we are wary of her narration and subsequent quest. She settles in to her father’s deserted beach house filled with his surreal and unsettling paintings, many of which are simply giant faces on the walls.
The locals are hollow and weird. It seems a supernatural force has infected the town gradually turning the occupants into zombies. They are the undead, but not the familiar kind. Yes, they do eat raw meat and are in a slow state of decay, but they also manage to operate in a vaguely normal fashion (drive vehicles, converse with strangers, etc).

Arletty is befriended by Thom (Michael Greer), a dapper and slightly mysterious man, and his two female companions (lovers), the sexy, feline Laura (Anitra Ford) and the boyish, child-woman Toni (Joy Bang). They are drifters, also intrigued by the town’s history, and plant themselves at Arletty’s pad.

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Events start to take a turn for the seriously weird (as if they weren’t a little damn odd already) when Laura packs up and gets the hell out, but finds herself caught in a mall with the hungry undead. Later Toni visits a cinema (ominously playing Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye) and, in one of the movie’s most unsettling and surreal scenes, is trapped and devoured also.

Arletty's deranged artist father blue in the face

Eventually the town’s dark and diabolical history is revealed when Arletty’s father makes his presence known and tells of the Dark Stranger, whom 100 years earlier arrived at Point Dune to establish his unholy religion. The Stranger is about to return from the ocean’s depths to reclaim what is his and infect the rest of the land, aided by the hordes of undead.

It’s all hallucinogenic hokum, but the movie carries it off with an intensely atmospheric visual style and dream-like logic which reminds me of some of Argento’s earlier films, but also, and more directly, Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg’s Performance (1970), with its multi-layered use of symbolism (religious cultism, sexual role-playing, identity and disguise, socio-politics, artistic expression) and a brooding, inherent sensuality.

There’s some neat dialogue scattered throughout (as well as some hilariously cheesy lines too). After Laura has left Thom casually mutters “Give a girl a pair of shoes and she walks out on you”. While Arletty’s opening narration delivers the delicious “They say nightmares are dreams perverted …”

I was lucky to find a couple of extended clips on youtube, the first is Laura's demise:

The performances are all assured with excellent casting of the leads and some great bit-parts (the featured albino Negro zombie is particularly scary, while Elisha Cook’s town drunkard is amusing). Most striking of all is Jack Fisk’s production design (curiously he was the Man in the Planet in Lynch’s Eraserhead) and director Huyck (and uncredited Katz)’s mise-en-scene: the rolling surf, luna in the night sky, empty streets and buildings, and one especially striking sequence where Arletty first descends down into her father’s studio where a massive jetty mural fills the wall. The succession of images, combined with the very spare, but haunting electronic score (by Phillian Bishop) is powerful and undeniably creepy.

Here is the second clip (stay with it) ... Toni's demise:

The movie’s final quarter descends into near hysteria and culminates in a rather cryptically-toned revelation concerning the Dark Stranger and the movie’s prologue. As I figured halfway through the film, apparently the character of Thom was designed to be the Devil’s son (the Dark Stranger returned), but the filmmakers changed tack during shooting and re-wrote the ending, turning Thom into simply another unfortunate victim of Point Dune. The real madness lies in Arletty’s mind … is the whole story a figment of her crazed imagination??

Messiah of Evil is definitely a movie for fans of horror’s more expressionist avenues. It dabbles in abstract ideas, meanders down a strange little street toward the sea, whilst staring off into the blood red moon; the un-zombie movie for the disjointed dead, and well worth checking out, if you can find its striking, elusive self.

* images on this page are courtesy of www.horror-online.com

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Comments

8 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by JohnDoe

March 22nd 2007 06:44

Film & TV on DVD

Man, you got a copy of this?

Its one of those curios Ive read about but never got my grubby little paws on.

Awesome stuff and a fine review to match.

Comment by Bryn

March 22nd 2007 07:12

Horrorphile

Consider it in your grubby little paws my good man. And cheers for the review props, I enjoyed writing this one. I would devour human flesh to see this in on the big wide screen after a little whewt-whew!

Comment by JohnDoe

March 22nd 2007 07:33

Film & TV on DVD

What an intoxicating idea, shame we haven't got trash video down here...when I lived in brissy they screened fantastic, hard to find exploitation films.....check out there site. www.trashvideo.com.au

Comment by Bryn

March 22nd 2007 10:06

Horrorphile

Tell me about it!!! Perhaps you and I need to mull over the idea of putting a psychotronic film festival together .... ?

Comment by KylieW

March 23rd 2007 03:17

Celebrity Obsession

OK, someone figure out a way to get this screened in a cinema. I want to see it!! Though I'm not sure devouring human flesh is necessarily the way to go about it.

I’d kill to find a decently transferred version in its original 2.35:1 ratio (director’s commentary would be fantastic!)

............spoken like a true movie geek!!

Great review.

Comment by Bryn

March 23rd 2007 05:02

Horrorphile

Hear! Hear! Kylie, once again, your comments always go down like a chalice of warm fresh human blood held to the cold lips of a thirsting vampire ....
And yes, I am a true movie geek, or as I like to say here in the Darkness of my blog ... a True Believer.
As for ever having this movie screened in a cinema? You'd have more chance squeezing blood from a stone I'm afraid ... it's that rare in celluloid form. A DVD screening is a different matter .... If only you lived in Sydney ....

Comment by Anonymous

March 26th 2007 19:23

I just knew that ***Joy Bang*** had to be a former porn actress. I believe I'm disappointed.

I also got a definite Lovecraft's Dagon vibe from some of the set up. I believe I'll be searching for a copy of this myself. Excellent review.

-lilith

Comment by Bryn

March 27th 2007 06:23

Horrorphile

Thankyou Lilith .. funny that, I thought the same thing about Ms. Bang, although it was Anitra Ford who looks more the adult performer ....
Do check this out .. it's old gold!

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