Editorials
19 Things We Learned from the ‘Messiah of Evil’ Commentary
Some people read “horror movies” as synonymous with “scary,” but the vast majority of films in the horror genre are far from frightening. Most aren’t even trying to be scary as they’re instead looking only to entertain, thrill, and occasionally startle. These are all worthy goals, but when a horror movie sets out to unsettle and scare… and then actually succeeds? Well, that’s something special right there.
There are various ways in which a filmmaker might try to unnerve viewers, and the most difficult is arguably atmospheric. 1974’s Messiah of Evil may be a low-budget feature, but it’s a masterclass in capturing a disturbing and disquieting sense of place. Its eerily empty seaside town just seems off, and when its occupants do arrive, all pasty-faced and quiet, the film’s increasingly upsetting atmosphere finds incredible terror in mundane locales like supermarkets and movie theaters.
Fans of the film should seek out the “Father’s Day” segment of 2016’s Holidays and Mickey Keating’s Offseason (both coincidentally starring the great Jocelin Donahue) for some similar vibes. Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Messiah of Evil (1974)
Commentators: Genre film experts Kim Newman and Stephen Thrower
1. The film went through various titles during production, including The Second Coming and The Blood Moon. It was also released at various points as Return of the Living Dead – a short-lived venture quickly shot down by George Romero’s lawyers – Dead People, Revenge of the Screaming Dead, Blood Busters, and Return of the Damned.
2. The man running and dying before the title card drops is future filmmaker Walter Hill.
3. Co-writer/director Willard Huyck attended UCLA alongside the likes of George Lucas and John Milius, and all three competed against each other with short films in a film festival at the time. The Los Angeles Times’ review of the fest singled out Huyck’s short as the best of the bunch.
4. Huyck never found his peers’ level of success as a director, but he did go on to direct 1986’s Howard the Duck. He had more luck as a writer alongside his fellow co-director/writer Gloria Katz, and went on to co-write American Graffiti, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and more.
5. Katz’s brother, Stephen Katz, is the film’s cinematographer, and he went on to shoot The Blues Brothers, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, and more.
6. Newman draws a line, of both style and themes, between this film and other “counter culture-inflected, slightly Lovecraftian” movies like The Witch Who Came from the Sea, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, and the work of French filmmaker Jean Rollin.
7. “There’s a kind of wry wit to this film, but the characters exist in this sort of [Michelangelo] Antonioni J.G. Ballard-type ennui as they drift to their dooms,” says Newman, and this kind of line is exactly why you get him and Thrower on your commentaries.
8. Thrower adds that the dialogue walks a fine line between the pretentious and the more Lovecraftian, literary means of communication. “If you try to speak Lovecraft out loud, it’s kind of difficult to bring that off without adopting a very melodramatic persona to do it.”
9. Huyck and Katz were locked out of the editing room after they finished filming, but what followed wasn’t “a hack job.” The people who stepped in clearly knew what they were doing and made their best efforts to complete the film and stay true to its intentions.
10. We watch as Laura (Anitra Ford) walks through an eerily empty town, and Thrower comments that the feeling we get from it is sadly relatable these days after we’ve all been through the pandemic lockdown.
11. Newman suggests there’s been some debate over the years as to what exactly the “monsters” are in the film. Zombies, vampires, possessed people, a cult… “It’s good that you can’t define” what exactly these folks have become. Part of that, of course, could be due to the filmmakers being unable to film the intended, bigger, more clarifying ending.
12. The score is by Phillan Bishop, and they talk about how it’s among the early electronic scores in cinema. They mention a few more examples, including Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, and a common thread between them is their place in the horror genre, something that speaks to the genre’s typical low budgets more than anything else.
13. Gloria Katz cameo at 55:35 as the woman selling tickets at the movie theater.
14. The film on the theater marquee is 1950’s Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, a James Cagney crime picture, that was chosen strictly for the terrifically appropriate title.
15. They reach the film’s most memorable scene – Toni (Joy Bang) takes a seat in an empty theater only for the seats to fill up behind her as the trailers play – and Thrower recalls a similar incident he experienced. In his case, he had gone to see Mario Bava’s Shock, took a seat in a fairly full theater, and turned around barely ten minutes into the film to realize that he was the only one there.
16. “If you really tap into the mood of it, then it really does start to pay off,” says Thrower regarding the film’s slow burn that explodes with legitimate horror at various points, like the supermarket and theater scenes.
17. The edits during both the supermarket kill and theater kill drive home one of the film’s themes on rampant consumerism consuming us all. As Laura is eaten, we get cuts to the empty supermarket aisles, and when Toni is attacked, we see shots of empty theater seats and a concession stand.
18. The stunt performer set ablaze towards the film’s climax is Buddy Joe Hooker, who went on to have a long, distinguished career in stunts as both a performer (Prophecy, The Entity, The Guardian) and a second-unit director (Mannequin, Gleaming the Cube, and Vanilla Sky).
19. They agree that the only real disappointment here is that the film’s ending wasn’t completed and was instead hobbled together by producers and editors after the fact. The bookends here, that Arletty (Marianna Hill) is simply a crazy woman recounting her madness via voiceover – as opposed to these events having really happened – do feel like an unfortunate afterthought.
Quotes Without Context
“It’s that strange moment when the political revolution of the sixties has died away and fizzled out, but all the love children and hippies are left trying to work out what to do next.”
“People tried to do Lovecraft in the sixties, but in a way that made me think they’d never read a Lovecraft story.”
“I think that’s true of this house as a whole; it looks incredible, but you’re supposed to find it unnerving and off-putting.”
“If the camera panned away from the youthful shenanigans of American Graffiti and went down a different street, you might find the beginnings of the horror developing in this story.”
“Another theme in this film is that cops are useless.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
“Elevated Horror.” Of all the combinations in the English language, that one is the most insufferable.
It represents almost a decade of scary movies that, for the most part, took themselves too seriously. Horror responds to the moment, so its “why so serious” lean makes sense as we scuttle through the “worst of times” equation of Charles Dickens’ famous opening lines. But there’s still an opening and a need for a lighter approach; one that not only has fun with its audience but takes the piss out of a genre that is seemingly letting its newfound “respectability” go to its head.
Wes Craven believed devotees see horror films to let out their fears one primal scream at a time. At their core, these movies are roller coasters; they bring us as close to the edge as possible before pulling us back into a safety net of reality. The need for a bigger and badder coaster increases during times when the size of that net decreases.
There’s a thrill that comes from imagining being in a foot race with a madman, or outthinking the hordes of zombies on the other side of the door, plus the scavenger humans coming behind them. There’s even a rush that comes from imagining how one might deal with possession to see good triumph over evil in the end. It’s all about building tension and releasing it through catharsis. That cathartic release usually sounds like screams followed by laughter, which signals relief. Genre heavy hitters over the past 10 years offered very little of that respite when the credits rolled. Films like Hereditary, The Witch, Talk to Me, and even Smile (pick one) keep that tension going after the screen fades to black.
Hereditary
As the genre became obsessed with creating trauma metaphors, that lack of release made sense. Anyone with even a small sample size of traumatic experiences knows those emotions don’t magically resolve themselves in an allotted run time. But how much trauma can one take? Especially when there’s a mess going on outside that few of us can escape from. Movies offer that off-ramp, no matter how short.
Everything can’t be, nor should it be, “elevated.” Audiences need thoughtful explorations of life’s ills via monsters as much as they need murdering masked maniacs with kitchen knives. And no, it doesn’t have to go any deeper than that. Sometimes, a knife is just a knife, and it’s still worth our time and respect. As weird as it sounds, that simplicity is comforting not in spite of the trauma but because of it.
The worst of times should manifest more than just anguish. People need to laugh just as much as they need to think seriously about this moment in time. Even the Scream franchise forgot the meta rock upon which it built its church when the latest foray sacrificed the subtle comedy for serious drama. Scary Movie returned at the perfect moment. It provides the necessary laughs, but it’s not a cure-all.
This isn’t a call for Scary Movie imitators but a return to a mainstream landscape where Killer Klowns from Outer Space sat with The Serpent and the Rainbow, nestled neatly with the latest Nightmare on Elm Street, which took nothing away from The Vanishing.
They Live
Even They Live, John Carpenter’s horror sci-fi satire sandwich, kept its tongue firmly in cheek while discussing serious ideas still relevant in 2026. Yes, a film about aliens taking over the world through subliminal messaging only visible through coded sunglasses is, in fact, a tad silly. Carpenter understood that mainstream horror can’t become so self-important that it never looks itself in the mirror and laughs at that inherent silliness.
The thing is, horror historically excels at poking fun at itself. Most of the Scream franchise, The Cabin in the Woods, or The Blackening show adoration without kowtowing. They recognize tropes and trappings but invert them for an audience already in on the joke, but one that also finds solace in said conventions. This keeps the genre on its toes; once something gets parodied, it’s usually time to evolve. That breeds new ideas and fresh filmmakers, which not only strengthen the genre’s collective voice but also amplify it.
Get Out, as “elevated” as some critics want us to believe it is, is a cathartic, populist scary movie that spoke to an untapped audience rather than speaking down to them. Backrooms is one of the biggest horror hits in years, partially because it’s fine-tuned for modern-day teenagers instead of their parents. Movies like these tell everyone the genre is open for business; open for innovation and, yeah, open for new ways in which people can lovingly poke fun at with a wink and a nudge.
Horror needs dread as much as it needs laughter.
Catharsis is just as important as tension, and pulpy populism has the same merit as more high-brow material. Respectability shouldn’t come at the expense of an experience akin to walking through a haunted house. At a time when joy seems in short supply, horror should look to its past to map out its future, and make things just a tad brighter for audiences.
Backrooms
You must be logged in to post a comment.