Director: Willard Huyck
Screenplay: Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz
Starring: Marianna Hill, Michael Greer, Joy Bang, Anitra Ford, Royal Dano
Release Date: May 2, 1973
Of all the filmmaking talent to come out of the wellspring that was the University of Southern California in the late-1960’s, perhaps the least mentioned and often maligned are Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, the husband and wife team who collaborated with George Lucas on the screenplay for his seminal coming-of-age film AMERICAN GRAFITTI. The duo were rewarded with an Oscar nomination for their efforts, and although Lucas would later call on the pair for scripting duties on INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, their careers stalled out in the mid-80’s after the team produced two of the very worst big-budget films of the decade, the Dudley Moore/Eddie Murphy vehicle BEST DEFENSE, and the notorious HOWARD THE DUCK. Their reputation has never really recovered from those back-to-back debacles, which has unfortunately only made it easier for genre fans such as myself to overlook a little horror film the pair produced earlier in their careers, outside the sphere of Mr. Lucas’ influence. The film in question is 1973’s MESSIAH OF EVIL, a fantastic, criminally underseen little gem of a movie that deserves to be given consideration by anyone who calls themselves a fan of the genre.
Following a cold opening scene that feels totally disconnected from the rest of the film, in which a man (future THE WARRIORS director Walter Hill) has his throat sliced by a young girl, the story proper opens with Arletty (Hill) wandering the halls of an insane asylum at night, recounting her tale. After receiving a series of increasingly distressing letters, the young woman travels to the cozy beach town of Point Dune to try and piece together they mystery of what’s plaguing her artist father (Dano). What she finds is an abandoned beach house, the walls totally covered with her father’s latest work, eerie paintings of groups of dark visages and bizarre faces staring into oblivion, as well as a journal detailing his descent into madness on the eve of the “Blood Moon”, which legend has it passes every one hundred years and consumes the town in darkness. When questioning the local art dealer leads her nowhere, Arletty ends up meeting a young aristocrat named Thom (Greer) and his two groupies Laura (Ford) and Toni (Bang), while they interrogate an old wino (Elisha Cook, Jr.) in a hotel room. The man drunkenly babbles about blood moons, children devouring raw meat in the night, and bodies set afire, before suddenly growing fearful and running off. Thom, who describes himself as a “collector of legends”, has been traveling the country with his lady friends investigating old folk stories and, after being kicked out of the hotel by the local authorities, convinces Arletty to let them stay with her at her father’s home. In the days that follow Arletty delves further into her father’s journal, which vaguely describes some horrible transformation that befell him, as well as an all-consuming darkness that grows every day, driving him further into despair. Each night, pale-faced figures gather on the beach in front of bonfires, staring dead-eyed into the moonlight. Arletty is plagued by horrible nightmares which drive her further down the path of madness that overtook her father, the same madness that drives the residents of Point Dune to go on nightly sprees of cannibalism, devouring the flesh of anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths. Something unholy is eating away at the soul of Point Dune, an evil which soon threatens to spread beyond this small town and consume all of humanity.
Methodically paced and obviously shot for very little money, Huyck and Katz squeezed every bit of value they could out of this limited production, building unbearable tension and a doom-laden atmosphere that permeates every frame of the film via truly otherworldly lighting, careful frame compositions, and some truly off-kilter production design. From the moment Arletty sets foot in her father’s home, the paranoia and unease is made palpable by the hellish paintings that adorn the walls depicting various streets and storefronts populated by some seriously creepy visages of what appears to be the townsfolk ominously huddled in groups. Pale, unemotional faces leer at our main characters around every corner, almost acting as characters themselves and increasing the undeniable sensation that Arletty and her new acquaintances are constantly being watched by some unknowable outside force. Arletty sleeps in her father’s bed, which hangs from chains in the middle of the room and whose constant swaying causes the viewer to feel incredibly unbalanced. Every character we are introduced to has some strange quirk that enhances the sense of danger in Point Dune, be it an ancient, blind art dealer, the gas station attendant Arletty finds wildly firing his pistol into the wilderness without explanation, or the cross-eyed behemoth who eats live rats and drives an old pickup with a caravan of locals silently staring skyward in the back.
I’ve kept the summary vague so as not to spoil MESSIAH OF EVIL’s many unsettling pleasures. While the evil that plagues Point Dune is given a very tangible form in the zombified townsfolk, the filmmaker’s are clearly attuned to a more Lovecraftian sense of horror, one in which the true antagonist cannot be seen, and cannot be stopped. What is happening in this tiny seaside village has already been set in motion long before our protagonists entered the picture, and every exit has been carefully sealed. The experience of the film is like watching a long nightmare unspool. Huyck and his cinematographer make the most of their limitations, revealing the horror in such mundane locales as an ordinary small town main street after dark, the skeletal remains of an abandoned housing development at midnight, and the eerily empty aisles of a supermarket. The movie is filled with individual moments of abject horror, framed with all the love and attention of a Mario Bava or Dario Argento. In fact, the color scheme here at times takes on the garish hues of red and blue seen in Argento’s INFERNO. Like the most effective nightmares, each horrific event is very clearly connected, but none if it ever quite makes sense. Characters who are perfectly sane one minute begin bleeding from the eyes and eating their friend in the next scene. Arletty appears to be transforming into one of the undead, unable to feel the pain of a needle stabbing her flesh, and vomiting live insects and lizards. That’s not condemnation of the film’s narrative cohesion, but rather an affirmation of the constant confusion suffered by our protagonists. They never quite figure out just what’s is going on, and neither do we.
The two best moments in the film involve one unfortunate character trapped alone in the aforementioned supermarket, and another in which a young lady goes by herself to see a late show at the local movie theater. As she nonchalantly munches on popcorn and watches the film unfold, pale figures enter the theater one or two at a time and sit behind her until, when she finally realizes something is fishy and turns around, an entire town of zombified townsfolk is staring back at her and proceeds to…..but I wouldn’t want to spoil it, would I? As the film’s climax draws nearer the sense of apocalyptic dread never lets up and things wrap up in an appropriately obtuse fashion, with a nicely nihilistic conclusion that poses more questions than it answers and a final line that chills to the bone.
That MESSIAH OF EVIL has languished in obscurity for the last four decades is truly a shame. The film is a horror fan’s wet dream, oozing with atmosphere and proudly bearing the influence of Bava and George Romero. It can be found on most public domain horror collections in a horribly beat up full-frame print. The version I viewed was a cleaned up widescreen print released by Code Red several years ago that has unfortunately long been out of print. If you watch any version, try to make it that one, as it is a visually stunning piece of horror filmmaking that deserves to be seen in the best format possible. Huyck and Katz might have squandered their talents in later years, but MESSIAH OF EVIL remains proof that at one time they were truly artists, utilizing their skills and influences to craft a profoundly disturbing exploration of fears both real and unknown. It is an unsung classic of the genre that deserves to be recognized as such.
My Rating:
9/10
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