Messiah of Evil.

Review #2622: Messiah of Evil.

Cast: 

Michael Greer (Thom), Marianna Hill (Arletty Lang), Joy Bang (Toni), Anitra Ford (Laura), Royal Dano (Joseph Lang), Elisha Cook Jr (Charlie), Charles Dierkop (gas attendant), Bennie Robinson (albino trucker), and Walter Hill (victim in prologue) Written, Produced and Directed by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck (#1704 - Howard the Duck)

Review: 

I guess it makes sense to pick a possible "cult favorite" every now and then. You might remember that Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck were a married screenwriting duo that had a notable connection in filmmaking when Huyck met George Lucas when each were students at USC and their film school. Huyck and Katz were hired by Lucas to work on a treatment for what eventually became American Graffiti. The resulting success on its August 1973 release came right as Katz and Huyck were to do their first film together with, well, Messiah of Evil. It was a low-budget movie that had several of their friends play bit parts (Walter Hill, Billy Weber, Bill L. Norton). Apparently, Katz co-directed the film with Huyck (sources list her as uncredited) in what was her only directorial credit. The movie either finished as it was planned or it was left* with a few scenes left to actually finish (honestly, the latter seems more there) before just being dropped into theaters in December 1974. There apparently were multiple titles that the film got released in for later years, such as "Return of the Living Dead", "Revenge of the Screaming Dead", "Night of the Damned", and "Dead People". Katz once called it a "real bowwow", although Huyck eventually warmed to the film, even attending a sold-out Q/A screening for it in later years. The following year after the release of Messiah, Huyck and Katz got tasked to do script-work on Lucky Lady [1975] before working on French Postcards [1979].

What's there to say that isn't merely just stating things that occur in the film? You might wonder what the film is about. Well, in the vaguest way possible, a woman tells of what happened when she visited a coastal town to see her artist father only to find a diary of his strange experiences alongside a few strangers that happen to need to stay at the place because of strange things that only get stranger (I suppose it's not a spoiler to say it starts at the loony bin). People gather around bonfires to stare at the moon while people's eyes weep blood and a "dark stranger" apparently may return 100 years after being a survivor of the Donner Party. Around that is a variety of things that happen from albino truckers to narration to basically carry what isn't evident. This is...one of those movies where you really, really need to experience the "atmosphere" and see if it actually will hit for you in the unsettling manner that comes through in all-consuming, all-bewildering dread. Hill doesn't really get much to actually say besides reacting to what is going on (around her and to her with the vomiting insects), which works in some ways to accompany her growing fear that doesn't exactly get a chance to really explode at what actually comes out in the art of unsettled lunacy. The best sequence might be in the movie theater with a growing array of people coming inside that actually shows some sort of terror on screen. You have to fill in some of the blanks with the looming terror because damned if the movie is going to allow you to have an easy time doing it, particularly when it ends just as abruptly as it starts, because nothing is that easy to resolve. As a whole, Messiah of Evil is basically a dreamscape type of movie, one that will either hit the chords required for off-putting interest in what is said and left unsaid or will pass through with the bare minimum of "well, that was a movie". For me, it was pretty okay, and I suppose that is a tacit endorsement worth checking out least once on a dreary night.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Next up: Keeping it a surprise.

Song of the day!

*Anita Ford claimed this as such: Anitra Ford's Personal Blog: Be afraid, very afraid -- for 6 minutes

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Review #1425: The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Cast: 
Jason Robards (Al Capone), George Segal (Peter Gusenberg), Ralph Meeker (George "Bugs" Moran), Jean Hale (Myrtle), Jan Merlin (Willie Marks), Clint Ritchie (Machine Gun Jack McGurn), David Canary (Frank Gusenberg), Harold J. Stone (Frank Nitti), Frank Silvera (Nick Sorello), Joseph Campanella (Albert Wienshank), Richard Bakalyan (John Scalise), Charles Dierkop (Salvanti), John Agar (Dion O'Bannion), Joseph Turkel (Jake Gusik), Bruce Dern (Johnny May), and Paul Frees (Narrator) Produced and Directed by Roger Corman (#368 - The Little Shop of Horrors, #684 - It Conquered the World, #852 - The Terror, #931 - Not of This Earth, #1007 - Attack of the Crab Monsters, #1039 - Five Guns West, #1042 - War of the Satellites, #1136 - Gas-s-s-s, #1147 - X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes, #1186 - A Bucket of Blood, and #1423 - The Wild Angels)

Review: 
"There comes a time when the public conscience needs jolting and in St Valentine's Day Massacre this is our intention. It is also certain that the movie will make money - crime is always box office."

As one would say, give people what they want and they will come see it in theaters. One can talk for ages about the ways that Roger Corman has served film well in making them fast, cheap and generally good that have served him well in a long-lasting career as producer and director. This is an unusual film in his lineup because of his collaboration with a major studio in 20th Century Fox, as opposed to his usual independent filmmaking. He had expressed an interest with making a film with a major studio, and he attracted the attention of Columbia Pictures. Cracks seemed to form almost immediately, as his submitted ideas (a biopic of Baron Von Ritchhofen, this film, and an adaptation of Only Lovers Left Alive) were considered too strange while their ideas seemed too ordinary to him, with Corman believing in giving the audience "something a little more complex artistically and intellectually. To show something you can't see on TV leads inevitably to unusual material." Perhaps predictably, he would never end up making a film for Columbia, leaving the production of A Time for Killing (1967) early on. However, he would be granted a chance with Fox, since I suppose one can't resist the urge to do business with a proven director for fast and effective moneymakers, with this being a particularly interesting year for evolving tastes (the first coming to mind being Bonnie and Clyde).

Corman would have to modify certain aspects of his plan to make the film with the studio, however. For one thing, he wanted Orson Welles to play the lead role with Robards as the character of Moran. However Fox felt that he was undirectable and could potentially try to take rein of the director's chair from Corman. Ideas to film in Chicago were soon shifted to the Fox backlot, and Corman even re-used sets from other movies. While given seven weeks and $2.5 million to make a film, he felt most comfortable with tighter budgets, although he generally felt more comfortable as producer than directing, with this being the sixth-to-last film that he directed. He strived to make an authentic and accurate gangster film, right down to the climax and having the bodies lie where they fell in the original crime photos. The portrayal of Capone by Robards was the third in a feature film (after the first by Rod Steiger in the eponymously titled film in 1959, which also had The Untouchables premiere on TV), and Corman would return to the subject as producer for Capone (1975). In that matter, this is a decent ensemble piece with careful plotting that shows its criminal underside without trouble to make a 100 minute tale resonate with a bit of shock value. It isn't one of Corman's greatest achievements, but it at least one with ambition and the tools to try and make things work out with its buildup to the massacre with gradual use of Frees as narrator to describe the characters and their actions. Robards and Meeker stand out the most in the cast. Although it might have proved more fruitful to have had Welles in the title role, Robards makes the most of it with scene-chewery that makes for well-seen bluster whenever the time is needed to raise voice. Meeker contrasts this with his own type of conniving spirit of conviction, while Segal, Stone and the others follow along in making for some interesting unsavory people to look at for a time that doesn't lead one to want some sort of authority opposition or some sort of comic relief. On the whole, this is a decent little movie from Roger Corman in something a bit different from his usual tactics of filmmaking that still retains his usual drive to make quality entertainment that lives up as a decent gem for its era.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.