Messiah of Evil

If you're not in the market for a moody, atmospheric horror film, Messiah of Evil might not be for you. The script is nothing to write home about and a lot of it can be rather confounding, but it more than makes up for it with some of the spookiest set pieces I've ever seen on screen.

Two sequences stand out in particular. 1.) a woman enters a grocery store late at night to find a horde of zombie-like creatures eating all the raw meat in the freezer section and 2.) another woman goes to see a late night movie and finds herself swarmed by the living dead in a sleek homage to a moment from Hitchcock's The Birds.

Messiah of Evil is a well crafted, creepy, and very memorable experience akin to a nightmare from your childhood. You won't be able to remember all the little details, but you'll remember how it made you feel.

Eerie, dream-like zombie picture that anticipates both Romero's consumerism subtext and Boyle's agile undead. Full of quirky touches, it should be much better known than it is. Strange to think that one year later husband-and-wife team Huyck and Katz would co-write American Graffiti

After losing contact with her artist father, Arletty (Marianna Hill) travels to the coastal town Point Dune. She does not find him and stumbles upon Thom (Michael Greer), a weird wealthy man that is travelling with two lovers, Toni (Joy Bang) and Laura (Anitra Ford), to meet her father. She reads his diary and soon she realizes that there is something strange with the residents of the Californian town.

"Messiah of Evil" is an atmospheric horror film with a messy screenplay and disappointing conclusion. There are several great scenes and creepy deaths with wonderful cinematography. However the character Thom never works and his arrival to the house of Arletty's father is ridiculous. The living sharing Point Dune with the dead is also absurd. Last but not the least, there is no satisfactory explanation for the transformation of the dwellers into zombies. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Zumbís do Mal" ("Zombies of Evil")

Arletty (Marianna Hill) arrives in a small, odd, creepy coastal town in California looking for her father and she quickly learns little is as it seems.

Before Romero's Dawn of the Dead and The Crazies, there was Dead People a.k.a Messiah of evil. Shot in 1971 the film was not released until 1973. Like H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon and The Wicker Man (1973), weird locals are hiding a horrific secret... In Messiah, the people of Point Dune worship the rise of a red moon as they become zombies. The storyline is disjointed, but this adds to the mystic, surreal and dreamlike quality of the film. Admittedly, it feels art house, there is some irregular editing and the score is very much of its time, but there's plenty to like about it.

Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Dead & Buried (1981) and the aforementioned Dawn of the Dead clearly have taken a cue from Willard Huyck's jumbled but effective film. Especially the scene where slinky brunette Anitra Ford is pursued through a supermarket. There is also truly creepy scene again with Ford and an albino trucker, played by Bennie Robinson, who you'd think would have been in a lot more horror movies. If you liked Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971) and Night of the Living Dead there's some horror delight to be found here from the shocking first kill to the insane asylum ending.

Messiah of Evil oozes dread and suspense, it's a chilling 70's horror flick that despite its faults is a lot better than some of today's so called horrors.

Virtually unknown horror pic from the 70s about a woman looking for her missing artist father and finding some kind of zombie cult wiping out a Californian seaside town. The story's flaws are legion as huge holes fill much of it, yet the story about a man coming from/to the canyon a 100 years ago that had been a member of that infamous party forced to consume...well, it was interesting in nothing else. In the beginning of the film some care and effort had been given to help distinguish who was a member of this flesh-eating cult that work together, play together, and rip flesh together. You won't see any gore at all gore-hounds - so this one may not be for you. In point of fact, there is little actually seen in the film other than people at a table gnawing meat(from what looks like it came right out of a supermarket)and like scenes. What this film DOES have going for it are some very clever scenes amidst an obviously constrained budget. There are no names here except Elisha Cook Jr. in a pretty good cameo as a crazed drunk and Royal Dano as the film's narrator and a central character. Other than that we have the daughter played by beautiful Marianna Hill and a man with two girls as his companions holing up in Hill's house when asked to leave town. The man likes mysteries and the girls want to leave. Both are pretty; Anitra Ford, star of such films like Invasion of the Bee Girls, is sultry and decent and her leggy, young co-star is, well let's say its one of the more interesting stage names, Joy Bang. In fact Joy is in the best scene in the film that takes place in a movie theater. The theater is empty at first and each successive scene has more and more of these "beings" moving into the background of the theater and then on all sides of her while a God awful scene from a trailer for a western starring Sammy Davis Jr. plays on the big screen. This scene was darkly humorous and chilling. There were other scenes too, but before I get too carried away with what I did like - this film has some flaws. The aforementioned script has lots of unexplained or poorly explained things throughout: how does the man come from the sea? what is the significance of the guy that eats rats? why was the art dealer blind?(an unusual touch) Where had...? OK, I have lots more but the point has been made. The film's budget is very low. Nothing is shown on screen that might have exhausted the smallest of budgets except for a lot of paint being thrown around a room and one stunt man wearing an outfit that was set to flames. The town used for location shots suits the creepiness of the plot and adds to the film's atmosphere. The acting is not real bad nor is it real good. The four central characters were all chosen not for their abilities but rather for their physical features. They could have been a lot worse in front of the camera in their defense. The ending is way over-blown too. Flaws notwithstanding, I liked this film overall and was impressed with much in it(just loved that movie theater scene) and heartily recommend it to the viewer of low-budget quality horror films.