Come take a bite of one of the strangest cuts ever served up by 1970s horror. Before Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz entered the blockbuster machine, they took us to Point Dune. A seaside backwater where the movie theater is suspiciously packed, the supermarket is no place to linger after dark, and the locals have a taste for raw meat.
Messiah of Evil is a sticky hallucination of pop-art interiors, empty streets, and creeping doom, turning the temples of American consumerism into hunting grounds. Here, the promise of abundance curdles into appetite, and the American dream seems ready to devour its own children.
The film’s troubled production only adds to the alluring spell: gaps in the plot, characters whose motivations barely make sense, and dream logic that refuses to explain itself. Imagine a dusty print discovered years later with the reels shuffled out of order – and somehow none the worse for it.
Zombies? Vampires? Ghouls? Cannibals? Ghosts? Who cares. Just stay away from the meat counter.
