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By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I had bought the Mill Creek Chilling Classics 50 movie pack a few years ago and I had noticed that Messiah of Evil (1973) was included in it but for one reason or another I never wanted to watch it. Fast forward to last years October Challenge and I was running out options to watch - so I half-heartedly decided to watch it. Well, needless to say, I didn't regret it, and even tho the copy wasn't the best in the world - it didn't damper my enjoyment of it, far from it. It was a great find and if I were to compile a Top 10 of my favorite horror films of the top of my head, then this would undoubtedly make the cut.Messiah of Evil is about a young woman who searches for her missing father after he abruptly and unexpectedly stops communication with her. When she arrives at a picturesque seaside home, where her father lived, she finds that the residents of the town are bizarre. She arrived with a hippie couple who are curiously attracted to the strange town. Together, the soon find out that the town is crawling with a flesh-eating cult.There are a few unforgettable scenes that are genuinely scary that leave an expression: like the supermarket scene and, of course, who can forget the movie theatre scene, both outstanding. The director, Willard Huyck, I have to say does a really splendid job in creating this almost dream-like vibe for the film and it doesn't let up. It is psychedelic. The story kinda reminded me of an old H.P. Lovecraft tale. The atmosphere is unrelentingly grim and I can only describe it as intense and an nightmarish dread. It is creepy as hell and it is full of very strange and memorable characters.What I like most about it - is it's ambiguity. We're never terribly sure if the "creatures" are zombies, ghouls, vampires or just cannibals or something else and no loose ends are tied by the end of the film either. It is shamefully still obscure among the numerous bad low-budget drive-in horror flicks of the 70's, it doesn't deserve it. I seen it late at night and I was pretty tired but I will never forget it. Messiah of Evil is one of a few horror movies that I truly found scary and I seen a lot.

Troubled young woman arrives in the oceanside town of Point Dune to visit her artist father and finds the residents behaving strangely; her father seems to be missing, so she allows a swinger and his two groupie-girlfriends to stay with her in his big, empty house. Reading her father's verbose diary entries worries the girl, who begins to suspect something inhuman was overtaking him; meanwhile, the streets and shops in town begin to empty out, all except for small groups of people who travel in packs at night "like wolves". Horror movie, filmed in 1971 but not released for two years, was an early effort by the husband and wife writing-producing-directing team of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (who, in 1973, would share the screen-writing credit on "American Graffiti" with George Lucas). With help from good cinematography by Stephen Katz, sharp editing by Scott Conrad and a terrific art direction by Joan Mocine and future filmmaker Jack Fisk(e), the picture looks great and has a creeping sense of low-keyed menace and dread. Neither the characters nor performances are developed, however, and it's unclear how we're supposed to take them (I got no reading on leading lady Mariana Hill, for instance, who is--intentionally?--vacant, lifeless). There are two brilliantly-conceived sequences, one in a brightly-lit but abandoned supermarket and the other in a movie house with red seats. Huyck and Katz ran into some trouble with financing during production, yet their movie doesn't feel choppy or unfinished--it works itself slowly on viewers with its foreboding ambiance and voiceovers, underlined by Phillan Bishop's electronic score--yet it doesn't have any wit or sting. The visuals outweigh the writing, which may as well have been an afterthought. Though this project might have been conceived by the twosome after a double feature screening of "Night of the Living Dead" and "Carnival of Souls", the handful of striking scenes are memorably frightening. ** from ****

If this town has been zombified for awhile then why are fruits and veggies in the supermarket fresh? And why was the meat fresh? - should have been all rotten if the town really was zombified for a long while. I'm just glad the zombies decided on a fresh kill to get their meat. Yea the only scene worth watching.Boring, awful film. It's not the low budget factor because I love many low budget films but this film is just lame - LAME! It's awful in every way I can think of.If you want to see a GOOD zombie movie watch White Zombie (1932) or Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the rest of that series - those films are so much better than this Messiah of Evil crap.This film is forgotten for a reason so they say but it does have a strong following for a forgotten film - lots of people seem to like this movie and I still don't know why.I give this one a 2 out of 10 just for the grocery store scene.2/10

'Messiah of Evil' is a relatively unknown B-Movie horror curio from the Seventies. A woman goes to a small seaside town to look for her artist father after he mysteriously stops correspondence with her and finds that something is well and truly afoot in the town. From the off the film establishes a disjointed atmosphere which is accentuated when she teams up with a man and two (stunning) women involved in a bizarre three-way relationship and together they try to fathom just what the dickens is going on in this creepy town. From here they learn that the town has become (for reasons unknown) a flesh-eating zombie cult.On the surface the movie appears to have little in the way of characterisation or plot, but any gaps in these qualities only serve to highlight the lingering oddness that pervades the film which reminded me strongly of the distanced dream-like quality of Herk Harvey's B-movie classic 'Carnival of Souls' (1962) and, to a lesser extent, Argento's 'Suspiria' (1977)…if the hysteric flailing of Argento's classic had been given a sedative, that is. This effect is achieved through the locale of the town itself, the fine cinematography, the use of voice-overs, and the music all working effectively to build suspense as the eeriness unfolds climaxing in some genuinely surreal and haunting scenes.However, it must be said that while I found the surreal world created for me easy to step into and inhabit I can easily see how fans of conventional horror would be put off by the creeping pace and absence of anything tangibly horrific. Still, it's the kind of movie that lives happily with its "cult" tag and sits comfortably among the late-night schedules which it knows all-too-well how to haunt.**************************Public domain movie. Watch it free here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuUyNwq9T8