Messiah of Evil

Plot synopsis:
A young woman named Arletty (Marianna Hill) drives to the beach town of Point Dune, California, to visit her estranged father, an artist. She finds his house, abandoned. He left a diary in which he addresses her specifically. In it he complains about darkness consuming the town, and horrible nightmares he is having, and implores Arletty to never, ever 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, does not sell them, no one ever comes in looking to buy his works, and says he doesn't know where he went. He says Point Dune is "an artist colony" and 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, like dead men at a funeral). It is never clear if these are townspeople, or figures from his visions, or both.
Arletty meets a visiting Portuguese-American aristocrat Thom (Michael Greer) and his two extremely provocative, groupie-like female companions, Toni (Joy Bang) and Laura (Anitra Ford). Back at his motel, Thom interviews Charlie, (Elisha Cook, Jr.) the local town 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." He will return, the moon will turn red, and the town will be overrun with evil. Charlie warns Arletty about her father, he says he is "one of them" now. Moments later he is murdered off screen.
Thom, Toni, and Laura are kicked out of their hotel after interviewing Charlie, and 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 he mentions fighting his "condition." Meanwhile, each night, creatures gather on the beach in front of bonfires, staring straight 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 hoard of vampires who are feasting on raw meat; the following day, Toni goes to see a movie, and is also eaten by the other theater patrons, who are the same creatures. That evening, the "blood moon" rises, and the town's resident turn into a vampires, and the titular "Messiah of Evil" returns. Through 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 turned vampire/cannibal, who has come to spread his new "religion" 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 vampires; however, one of the cops suddenly begins to bleed, causing his now-former partner to shoot him and flee. Undaunted, the undead cop shoots his former ally, and he and the other vampires go to feast on his flesh.
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 bug crawling around in her mouth and immediately vomits up various beetles, mealworms and an anole. While Thom was gone, Arletty was visited by her father, who had warned her not to follow him and begs her to leave to tell the world about Point Dune. He then attacks her, reluctantly giving in to his "vampire" urges, and after she stabs him with garden shears before burning him alive. Startled by Thom, she stabs him in the arm with the shears. The two of them flee to the beach, but the ersatz vampires follow them, even in broad daylight. They swim out to the breakers, but Thom drowns. Arletty survives and is captured by the townspeople. Instead of killing her, she is let free 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.

Tags: paranormal, dark, good versus evil

Review:
This movie is worth a thousand words only because no one word will suffice.Messiah of Evil is the story of a woman who goes looking for her father after he mysteriously stops correspondence with her.
Together, the trio find out that the town has become one big, evil, flesh and blood craving, moon worshiping zombie cult.This movie is filled to the brim with creepy atmosphere, chilling scenes, very strange and memorable characters, and plenty of genuine w.t.f. moments.
When she meets up with a swinging drifter the two soon discover that the weird locals are hiding a horrific secret, they're also quite hungry...Dead People (also known by the title Messiah of Evil) is an obscure gem among the numerous low-budget drive-in horror flicks of the 70's.
It also uses very little violence or gore to reach its effective creepiness.Director Willard Huyck does a splendid job creating a dream-like vibe for this film and does well with crafting some suspenseful scenes.
DEAD PEOPLE (or MESSIAH OF EVIL) is one of those rare horror films that comes along only a few instances in one's lifetime.
Unlike so many horror movies, the horror elements in DEAD PEOPLE are not used by the filmmakers to "punish" the characters but to create a nightmarish world, which oddly enough, because of the subtle way the creeping terror unfolds, makes the movie look more real than real.The acting from everyone rangs from OK to pretty good, with Michael Greer being a revelation.
A young woman named Arletty moves back home to find out what happened to her estranged father an artist.However as she arrives in the California beach house she runs into some decidedly odd behavior.Her father is gone but the house is full of his paintings.She meets an aristocrat played by Michael Greer and his two sexy groupies when they are asked to leave town they remain staying at her father's house.Things get completely crazy as the moon turns red with the townspeople turning into flesh-eating ghouls and the dead coming back to life as the Messiah of Evil,a former minister turned cannibal and Satan worshipper rises from the darkness to claim the town.Rarely seen and rather unknown zombie flick with strange surreal atmosphere and some strikingly eerie moments.The whole movie is a flashback from a foregone conclusion.The film is highly influential:it somehow reminded me "Dawn of the Dead",Fulci's "City of the Living Dead" and "In the Mouth of Madness" several times.Check out this extremely effective mood piece..
Virtually unknown horror pic from the 70s about a woman looking for her missing artist father and finding some kind of zombie cult wiping out a Californian seaside town.
In point of fact, there is little actually seen in the film other than people at a table gnawing meat(from what looks like it came right out of a supermarket)and like scenes.
Both are pretty; Anitra Ford, star of such films like Invasion of the Bee Girls, is sultry and decent and her leggy, young co-star is, well let's say its one of the more interesting stage names, Joy Bang.
Flaws notwithstanding, I liked this film overall and was impressed with much in it(just loved that movie theater scene) and heartily recommend it to the viewer of low-budget quality horror films..
Joined by aristocratic loafer Thom (Michael Greer) and his two "groupies" (Joy Bang and Anitra Ford), Arletty investigates her father's disappearance and is struck by the strange behavior of the townsfolk.MESSIAH OF EVIL (DEAD PEOPLE) is an inchoate, jumbled narrative, given a boost by some of the more atmospheric scenes in the horror genre:  The opening encounter with the albino at the gas station; Anitra Ford stumbling upon some late-night grocery store scavengers; Joy Bang sitting in a movie theatre while the seats around her gradually fill with the undead; the climactic raid on the beach house during which attackers crash down through the skylights; to mention just a few.On the other hand, aspects of the film such as the morose, faux-literate narration, and the Thom character, are pretentious.
The atmosphere of this film will put you in a trance, and keep you there.Arletty, who may or may not be sane, driving in the pitch black, frantically making her way to Point Dune, a small, California, coastal town, her father is in danger.
I think it is well shot, or at least unintentionally atmospheric and I like it because I get a feel of that time and place in independent film-making.Could have been better but more than technical perfection I look for uniqueness in a movie and this one is unique.
An excellent fusion of H.P. Lovecraft storytelling mixed with flesh eating zombies results in the criminally underrated Messiah of Evil, the directorial debut of Willard Huyck who would go on to direct far less ambitious projects like the infamous Howard the Duck.
Perhaps, though that takes nothing away from how engaging and original this movie was and how well it holds up today.Arletty is traveling to Point Dune on the California coast to look for her father, an artist, whom she hasn't heard from in some time.
According to legend a "dark stranger" arrived in Point Dune one hundred years ago and placed a curse on the town that turns the inhabitants into flesh eating zombies with the rise of a red moon.
"Messiah of Evil" (or "Dead People", which is a much more appropriate a.k.a title) is a solid 70's horror gem, surprisingly atmospheric and quite gory despite the obviously low budget production values.
The undead souls in this film are merely background characters whilst the main storyline revolves on a young woman searching for her father since he went missing in a little seaside town called Point Dune.
Arletty (Marianna Hill) arrives in a small, odd, creepy coastal town in California looking for her father and she quickly learns little is as it seems.
If you liked Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971) and Night of the Living Dead there's some horror delight to be found here from the shocking first kill to the insane asylum ending.Messiah of Evil oozes dread and suspense, it's a chilling 70's horror flick that despite its faults is a lot better than some of today's so called horrors..
Even before she arrives in the town she runs into some decidedly odd behavior, once there things get completely crazy with the dead coming back to life and all hell breaking loose.I was hesitant to try this movie because because the people behind Howard the Duck made it, but I was pleasantly surprised, this is a scary film.
Although to find this film your best bet is to search under the 'Messiah of Evil' title, I saw it in it's 'Dead People' format at the drive in many times, one of our favorites.
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.
If the above pique your interest at all, chances are you'll have a heyday with "Messiah of Evil." The actual plot of the film follows a woman, Arletty (the dazzling Marianna Hill) who goes to the rural California coastal community of Point Dune, where her artist father has been living and has stopped returning her calls.
Like in "Jessica," the zombie/vampire plot here is somewhat understated, so those expecting an all-out Romero zombiefest will be disappointed; this film is a lot more leisurely paced and dwells in its own atmospherics.The cinematography is artful and nuanced, and the film's retro California seventies vibe bleeds through on every frame; abstract artwork set pieces recall "A Clockwork Orange," and even seem to anticipate the visuals of Argento's "Suspiria"; this may be purely speculative, but watch for yourself and come to your own conclusion.
It's one of those rare moments in which a filmmaker successfully takes the real, slowly applies pressure to it, and distorts it just to the point at which the real edges into the surreal, and the "normal" (a supermarket) becomes a site of complete and utter horror.Overall, "Messiah of Evil" is one of the best off-kilter early seventies horror films, and may be my favorite "zombie" film, if you want to call it that.
From here they learn that the town has become (for reasons unknown) a flesh-eating zombie cult.On the surface the movie appears to have little in the way of characterisation or plot, but any gaps in these qualities only serve to highlight the lingering oddness that pervades the film which reminded me strongly of the distanced dream-like quality of Herk Harvey's B-movie classic 'Carnival of Souls' (1962) and, to a lesser extent, Argento's 'Suspiria' (1977)if the hysteric flailing of Argento's classic had been given a sedative, that is.
Messiah Of Evil (title I saw this film under in a theater in 1974) is a haunting twist on the living dead genre.
Michael Greer (a fine actor who appeared in THE GAY DECEIVERS and FORTUNE IN MEN'S EYES) travels with Anitra Ford (early Price Is Right model who also starred in INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS and THE BIG BIRD CAGE) and Joy Bang (star of NIGHT OF THE COBRA WOMAN and CISCO PIKE) to a lonely beach town under the spell of a 100 year dead stranger.
Dead People (aka Messiah of Evil), is probably one of the best zombie films of the 70's.
It's strange to watch a movie like "Messiah of Evil" and be at once intrigued and impressed with some of its atmospheric setpieces, but almost fall dead asleep for your efforts.
But regardless, this tale of a girl who returns to her hometown to find out her father's true fate (helped by a bohemian Lothario and his two gorgeous muses) works better in its imagery than its negligible plot--pervasive long shots of a deserted downtown at night, an attack in an empty supermarket, and a scene within a movie theater are all memorably chilling.
Combine elements of "Carnival of Souls", "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", and "Night of the Living Dead" and you get "Messiah of Evil"(aka "Dead People").Of course this film has flaws, but its more than made up for in some truly memorable horror sequences.Well worth a look for the "B" Flick horror fan!.
The albino man is particularly strange, though I also have no desire to EVER go to a Ralph's grocery store after seeing this film'...and the movie theater will never be the same after seeing "Dead People"!
Perhaps as a testament to the talent that would earn Willard Hyuck and Gloria Katz an Oscar nomination later in their respective careers, Messiah of Evil has potential, but sadly becomes frustrating exactly because it can't muster the film-making prowess to pull it off.The premise involves a young girl who travels to a small coastal town in search for her painter father who went missing a while back.
It doesn't take long for the fragmented narrative to abandon all hope and dive headlong in disjointed absurdity - and for a while it works admirably well to the point where you begin thinking that maybe Messiah of Evil needs to be reclaimed from the schlocky gutter of 70's exploitation as an example of artful mystery horror.The surreal non-sequiturs keep piling on as the daughter stumbles upon a young couple in a seedy hotel room who are in town to conduct a research on the local legend of the 'blood moon', a scruffy and half-mad alcoholic (played by the great Elisha Cook Jr. in perhaps the best scene of the movie) who warns her about her father only to be reportedly found dead in an alley 'eaten by dogs' a little later, the blind old lady that owns the local art gallery and who has inexplicably removed all of her father's paintings from the shop and last but not least a retarded, murderous, squirrel-eating albino.Part of the movie's charm is precisely this brand of bargain-basement artsy surrealism that defies logic and genre conventions every step of the way.
While we're still talking about a 'living dead' picture, Messiah of Evil is different and only loosely one - at least with current preconceptions of what a zombie movie is supposed to be.
In the meantime Hyuck finds time for snippets of mass-consumption criticism in a flesh-eating supermarket scene that predates DAWN OF THE DEAD by a good number of years (you can hear the MST3K line already: 'man is dead, only his capitalist food tins remain') and a nicely thought but poorly executed similar scene in a movie theater.I generally think that the surreal works in careful, well measured doses - how is the absurd to work if it's not hidden within the perfectly normal?
What she ends up discovering is a zombie 'cult', in which the living are changed into the living dead by way of some strange supernatural force...The film begins very slowly, and the first half of the movie is really rather uneventful.
The DVD collection;chilling classics has some good movies and some stinkers,and the in betweens.this falls on the in between,i actually never heard of this before,but the cast is good.Marianna hill who i liked in blood beach and some spaghetti westerns,royal dano the great character actor who was last seen on twin peaks(second season episodes) Anitra ford(invasion of the bee girls)and Elisha cook Jr(house on haunted hill 1959)well its a pretty gory zombie movie and some scenes are kind of gross,there's a guy who eats a live rat.this movie had lots of title changes and did'nt do too well at the box office.but its an entertaining ghouls on the loose flick.well I'm a sucker for beautiful Marianna hill.as for the ghoul that eats the live rat,he's very creepy.
as for being a night of the living dead rip off,i don't think so.if you see this in a horror movie, watch it with your lights off.I'm giving this 5 out of 10.not bad..
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.
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 film's strong emphasis on atmosphere and mood, created by a slow, but effective pace, unusual premises, a weird music as well as a suggested hidden threat confers to it a surreal tone that reminds a little bit of ''Carnival of Souls''.The hidden threat is actually an unknown and indistinct evil force that is progressively taking possession of an entire town by transforming its inhabitants into killers.All these elements produce in the viewer a constant feeling of uneasiness and insecurity that makes this movie captivating to watch..
Messiah of Evil, as was titled when I watched it, is a muddled picture about a woman who comes to her artist father's seaside home, only to find he's not around but has left a lot of notes about the horrors that have come unto the area, and soon enough there's dead people coming out at night to claim those around the area.It's muddled, for one thing, because the way the dialog is presented, sometimes in narration and sometimes just badly recorded, comes off like its meant to be amateurish (or, at best, right out of a MST3K movie), not to mention in the bulk of the performances (albeit character actor Elisha Cooke Jr pops up for a couple of scenes as a town nut).
Shots like the one looking down that white corridor with the figure at the end, or the one girl wandering through the empty streets with a red tint, or the big horror scenes at the supermarket or an even creepier scene at the movie theater.
Messiah Of Evil finds young Marianna Hill coming to a small Pacific coast town to pay a visit to her father Royal Dano.
The title is misleading; the movie was originally called "Dead People," which is more fitting.THE PLOT: A woman (Marianna Hill) goes to the California coastal town of Point Dune to visit her artist father.
Messiah of Evil (the most common title) is not the kind of zombie movie that most people expect.
We then see what looks like a women, all out of focus and fuzzed up, in what's obviously a lunatic asylum who then recounts what were about to see in the movie.The flashback starts with young and pretty Arletty driving to this creepy town on the Pacific coast called Point Dune.
It was a great find and if I were to compile a Top 10 of my favorite horror films of the top of my head, then this would undoubtedly make the cut.Messiah of Evil is about a young woman who searches for her missing father after he abruptly and unexpectedly stops communication with her.
Messiah of Evil is one of a few horror movies that I truly found scary and I seen a lot..
So, if you are a horror film junkie and would like to see two really good creepy scenes, then by all means watch those two scenes then turn it off.