Messiah of Evil (1973)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Best movie of this year hands down!

The movie is surprisingly subdued in its pacing, its characterizations, and its go-for-broke sensibilities.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Troubled young woman arrives in the oceanside town of Point Dune to visit her artist father and finds the residents behaving strangely; her father seems to be missing, so she allows a swinger and his two groupie-girlfriends to stay with her in his big, empty house. Reading her father's verbose diary entries worries the girl, who begins to suspect something inhuman was overtaking him; meanwhile, the streets and shops in town begin to empty out, all except for small groups of people who travel in packs at night "like wolves". Horror movie, filmed in 1971 but not released for two years, was an early effort by the husband and wife writing-producing-directing team of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (who, in 1973, would share the screen-writing credit on "American Graffiti" with George Lucas). With help from good cinematography by Stephen Katz, sharp editing by Scott Conrad and a terrific art direction by Joan Mocine and future filmmaker Jack Fisk(e), the picture looks great and has a creeping sense of low-keyed menace and dread. Neither the characters nor performances are developed, however, and it's unclear how we're supposed to take them (I got no reading on leading lady Mariana Hill, for instance, who is--intentionally?--vacant, lifeless). There are two brilliantly-conceived sequences, one in a brightly-lit but abandoned supermarket and the other in a movie house with red seats. Huyck and Katz ran into some trouble with financing during production, yet their movie doesn't feel choppy or unfinished--it works itself slowly on viewers with its foreboding ambiance and voiceovers, underlined by Phillan Bishop's electronic score--yet it doesn't have any wit or sting. The visuals outweigh the writing, which may as well have been an afterthought. Though this project might have been conceived by the twosome after a double feature screening of "Night of the Living Dead" and "Carnival of Souls", the handful of striking scenes are memorably frightening. ** from ****

If this town has been zombified for awhile then why are fruits and veggies in the supermarket fresh? And why was the meat fresh? - should have been all rotten if the town really was zombified for a long while. I'm just glad the zombies decided on a fresh kill to get their meat. Yea the only scene worth watching.Boring, awful film. It's not the low budget factor because I love many low budget films but this film is just lame - LAME! It's awful in every way I can think of.If you want to see a GOOD zombie movie watch White Zombie (1932) or Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the rest of that series - those films are so much better than this Messiah of Evil crap.This film is forgotten for a reason so they say but it does have a strong following for a forgotten film - lots of people seem to like this movie and I still don't know why.I give this one a 2 out of 10 just for the grocery store scene.2/10

This film technically isn't completely a zombie film but a mystery, it's a true look into a nightmare and is by far the greatest hidden gem of the seventies if you ask me. A young woman named Arletty enters the sea side town of point Dune searching for her father, but she unexpectedly enters a nightmare fueled hell for she has Arrived on the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the dark stranger, a priest who came with intentions of spreading his new order. But The anniversary is nothing to be celebrated for the moon, blood red, has turned the whole town into zombies. Arletty along with the suspicious threesome, must solve the mystery of point dune and escape, before they too are changed.This film ends fairly ambiguous with the viewer wondering if the events ever even happened, no loose ends are tied by the end of the film but it's fairly obvious that this was done on purpose to give the film a more mysterious feel. This is truly a strange film and it has to be one of the best paced films I have ever found. Truly a one of a kind I could not recommend enough.

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.