Messiah of Evil

R

Released Apr 23, 1973

1 hr. 29 min.

Horror

List

100%

7 Reviews

Tomatometer

56%

500+ Ratings

Audience Score

While searching for her missing father, a woman (Mariana Hill) comes to a town crawling with flesh-eating zombies.

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Jon G

I cannot believe I missed this gem so many years ago! So happy to have found it!

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

03/02/24

Full Review

Marvin H

This twisted movie has stayed with me since my childhood viewing. After rewatching resently well " it is better and even creepier than I remember". It starts with the most amazingly awful earworm song (part ballad part hot ass mess) and it just goes all over the place. It fells like a comedown from a bender and it is also what I image a fever dream (or nightmare)to look like on film. So 70's you can taste it. Awesome nightmare.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/22/24

Full Review

Deke P

1974 or 75. Eerie zombie movie. 100% rave reviews from the pro reviewers. Takes place in POINT DUME, they pronounce it DOOM, which I have passed many times without much thought, north point of the bay & Malibu. Saw it on the telly, 2.6.24 late nite.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/07/24

Full Review

Darren D

"Messiah of Evil" visually haunting with ongoing feeling of uneasiness from it's near silent & emptiness from the surroundings within the story. The atmosphere is a fine line between a slow moving dream & the tense build up of a nightmare you can't wake up from. Pure horror.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

11/25/23

Full Review

Cyril Joyce A

a tragic life happened to a woman just only to visit her father but get victimized of a cult group, it's so sad causing me to feel blue right now, i thought she will have an oppurtunity to escape but there's a plot twist in the end that she ended up being also a member of that satanic cult, analogue to Rosemary baby film(1968) similarly when rosemary have no choice but to accept the fact that she ended up in a cult like this film. it gives me terrible tragic mood after i finished this sad movie, it's not give me a kindof catastrophe or misery but mourning

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

11/15/23

Full Review

Michael D

great unknown scary movie with a milieu unlike any other horror movie save Carnivsl of Souls. Supposedly, production cuts made piecing the movie together a difficult task. What remains to be seen is enough to shake any horror movie lover's main nerve and satisfaction core

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

05/23/23

Full Review

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Willard Huyck

Director

Michael Greer

Thom

Marianna Hill

Arletty

Joy Bang

Toni

Anitra Ford

Laura

Royal Dano

Joseph Long

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Budd Wilkins

Slant Magazine

Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz’s eerily brooding Messiah of Evil remains an undervalued gem of American gothic filmmaking.

Oct 27, 2023

Full Review

Anton Bitel

Little White Lies

co-writers/co-directors Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz confound life and art, reality and dreams, sanity and madness in their surreal vision of conservative America succumbing to – or biting back against – the encroaching counterculture.

Oct 18, 2023

Full Review

Matt Brunson

Film Frenzy

This maintains its aura of unease and contains a pair of genuinely creepy sequences.

Rated: 3/4

Nov 8, 2023

Full Review

Jennie Kermode

Eye for Film

After a lot of scene setting, the film delivers, almost out of nowhere, an intense and fully committed mythology which takes night scenes already set against a pitch black sky to a still darker place.

Rated: 3.5/5

May 15, 2023

Full Review

Jason Shawhan

Nashville Scene

One of the enduring classics of hippie horror, Messiah of Evil is a very California apocalypse, foretold in the stars.

Sep 10, 2021

Full Review

Tim Brayton

Alternate Ending

It's an amazing success at instilling the sensation of waiting for something awful and nightmarish to happen.

Rated: 3.5/5

Sep 27, 2017

Full Review

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Synopsis

While searching for her missing father, a woman (Mariana Hill) comes to a town crawling with flesh-eating zombies.

Director: Willard Huyck
Executive Producer: Alan Riche, James P. Graham
Screenwriter: Gloria Katz, Willard Huyck
Production Co: V/M Productions, International Film Corporation
Rating: R
Genre: Horror
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Apr 23, 1973, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Jul 1, 2016

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