Review: Messiah of Evil (1974)

Marianna Hill arrives at a seaside town in search of her artist father (Royal Dano), whose communications have become increasingly erratic. She hooks up with Michael Greer and his friends Anitra Ford and Joy Bang as they slowly realise it’s the hundredth anniversary of an incident involving a blood red moon and the dead have risen to feed on the living. Charles Dierkop appears briefly as a gas station attendant, and Elisha Cook Jr. plays a fearful homeless man.

1974 cult item from husband-and-wife team of director Willard Hyuck and co-writer Gloria Katz, George Lucas’ pals who later forced “Howard the Duck” onto the cinematic landscape. This one’s considerably better, but still not a complete success in my book. It’s got a pretty agonising pace and a little too much vagueness for my liking. After 40 minutes, you kinda want the details to start filling in, and they just don’t come until you’ve stopped caring. Character motivation in particular seems lacking, and the character played by Michael Greer seems to come in from an entirely different film. He’s probably the best actor in the film, but he’s a strange, creepy choice for a character who isn’t meant to be an antagonist so he doesn’t seem to fit here. I also think that having certain events take place off-screen suggests that certain actors were only available for a brief time.

There’s some interesting stuff in here from time to time and it’s so weird that you keep watching just to see where it all ends up. To that end (no pun intended), it’s still a mixed bag because the finale is quite fun until the ultra-lame ending. Apparently the filmmakers ran out of money by that point, and for once that’s just me speaking to the facts instead of mock speculation. There’s a cute/creepy bit at a cinema where a crowd slowly gathers around, which seems to be everyone’s favourite moment in the film. I would’ve liked more of those moments and less time-wasting. In fact, it plays more like a drama than a horror film for much of its length. The cast is a mixed bag, it’s always fun to see Anitra Ford, Elisha Cook Jr. (doing his patented scared little guy thing), and early on Charles Dierkop. However, lead actress Marianna Hill is a bottomless void of stiffness, with a particularly flat voiceover narration.

An unsatisfying mixture of intriguing and waffling, this cult item never quite succeeds the way you’d like. Despite clearly being set in America, it looks, sounds, and vibes far more Italian to me, with a little bit of Brazil’s Jose Mojica Marins thrown in. Which is to say if you like arty nightmare horror, you might get with this one if you can overcome it’s rather meandering, slow pace. There’s something here, it just didn’t quite come off as a whole for me.

Rating: C+