Messiah of Evil (USA, 1974)

For decades, I have mistakenly believed that I have seen Messiah of Evil. It wasn’t until I stumbled over some stills while researching our recent episode on liminal spaces that I realised they didn’t look familiar. Finally, it clicked that I had somehow conflated it with Bob Clark’s Deathdream, released in the same year. Given how many great things I’ve heard and read about Messiah of Evil, this seemed like a mistake I should rectify. And what better excuse is there than the October Horror Movie Challenge?

Messiah of Evil is currently streaming on Shudder in the UK.

Synopsis

After a cold open in which we see a panicked Walter Hill having his throat slashed, we are introduced to Arletty Lang, a young woman in a psychiatric hospital, who offers us a monologue filled with omens and sinister portents. We descend into her narrative, following her as she travels to a small coastal town (“They used to call it New Bethlehem, but they changed the name to Point Dune after the moon turned blood red”) in search of her estranged father.

Finding her father’s art studio abandoned, Arletty reads his diary. This tells of his descent into madness, seeing strange creatures and pale women with haunted eyes, staring towards the water. Her efforts at tracking her father brings Arletty into the orbit of a louche thruple staying at a nearby motel, drawn there by the blood moon. They are interrogating Charlie, the town drunk, who shares an intense monologue about a sinister cult of undying cannibals. He is also very keen on burning Arletty’s father.

As Arletty and her new associates investigate the looming horrors, they meet a merry albino cultist who drives around town by moonlight, eating live rats. They then encounter other, more ghoulish townspeople, who like their prey a bit larger and travel in packs. Meanwhile, Arletty appears to be coming under the spell of whatever malign force drove her father to madness, although it seems more keen on making her vomit roaches, worms, and a very surprised gecko. The gecko is no happier about this than she is.

But can Arletty and her companions solve the mystery of Point Dune before they end up as today’s special? Did Arletty’s father actually die in a bizarre sculpting accident? And what does death really mean as the blood moon rises in the night sky?

General Thoughts

Messiah of Evil was written and directed by regular George Lucas collaborators Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who would go on to write such classics as American Graffiti, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Howard the Duck. They also served script doctors on Star Wars. It’s a strange old world.

At its heart, Messiah of Evil is “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, only with cannibals instead of Deep Ones. This is a remote seaside community reshaped by a cult, unwelcoming to outsiders and fraught with dangers. Charlie, the alcoholic exposition monger, could be Zadok Allen’s lost cousin. The protagonists even pay him with booze. This is all just a few gill slits short of a Lovecraft adaptation.

A lot of what makes Messiah of Evil work is simply shots of people wandering around the empty town at night. Imaginative use of dark, desolate locations creates a real sense of the uncanny. There is very little gore, and the film relies almost entirely on set design, lighting, and atmosphere. It is no wonder that interest in the film has resurged as part of the liminal spaces genre.

Verdict

Messiah of Evil feels less like a coherent story and more like a bunch of things that happen. Although this may sound like a complaint, it very much is not. What this film manages to do with its simple, almost minimal plot is magical. Its disjointed style and oppressively gothic mood blend with the ambient weirdness of the early seventies to create something unique and nightmarish. Its atmosphere is enhanced by the kind of sinister synth score that could only come from this period of horror cinema.

It’s a cliché to compare every strange film to the work of David Lynch, but at times I really could almost believe I was watching a Lynch film. The scene in which Charlie tells his tale of the town felt like something out of an episode of Twin Peaks, with his earnest monologue conveying images that could only come from dreams. At the same time, the visual style and jarring weirdness evokes the trippier Italian horror films of the decade. All this is enhanced by moments of absurd humour which only add to the uneasiness.

For such a dreamy film, Messiah of Evil is not slow paced. Within the first five minutes, we witness a bloody murder and encounter a sinister cultist hauling eyeless corpses around in his flatbed truck. The little exposition we need is delivered as an in-character voiceover during the titles. This is a film that knows how to grab our attention and then doesn’t squander it.

Messiah of Evil deserves its reputation as a cult classic. It is very much an artefact of its time, and its aesthetic may look old-fashioned at times, but it will take you on a strange and unsettling journey if you’re willing to lose yourself in its brooding nightmares. Highly recommended.

The October Horror Movie Challenge

Please do join in and share your own thoughts with us about this or any other films as the month goes on. You can usually find us on BlueSky, Reddit, Discord, or on the other side of the mirror.

If you would like to play along at home, my provisional selections are:

Messiah of Evil (USA, 1974)
Milk & Serial (USA, 2024)
Why Don’t You Just Die! (Russia, 2018)
The Visitor (Italy, 1979)
Lake Michigan Monster (USA, 2018)
Save the Green Planet (Korea, 2003)
Daniel Isn’t Real (USA, 2020)
New Religion (Japan, 2022)
The Driller Killer (USA, 1979)
Saccharine (Australia, 2026)
Evil Cat (Hong Kong, 1987)
Stéphane (France, 2023)
Send Help (USA, 2026)
Vampire Clay (Japan, 2017)
Hokum (Ireland, 2026)
Jack Be Nimble (New Zealand, 1993)
Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman (Japan, 2007)
The Appointment (UK, 1982)
Vampyr (German, 1932)
A Desert (USA, 2024)
The Fake Ghost Catchers (Hong Kong, 1982)
The Last Horror Film (USA, 1982)
Rampo Noir (Japan, 2005)
Fréwaka (Ireland, 2024)
Angst (Germany, 1983)
Toys Are Not For Children (USA, 1972)
The Cycle (USA, 2026)
The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (Italy, 1971)
Meanwhile on Earth (France, 2024)
The Ambulance (USA, 1990)
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (USA, 2026)

A Final Note

If you have been enticed here by these posts, please do look around at some of our other film reviews. We also have a podcast, called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which occasionally covers horror films. If this appeals, you might want to check out some of the following episodes.