Messiah of Evil aka Dead People : Zombie March Scene

[Cheezerussler72]

@Saunders 1962 I have that 50 DVD Box set along with M.O.E. love this movie

[Cleopatrastomb]

This looks good. Can't believe that I have missed seeing this 3 severed thumbs up!

[BenMisfit84]

This is actually pretty creepy, I wish this was more well known.

[Saunders1962]

Godforsaken. That's the best word I can come up with for most of these flicks. Godforsaken.

[Saunders1962]

How the hell do movies like this get made?

Incidentally, I saw this on a 50-movie DVD box set called CHILLING CLASSICS. Mostly public domain flix (I assume) from the 1970s and 1980s. I have three other similar box sets - MUSICALS, CLASSIC HORROR, and CLASSIC SCI-Fi. I highly recommend them. They're cheap and loadsa fun. I'm hooked.

[Saunders1962]

And the cast! Joy Bang (swinger chick #2) brings sssssssteam heat as does the stunning Anitra Ford. Royal Dano (!) is dad. Elisha Cook Jr. (!!) as a wino is first scary then lovable. And best of all is the great Michael Greer in a rare heterosexual role (well, nominally het).

[Saunders1962]

A masterpiece? No. But winningly godforsaken. And made by the folks who brought us AMERICAN GRAFFITI and, um, HOWARD THE DUCK (which I should probably take in now).

[Saunders1962]

Dad shows up too. Immediately after triggering a flashback (from 100 years ago!), he flays red paint onto the walls and douses his face in blue making for ever more arty (Antonioni-esque?) compositions. Soon it looks like he's staging an Otto Muehl happening.

[Saunders1962]

But the real Sammy Davis Jr. Western GONE WITH THE WEST is playing (which is odd because IMDb lists it at 1975 whereas MESSIAH is 1973).

[Saunders1962]

Eventually we learn that the entire town has become zombies. They get swinger chick #2 too in a very creepy scene at a movie theatre. KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE is on the marquee

[Saunders1962]

She wisely walks the rest of the way only to meet her end in a deserted supermarket...deserted save for raw meat eating townsfolk.

[Saunders1962]

The two swinger chicks are more crass - they burp and laugh at dad's art. One splits and runs into the truck driving albino. He gives her a lift (dead bodies now propped up in the back), plays Wagner (which he pronounces like Mr. Natalie Wood's last name), and eats a rat (avec crunching sounds too).

[Saunders1962]

She hooks up with a swingin trio (one guy, two gals). The guy's looking for dad too. He shares with the heroine a sort of upper class somnambulism - stilted, overly careful speech and movement a la MARIENBAD.

[Saunders1962]

The heroine makes it to her father's pad. Turns out dad is a Robert Longo-ish artist who has populated the walls with all sorts of trompe l'oeil imagery. These will repeatedly figure in more arty compositions with the "real" actors: characters look as if they're part of a jury or just stepping off an escalator.

[Saunders1962]

This latter action doesn't seem to phase the heroine that much. And thus, for a looong time, the shots tend to collapse in on themselves. Images fire off in a dream-like irreducibility, e.g. a wacky, unmotivated shot of two Mobil signs in an arty, zig-zag composition. Character motivation is shady. A creepy albino (are there any other kind in cinema?) rolls up in a pickup truck. The attendant sees dead bodies in the back but proceeds to ask if the albino wants stamps.

[Saunders1962]

A woman drives to visit her artist father whose increasingly bizarre letters have recently stopped. She pulls into a gas station where she finds the attendant firing off a gun into the adjacent forest/darkness. This latter action doesn't seem to phase the heroine that much.

[Saunders1962]

Very artsy fartsy horror flick from 1973. Sometimes called DEAD PEOPLE. Starts with a prologue featuring two characters you never see again (that I could determine). Then we get three different voiceovers from three different time periods.

[Saunders1962]

A small California village is attacked by zombies in this 1974 thriller. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

[Saunders1962]

small California village is attacked by zombies in this 1974 thriller. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

[Saunders1962]

Messiah of Evil (1973)

See it!

Posted 2007-03-18

[Saunders1962]

Instead of hightailing it out of there she sticks around to investigate, leading to an alliance of sorts with wealthy gad-about Thom, who is wandering around the county accompanied by a pair of buxom groupies. They discover a legend involving the titular messiah, whose return is causing the townsfolk to transform into flesh-hungry undead ghouls eagerly awaiting his reign of madness and evil. I think. It got a little unclear towards the end there.

[Saunders1962]

The willowy and oddly named Arletty travels to a remote coastal town to visit her father, a reclusive artist. When she arrives, she finds that he's covered just about every interior surface of his house with slightly creepy life-sized paintings of various townsfolk, who turn out to be no less odd and creepy in person.

[Saunders1962]

Then, in "Sisters of Death," Claudia Jennings portrays a member of a secret all-girl cult called the Sisters. When she and her pals become prisoners of the grief-crazed father of a girl who died during an initiation prank, they encounter terror beyond imagination. Arthur Franz, Joe Tata co-star. AKA: "Death Trap." 176 min. total. Standard; Soundtrack: English. Plays All Regions.

[Saunders1962]

First, in "Messiah of Evil," a woman searching for her missing father arrives in a small town whose residents are cursed, soon to become flesh-eating zombies. Horrific thriller from "American Graffiti" co-scripters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz stars Michael Greer, Marianna Hill, Royal Dano. AKA: "Dead People," "Return of the Living Dead," "Revenge of the Screaming Dead."

[Saunders1962]

Willard Huyck perhaps remains best known for his Oscar-nominated screenplay to George Lucas' autobiographical feature "American Graffiti" (1973), which was crafted in collaboration with his wife Gloria Katz.

[Saunders1962]

Gloria Katz was one of the few female screenwriters to make an impact during the 1970s, co-writing, with her husband, Willard Huyck, "American Graffiti" (1973), directed by George Lucas and based on events in his life growing up in a small California city.

[MyLuckyCars]

The police officer need the heavy machine gun, not a pop gun.

[RODNEYSALAZAR]

first machine guns =automatic. second they were issued ar15 later till 1990s third this movie looks like its from 1970s :P also they may had shot guns but thats probably the most effective gun they must of had!