10/26/07: Messiah of Evil (1973)Here’s an obscurity that isn’t all that obscure—unless you grew up down South and saw
Messiah of Evil at the drive-in under the title of
Dead People (twice) and then couldn’t figure out why it had never been released on home video. Amazingly, it took decades for us to make the connection that
Dead People is, in fact, the same
Messiah of Evil that was frequently showing up on cheap public-domain videos. Maybe we would’ve noticed it sooner if the most common copy on DVD wasn’t paired with the incredibly dull
The Devil’s Nightmare.
And right after finally making that connection, we found a
Messiah of Evil reference in the fine
new Jim Knipfel novel, so there’s a hint of that creepy web of coincidence.
Anyway,
Messiah of Evil is a wonderfully atmospheric horror film about evil transformations in a seaside village. It’s the kind of unheralded trash that you’d usually hear referenced all the time by film critics—like they do with
Deathdream—except that the film’s real message is conservative. That’s a turn-off, and
Messiah of Evil would probably be totally forgotten if it wasn’t for that public domain status and two particularly horrific set pieces. There have certainly been schlock film historians—all good Leftists—who’ve attempted to give the film a bad reputation.
Marianna Hill stars as Arletty, a normal gal looking for her missing artist father in the town of Port Dune. Dad’s recent letters suggest that he was becoming unhinged, but Arletty soon discovers that the whole town is a little loony. Local drunk Elisha Cook, Jr. is willing to hint about evil doings centered around the Blood Moon, but he promptly ends up dead.
The real Blood Moon, incidentally, is the first full moon after the Harvest moon. It occurs tonight—or so we were just told by this Goth gal we know. Not to scare you or anything.
The less known about
Messiah of Evil, the better for the viewer. Today’s clever heading might be the most direct part of this entry. It’s easy enough to sell the film by citing that
Messiah’s written and directed by the same husband-and-wife team who scripted
American Graffiti and
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (You’re supposed to then snidely note that they also wrote
Howard the Duck.)
The real trademark of quality, however, is art director Jack Fisk. The ex-husband of
Rainbo would later work on films such as
Phantom of the Paradise,
Eraserhead,
Darktown Strutters, and
Days of Heaven. His designs help make
Messiah as fun and disturbing as any of those later films. It was probably his idea to cast
the albino. (Thanks to IMDB, we also learn that Fisk was a mere gaffer on the crew of
The Peace Killers. All this coincidence is downright spooky.)
But we should at least offer some thoughts on
Messiah’s political content. Arletty’s only new friends in Port Dune are a threesome consisting of a dandy named Thom and his two lovers. Thom—as played by pioneering gay actor Michael Greer—is a particularly fine creation, oozing decadence while dolled up like a J.C. Penney model. There are several neat touches as
Messiah reveals how Thom and his gal pals are part of the problem in Port Dune.
There’s a good reason that liberated film critics can’t celebrate
Messiah of Evil. The impending dark presence is feeding off of things like changing sexual mores. The story here has actually been retold from two different conservative angles. If you go with a Halloween triple feature of
Messiah of Evil, John Carpenter’s
In The Mouth of Madness, and 1999’s
Ravenous, you might very well create a cinematic wormhole that’ll draw you into at least one of the films. Not to scare you or anything.
Make it your own: The curse of
Messiah of Evil continues. We finally rediscovered the movie in one of those massive cheapo box sets of public-domain horror films. Naturally, we had to pass along our copy, thinking it would be easy to replace. Well, yes and no. There have actually been two recent straight DVD reissues of
Messiah in the past few months, but neither offer any better quality than the bargain versions.
The best print we’ve found turns out to be
that DVD pairing with
The Devil’s Nightmare. That one’s getting hard to find, most likely because we’ve bought up several copies as stocking stuffers for the holidays. The most plentiful—and cheapest—version now available is yet
another 2007 DVD where
Messiah is paired with
Sisters of Death. That’s a nice match, especially if the print’s good. We still want our Criterion Edition.
And, no, we don’t know why we never bothered to search for
Dead People on IMDB—where, strangely enough, that’s the title that comes up in
the official entry.
