Looked up a list of overlooked horror movies from the seventies and decided to watch one of them. The film I went with was Messiah of Evil. This turned out to be an interesting choice, in a few different senses.
Messiah Evil was made by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, a married writing/directing/producing pair. They had the mixed luck to be friends and associates with George Lucas. That meant that they got credit for helping Lucas flesh out his American Graffiti idea to a full script. It also meant that they got the Howard the Duck assignment, which turns out to be their last time directing a movie.
Focusing on this movie, though. Arletty goes to the small California beach town of Point Dume (dun-DUN) in search of her missing father. An artist, his letters to her had grown increasingly dark and erratic in recent months. Arriving in town she meets Thom, a bohemian dilettante with an interest in her father's artwork. When they first meet, Thom is listening to a crazed prophecy from the town drunk Charlie (Elisha Cook Jr.) Blood moon, dark messiah, people going mad and eating raw meat. The standard stuff.
Arletty moves into her father's extended art exhibit beach house. Thom breaks in with his two "traveling companions" and stays with her, because it turns out small town hotels won't rent to you when you're openly in a three-way.
There are indeed strange goings-on about town. The townspeople aren't talkative, and they have indeed taken to eating raw meat. Uncooked steak, live rats, and yes, people. Both of Tom's girlfriends go into town and get ambushed in some rather effective Grand Guignol scenes. Things get even worse when Arletty's dad returns.
Dark Messiah came out around the halfway point between George Romero's first two "Living Dead" movies. It's been mentioned as a forerunner to Dawn of the Dead's critique of consumerism. There is something to that. The ghoulish flesh-eaters are conservative townies, and two of the big horror scenes take place in a supermarket and a movie theatre, respectively.
The attempt to put the heroes in the counterculture has some downsides, though. Take Thom, for example. He boasts of being born in a castle his family owned in Portugal. His relationship with the two women he travels with has an aristocratic air. And while he has long hair, what really stands out in terms of his appearance are his bespoke plantations suits. The unintended(?) message is that the great exurban unwashed are depraved and predatory, but that you can count on the enlightenment of people with lots of money and prestige. Almost half a century later that idea is still very much in circulation, and may get even more credence. So watching Messiah of Evil is like seeing a combination of grindhouse flick, art film, and psyop.
2 comments:
Howard the Duck - Born in a world he never made.
The original comic was pretty funny but beyond that I don't recall any sequels and definitely not the movie. I'm sure it will be no surprise to hear that horror movies are so far from being my favorite entertainment that when I watch one I'll very likely have my eyes ready to close or look elsewhere at the appropriate moments. Some I've bailed on altogether, but having spent years with another fan of the genre I've watched a number of them.
I've watched Night of the Living Dead more than once despite my opinion it's the scariest of the zombie movies, maybe because the hero got killed at the end or perhaps it's the cinema vérité aspect of the film. But like I said I've watched some horror movies, including zombie ones, that are just too silly not to be kind of amusing, ie, Dawn of the Dead (Shopping Mall of the Dead) - "They come here because it's all they know".
We saw World War Z at a movie theatre in Halifax. At the end Brad Pitt and his family arrived by ship to coastal Nova Scotia where they and the other survivors agreed they'd be safe there. That got a huge laugh from the audience.
As for the movie you've written about, Dark Messiah, your review is descriptive and complete enough to make it sound interesting, although I might prefer reading a book in another room while it's playing. Admittedly, I'm probably over sensitive. Then again, by the time they go way over the top like Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Til Dawn or the other grindhouse movie we saw tonight, Planet Terror, I'm amused by the ridiculousness of the gore and violence. Maybe Dark Messiah would strike me the same way.
Counting on the enlightenment of people with lots of money and prestige is a message that's been promoted in recent years. One of our favorite movies about the future is Mike Judge's Idiocracy. Its premise of a future run by morons could be read as what could happen if things continue down a 'woke' path. Paulo Bacigalupi's short story Pump Six is a good example of a world running short of people who know how to get things done.
The Seventies comic Howard the Duck was beautifully drawn and Steve Gerber was one of the most intelligent and individualistic writers ever to work in mainstream comics. Maybe the movie had no realistic way of living up to that legacy. Unfortunately they didn't seem to have any other good ideas either. Although to be fair Marvel Comics has had a hard time keeping the character going without Gerber.
If a movie is scary it's almost impossible for the sequel--or sequels--to match it. Because even if they up the ante, the audience knows the basic score. Night of the Living Dead was really scary and quite bleak. The movies that George Romero made after it would have comparatively larger budgets, but Night was an immediate experience, like something he had plucked from his nightmares. Dawn of the Dead couldn't pull off the same trick, so it was smart of him to go the satire route.
Sounds like a fun screening of World War Z. One neat thing about seeing a movie in a theater is that the crowd can catch those local references. Like the "We just left Rhode Island" line in The Muppet Movie.
Robert Rodriguez seems like someone who likes to make B-movies and makes no bones about it. If anything he's more upfront about doing that kind of film that Quentin Tarantino is. So yeah, his movies go pretty big, and often funny. You might feel the same way about this one. It achieves weirdness, at the very least.
Idiocracy was a good comedy, presenting silly situations that might illustrate a serious point. Some people have pointed out similarities to it and the short story "The Marching Morons" by Cyril M Kornbluth. The Bacigalupi story sound interesting as well. So far all I've read by him is The Clockwork Girl.
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