Written by / 4/09/2024 / No comments / , , , , , , , , , , , ,

MARIANNA HILL WITH JOY BANG & ANITRA FORD 'MESSIAH OF EVIL'

Title: MESSIAH OF EVIL Year: 1974 Rating: ***1/2

Directing married couple (and future George Lucas collaborators) Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz's arthouse horror MESSIAH OF EVIL has hauntingly gorgeous scream-queen Marianna Hill's narrated story-line about the search for her artist father at a beach community, pieced together in long sequences of gothic dialogue and neatly combined with three of the most eerily suspenseful moments of low-budget exploitation cinema... 

Wherein monotone Michael Greer seems to be the title character, a stranger holed-up at her daddy's pad with two lovely girls, Anitra Ford and Joy Bang, each making their own separate horror-trope mistake of leaving an otherwise safe location to venture out alone... in this case into the small beach town, inland from a wave-lapping, moon-lit beach...

Joy Bang in MESSIAH OF EVIL

After getting a lift from a towering black albino (his mere casting is exploitation itself), who had already turned up in an earlier gas station sequence setting the tense, anything-can-happen tone, Ford goes into a Ralphs supermarket, coming across a group of shoppers... until it's revealed they're ghouls eating body parts... turning their tastes onto the doomed beauty, anticipating an upcoming sequence involving Joy Bang in an initially vacant movie theater that fills up slowly, methodically... until she's surrounded by the same eye-bleeding antagonists that'd already devoured her friend: only far more subtle and methodically nightmarish... 

And while the rest of MESSIAH OF EVIL (mostly involving a foreboding Michael Greer and final girl Hill in the primary location surrounded by spooky artwork) exudes the right amount of atmospheric tension, it's regrettable there weren't more pretty young side-starlets to lead the viewer into other creatively-shot living-dead death sequences — so we wouldn't have to wait so long in-between the really great parts.

Anitra Ford and Joy Bang in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Marianna Hill in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Marianna Hill in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Marianna Hill in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Marianna Hill in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Marianna Hill in MESSIAH OF EVIL with Charles Dierkop
Future director Walter Hill in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Anitra Ford in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Joy Bang and Michael Greer in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Marianna Hill in MESSIAH OF EVIL
From MESSIAH OF EVIL
Joy Bang in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Marianna Hill in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Royal Dano in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Marianna Hill in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Marianna Hill in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Anitra Ford in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Elijah Cook Jr. in MESSIAH OF EVIL
Bennie Robinson in MESSIAH OF EVIL


Share This Post :
Tags : , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

All Time Popular

Featured Post

DEFENDING THE BREEZY SEQUEL 'BREAKIN 2': ELECTRIC BOOGALOO'

Title: BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO Year: 1984 Rating: *** Cannon Films' BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO  was rushed out the same...

WWW.CULTFILMFREAKS.COM

WWW.CULTFILMFREAKS.COM
Movie Reviews, Interviews, Articles and Pop Culture from White Heat to Blue City

RIP ACTOR KEN HUTCHISON

TOTAL HITS

Popular Trending

FOUNDED BY JAMES M. TATE

FOUNDED BY JAMES M. TATE
RANDOM QUOTE: "Yeah, and the devil serves lemonade, right?" David Proval, Kojak

FILM NOIR & NEO NOIR CRIME

FAVORITES SHORTLIST

1)OTLEY 2)HELL IS A CITY 3)ROBBERY 4)THE FEARMAKERS 5)CANYON PASSAGE 6)VIOLENT SATURDAY 7)HOT CARS 8)THE BREAK 9)THE CROWDED SKY 10)THE ROARING TWENTIES 11) ANATOMY OF A MURDER 12)CALCULATED RISK 13)SWEENEY TWO 14)RAIDERS FROM BENEATH THE SEA 15)HARDCORE 16)JUNGLE STREET 17)WHITE HEAT 18)AL CAPONE 19)MODEL SHOP 20)FALLEN ANGEL 21)SHARKS' TREASURE 22)THE ASPHALT JUNGLE 23)ASH WEDNESDAY 24)THE SYSTEM 25)AIR PATROL 26)THE STONE KILLER 27)SANDS OF THE KALAHARI 28)WILLIAM CONRAD'S BRAINSTORM 29)RIOT 30)THE MAN FROM LARAMIE FAVORITE ACTORS 1)DANA ANDREWS 2)JAMES CAGNEY 3)STANLEY BAKER 4)MARLON BRANDO 5)JACK NICHOLSON 6)CHARLES BRONSON 7)BURT REYNOLDS 8)WILLIAM LUCAS 9)TOM COURTENAY 10)GENE HACKMAN DIRECTORS 1)JACQUES TOURNEUR 2)RICHARD FLEISCHER 3)VAL GUEST 4)STANLEY KUBRICK 5)OTTO PREMINGER 6)ORSON WELLES 7)JOHN GUILLERMAN 8)JOHN LANDIS 9)SAM PECKINPAH 10)MICHAEL WINNER

BRITISH NEW WAVE CINEMA

RARITIES AND EXPLOITATION

HAMMER HORROR & THRILLER

Popular This Month

CHARLES BRONSON CINEMA

CINEMA OF DANA ANDREWS

WESTERN GENRE REVIEWS

PEAKING INTO THE SIXTIES

KICKING IN THE EIGHTIES

TALES AND REFLECTIONS

REVVING THE SEVENTIES

Most Popular Last Year