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.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
You must be logged in to post a comment.