Messiah of Evil (1973)

The population of the seaside town of Point Dune has turned into zombie-like beings who bleed from the eyes. (Sitting through 90 minutes of this made me want to do the same.) The plot also involves something called a Blood Moon, which signals the return of a Dark Stranger from 100 years ago. Each night, the townspeople gather on the beach to await his return. The rest of the time, they're at the supermarket, eating raw meat, or else killing the few people who haven't succumbed to the zombie sickness.The film also has a running theme of dreams and nightmares. This leads to such dialogue as, "I've been told that nightmares are dreams perverted," "You're about to awaken, when you dream that you're dreaming," and, "We sleep, and we dream, each of us dying slowly in the prison of our minds." The dream references are pointless and only bog down what should have been a simple horror film. I can hear director Willard Huyck saying, "Scary? Hell no! I want my zombie film artsy, pretentious, and dull."Item: At the beginning of the film, a zombie kills the owner of a service station. For some reason, his doing so knocks out the building's electricity.Item: The worst violence takes place off-camera, which makes even the murder scenes come across as weak.Item: The film attempts irony in the form of a blind art dealer.Item: Though Point Dune has been zombified for weeks, the supermarket's meat and produce are still fresh.Item: The whole "Dark Messiah" thing is insubstantial and comes off as an afterthought.Item: Given what happens in the film, it could have been titled "Point Dune" or "Blood Moon." Either would have been far better than the two feeble names under which it did come out.

If you overlook the first 40-minutes of the dragging foot of crippled dialogue, narration and senseless jabbering, you may find an entertaining lost episode of Scooby Doo. Correction. Scooby Doo has a more convincing creepy atmosphere. This is a dull, bus ride of underplayed overly dramatic characters. It has the dream-like quality of a bad movie nightmare. One where you're having pee dreams and can't wake up. By the time you finally escape the nightmare, you have wet your bed. Messiah of Evil, a.k.a. Dead People obviously tried to capitalize on the success of Night of the Living Dead, but forgot the most important element...terror. Its attempts at terrifying moments just seem to lie there like the Dead as a Doornail Not-so Living Dead. It has the pacing of a sloth.

For true horror fans this is an absolute gem. Despite all its glaring faults or because of them?, this sometimes abstract and always unpredictable movie is endlessly entertaining. Imagine if David Lynch would have grown up a hippie. He might make this film as a young acid head in California circa '73 (you know, in an alternate reality). Okay, got my Lynch reference in there... Oh, yeah, this movie is a real piece of work: the music is worth the time in itself-- through a huge spectrum, my friends. The sets (Artist's Home Studio, a Ralph's, etc) are used to creative ends. There are some good suspenseful set ups, like the unsuspecting movie goer picking the wrong theater. The Horror here is in the drab normals sucking the soul out of our "cool" protagonists; or, is it? Oh the glory of the fantastical explanation (that goes all Western, don't you know?) at the end. Yep, I can't believe it took me so long to come aboard, somekindoffreakyweirdmasterpiece

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. Before Romero's Dawn of the Dead and The Crazies, there was Dead People a.k.a Messiah of evil. Shot in 1971 the film was not released until 1973. Like H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon and The Wicker Man (1973), weird locals are hiding a horrific secret... In Messiah, the people of Point Dune worship the rise of a red moon as they become zombies. The storyline is disjointed, but this adds to the mystic, surreal and dreamlike quality of the film. Admittedly, it feels art house, there is some irregular editing and the score is very much of its time, but there's plenty to like about it. Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Dead & Buried (1981) and the aforementioned Dawn of the Dead clearly have taken a cue from Willard Huyck's jumbled but effective film. Especially the scene where slinky brunette Anitra Ford is pursued through a supermarket. There is also truly creepy scene again with Ford and an albino trucker, played by Bennie Robinson, who you'd think would have been in a lot more horror movies. 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.