Messiah of Evil

Messiah of Evil (later also shown under the title Dead People) is a 1973 American supernatural horror film co-written, co-produced, and co-directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, and starring Marianna Hill, Michael Greer, Anitra Ford, Royal Dano, and Elisha Cook Jr. Its plot follows a woman who travels to a remote coastal town in California to find her missing artist father; upon arrival, she finds herself in the midst of a series of bizarre incidents.

Released theatrically in late 1974, it would later be re-released under a number of alternate titles, including Dead People, Night of the Damned, Return of the Living Dead, and Revenge of the Screaming Dead.

Husband-and-wife team Huyck and Katz would go on to direct and write Howard the Duck, and write for American Graffiti and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Plot
A young woman named Arletty drives to the beach town of Point Dune to visit her estranged father, an artist. She finds his beachfront house abandoned. He left a diary in which he addresses her specifically, complaining about darkness consuming the town and horrible nightmares he is having and imploring Arletty to never look for him. His letter tells her to talk to the owner of the art gallery, who sells his paintings. The gallery owner says he has none of her father's paintings and does not sell them, that no one ever comes in looking to buy his works, and that he doesn't know where he went. He says Point Dune is "an artist colony," but he only vaguely remembers her father (his paintings are eerie pop art portraits of groups of people in black, white, and gray, standing; the men are always dressed in black suits, white shirts, and black ties, as if at a funeral). It's never clear if these are townspeople, or figures from his visions, or both.

Arletty meets a visiting Portuguese-American aristocrat Thom and his two extremely provocative, groupie-like female companions, Toni and Laura. Back at his motel, Thom interviews Charlie, a local eccentric. Charlie speaks at length about "the blood moon" and "the dark stranger" and how he has lived through both. He says very soon it will be the 100-year anniversary of the first appearance of the "dark stranger." When he returns, the Moon will turn red and the town will be overrun by evil. Charlie warns Arletty about her father, whom he says is "one of them" now. Moments later he is murdered.

Thom, Toni, and Laura are kicked out of their hotel after interviewing Charlie, and they stay at Arletty's father's house. Arletty reads through her father's bizarre journal entries, in which he reveals his body temperature is 85 degrees and mentions fighting his "condition." Meanwhile, each night, pale people gather on the beach in front of bonfires, ritually staring up at the Moon. The locals call it "The Waiting."

Late one evening, Laura goes into the local Ralphs supermarket and is devoured by a crowd of people who are feasting on raw meat; the following day, Toni goes to see a movie and is devoured by the other theater patrons, who begin bleeding from one eye. That evening, the "blood moon" rises, the town's residents transform, and the titular "Messiah of Evil" returns. Through a voice-over of Charlie's taped interviews, we learn that this "Messiah" was a former minister and a Donner Party survivor from the late 19th century. A vampire/cannibal, he came to spread a new "religion." He walked into the ocean, promising to return in a century and lead his people up the coast and inland. While Thom hides, two policemen in riot gear drive up and fire their guns into a swarm of townsfolk; however, one of the cops suddenly begins to bleed from his eye, causing his now-former partner to shoot him and flee. Undaunted, the undead cop shoots his former partner, and he and the other townsfolk feast on his flesh.

While Thom is gone, Arletty is visited by her father, who begs her to leave and tell the world about Point Dune. He then attacks her, reluctantly giving in to his cannibalistic urges, whereupon she stabs him with garden shears and burns him alive. Thom returns to the house, where he finds Arletty half-crazed; she is cold, cannot feel pain, and thinks she may be dead or undead. She even finds a spider in her mouth and immediately vomits up various beetles, mealworms and an anole. Startled by Thom, Arletty stabs him in the arm with the shears. The two of them flee to the beach, but the townsfolk follow them. They swim out into the waves, hoping to reach a small boat, but Thom drowns. Arletty survives and is captured by the townspeople. Instead of killing her, she is freed under the condition that she spread word of the religious movement throughout California and the world. This causes her to be locked up in an insane asylum. Each day, all day, she sits in the sun painting, dreading the day the Messiah and his followers come to take her away.

Cast

 * Michael Greer as Thom
 * Marianna Hill as Arletty
 * Joy Bang as Toni
 * Anitra Ford as Laura
 * Royal Dano as Joseph Lang
 * Elisha Cook Jr. as Charlie
 * Charles Dierkop as Gas Attendant
 * Bennie Robinson as Albino Trucker
 * Walter Hill as Stabbing Victim in Prologue

Analysis
Katz later said the film "was a real bowwow", though Huyck claimed in 1984 that "it appeared on a marquee in a Woody Allen film, and Film Comment called it 'one of the top 10 classic, overlooked horror films of all time.'"

Kim Newman considers this film to be a "neglected" and "surreal" horror film, which has both a convoluted narrative and a peculiar atmosphere. He draws attention to details such as the vanished father being a death-obsessed painter, the daughter falling in with a group of hedonists, the town people turning into ghouls. He also notes that the "dark stranger" was a sinister preacher, whose awaited return comes from the sea. He found all these details to point to the influence of H. P. Lovecraft on the film, while the depiction of the undead derives from their depiction in Night of the Living Dead. Newman points to the "doomed derelict", whose apt warnings are ignored, to be a cliché deriving from gothic fiction.

Ian Cooper comments that the undead of the film seem to be ghoul-like and zombie-like vampires. He states that there was a trend in this direction following the release of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and that Messiah was one of the films that followed it. He cites, among other examples, Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971), The Return of Count Yorga (1971), Deathdream/Dead of Night (1972), and Lemora (1975).

According to author Glenn Kay, one of the key weaknesses of the film is that "important plot points are never clarified" and that the motivations of the lead characters are insufficiently explained. In particular, Thom is identified as a collector of old legends, but his motivations are even more obscure than those of his female companions. Newman points out that the strange behavior of the seemingly normal characters adds to the surreal feeling of the film. The titular Messiah of Evil is never properly identified. Kay finds it problematic that no character reads the father's diary to the end until it is too late to prevent their fate. It is unclear whether the character Thom is the "dark stranger" himself (Michael Greer does in fact play the "dark stranger" in a flashback sequence), or a reincarnation, or a descendant.

The process of transformation for the infected is depicted on screen, but this process is also never really explained. The film features a distinctive pattern of symptoms for the infected population of Point Dune. They start bleeding from their eyes while becoming insensitive to pain. They consume meat regardless of its source, including human flesh and a mouse. Once fully transformed, they "become mere shells of their former selves". They all eagerly await the return of the so-called "dark stranger", passing the time by lighting bonfires on the beach and gathering round them. When the long-awaited return occurs, they are sent to spread their disease to other areas of California.

When a victim is chased through a supermarket and devoured, the death is implied and not depicted. It seems to be a reference to consumerism similar to the satire of consumerism in Dawn of the Dead (1978). Newman finds the highlight of the film to be the scene set in the movie theater. Toni, the "nymphet" as he calls her, is watching a collage of scenes from the Western Gone with the West (1974). Meanwhile, the decayed theater is increasingly filled with undead people.

Brendan Riley notes that the zombie films of George A. Romero are known for their social criticism, but he believes that the same can be said of non-Romero films of the genre. He notes Messiah as an example. The undead hordes consist of strait-laced, suit-wearing people, while their targets include a long-haired dandy and his two lovers.

Newman places the film within a specific era of horror film, which he names "the American Nightmare". He defines it as the era starting with Night of the Living Dead (1968) and ending with Dawn of the Dead (1978). He defines it as an era when writer-directors started their own film projects and then went in search of business partners and shady distributors. The films had commercial value, but the creators managed to express their personal concerns within the framework of the genre. He places Messiah among the one-off oddities produced in this era and notes that such oddities were regularly released alongside marketable hits that spawned sequels. Newman believes the era properly ended in the early 1980s, when formula-driven franchises such as Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street started dominating the genre.

Matt Serafini of Dread Central identifies the film as an early example of "nightmare" films, meaning that it portrays many dream-like, psychedelic scenes in an eerie, ominous atmosphere.

Production
Principal photography of Messiah of Evil began on September 1, 1971 in California, on a budget of under $1 million.

Theatrical distribution
The film premiered in Paris, Texas on December 11, 1974 and first appeared in Los Angeles in April 1975. It was released under several alternate titles in the following years, such as Return of the Living Dead, Revenge of the Screaming Dead, and Night of the Damned. The film was involved in a dispute in the 1978 over its title, when a Chicago distributor released it under the title Return of the Living Dead. The title was chosen to make it sound as part of the Living Dead franchise and this was misleading. The Laurel Group (also known as Laurel Entertainment), founded in 1976 by George A. Romero and Richard P. Rubinstein, took legal action against this use of the title. Eventually the Motion Picture Association of America decided that Romero did not hold exclusive rights to the terms Living Dead, but ruled against the use of the misleading title for Messiah. It would subsequently receive theatrical release again in 1980 under the title Dead People.

Home media
The film was released on DVD on October 27, 2009, fully remastered by Code Red DVD. A fortieth anniversary Blu-ray edition was released by Code Red in 2013. It had previous been released as a double feature DVD in 2003 paired with The Devil's Nightmare.

Critical response
Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times dismissed the film as a "thoroughly dismal horror picture that is sleep-inducing rather than hair-raising". Nick Spacek from Starburst Magazine rated the film a perfect score of 10 out of 10, calling it "unsettling", and praised the film's soundtrack and disturbing visuals. Ian Jane of DVD Talk gave the film four out of five stars, praising the film's atmosphere, performances, tension, and visual style, calling it "a high point in creativity for the independent American horror film movement of the 1970s".

Legacy
The film was listed at #95 on IndieWire's The 100 Greatest Horror Movies of All-Time, with the film's entry stating, "While Messiah of Evil is lesser known, it’s full of iconic and memorable scenes that recall to mind some of George A. Romero’s best work."