Arletty (Marianna Hill) has come to Point Dume to solve a mystery. Her father, an acclaimed artist who has found inspiration in this section of coastal California, has vanished, leaving behind an amazing home and the consumptive horror of an unavoidable cosmic event growing ever closer with every moment that passes. Quaalude-paced and absinthe-aggressive, the debut film from writer-director team Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (American Graffiti, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Howard the Duck) delivers the kind of grand, inexorable transcendence that one would hope for from a title like Messiah of Evil.
Rightfully acclaimed as one of the greats of hippie horror (that is, horror that happens to hippies, not horror that is caused by hippies — think Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, not I Drink Your Blood), this is the kind of trippy nightmare that winds its way through the subconscious and curls up, quietly, until the most inopportune of moments. Katz and Huyck have a gift for the visceral terror that comes from the violation of the social contract, making the grocery store and the movie theater and the gas station into the sites of terrors previously bound to creaky hallways, chaotic beach parties and battlefields.
Messiah of Evil (screening as part of the Belcourt’s ongoing 1973 series on a 35 mm print under one of its alternate titles, Dead People) really is a masterwork of cosmic horror, finding elements equally rooted in folklore and family narrative tradition as well as authors like Lovecraft and Derleth (et al.). One of the enduring truths of horror cinema is that a town with a secret and a family mystery are bedrocks of the genre, but the combination of a family mystery and a town with a secret is a foundation that will stand for as long as society does. Much respect is also due the impeccable outfits and the presence of legendary character actors Elisha Cook Jr. and Joy Bang. Gird your loins and gear up for one of the unheralded classics of ’70s horror cinema, on a well-loved print as well.
