Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

moonspinner55 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 ****

Rainey Dawn 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

melvelvit-1 Screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz took time off from "American Graffiti" to make MESSIAH OF EVIL, an art film in every sense of the term. Narrated by a woman confined to an insane asylum, the film opens with her warning "They say nightmares are dreams perverted..." as she proceeds via flashback to relate how and why she came to be locked away. Arletty (eternal starlet Marianna Hill, nee Marianna Schwarzkopf, cousin to the general) travels up the California coast to an isolated seaside town in search of her artist father and teams up with a well-dressed hippie (Michael Greer) and his two groupies (exotic Anitra Ford & spacey Joy Bang) to unravel the cryptic diary she finds in her dad's abandoned beach house. The walls are bizarre paintings that blend '70s pop art with Edward Hopper-style imagery and the film soon becomes a nightmarish fever dream indistinguishable from that artwork. The apocalyptic "mystery" involves a malediction dating back to the Donner party and doesn't make much sense but so what -the ladies are lovely and the set piece slaying's sure unsettling in this quasi- surreal, one-of-a-kind film, the closest Hollywood ever came to fantastical Eurotrash in the early 1970s. Elisha Cook, Jr as a town drunk who talks too much and Royal Dano as Arletty's missing dad make the most of their screen time and Joy Bang attends a midnight screening of what would prove to be the prophetic KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE with coming attractions showing Sammy Davis Jr & James Caan in GONE WITH THE WEST, a film not released until 1975. The MESSIAH's become a cult classic that actually lives up to that appellation.

udar55 Arletty (Marianna Hill) travels to the coastal town of Point Dune, CA to look for her father after his letters stopped arriving. She finds his art studio/house in a normal state but he is nowhere to be found. The only clue she has in a journal where he has written some increasingly bizarre entries. To say any more would give too much away. I've always known of this film, but never knew anything about the plot. When the new Code Red DVD hit, I read lots of great reviews. So, naturally, my interest was piqued and I ordered it. I was not disappointed as the film kept me enthralled from the opening frame. What surprised me the most about the film was the art house aesthetic it seemed to adopt. The film has atmosphere galore with the movie house scene being the highlight. Also, if you love to ogle 70s stores/houses/parking lots, this is the film for you. I haven't dug into the extras yet, but I'm looking forward to finding out tons more about this unique horror flick.