‘We wait. Each of us dying slowly in the prison of our minds…‘
More than any other genre, horror is subjective. Aside from the some of the behemoths (The Shining, Halloween, Hereditary etc) you could read ten different top 100 horror lists and find each to be wildly different. It was on one of these lists (I can’t recall which one, I am old you know) that I came across Messiah of Evil, an oddball little movie that was released under various titles during the early 70s and then never thought of again. While this is certainly one for the purists, there is an argument that it deserves to be in the conversation on any of those top 100 horror films list…
Arletty (Marianna Hill) visits the remote, coastal town of Point Dune in order to find answers about her recently deceased father. Upon arrival, it soon becomes clear that all is not as it seems. When the only other ‘normal’ character is an absolute weirdo called Thom (Michael Greer) who is there to investigate the local phenomenon of the moon turning blood red then you know you are probably in trouble. Thom is also accompanied by a harem of women in a plot point that, like so much within Messiah of Evil, is never really explained.
While George A. Romero and The Night of the Living Dead casts the longest shadow over Willard Huyck’s zombie adjacent film, Messiah of Evil also shares a few strands of DNA with the movies of Dario Argento and the Giallo movement. It’s all there in the melodramatic score, the bold colour schemes and the extreme closeups and quick edits. Indeed, visually, Messiah of Evil has some great moments, specifically one ominous scene inside a seemingly innocuous cinema, and it is this that sets Huyck’s work apart from all the other Romero imitators that sprung up in the 70s. There is something a little more arty here than in your average zombie flick.
Having said all that, there are numerous concepts and ideas here that are introduced and then quickly forgotten about. A subplot about a mysterious man in black orchestrating the mayhem is not even half explained, and character motivations generally are difficult to ascertain. Despite all this, Messiah of Evil does conjure up a uniquely foreboding atmosphere, and it remains a creepy experience even all these years later.
A strange but invigorating horror experience.