31 Days of Hell: Messiah of Evil (1974) - The Radiance Films 4K-Restoration Special Edition, Reviewed
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| All Images Courtesy: Radiance Films |
Messiah of Evil is that rarest, most sought-after type of movie: a truly unique and original, absolutely one-of-a-kind horror film, which taps into something dark and deeply unnerving in our collective psyche. It's the sort of gem that horror-loving cinephiles should be celebrating, alongside the likes of Suspiria and Carnival of Souls, yet it has always remained bafflingly obscure, outside of a devoted but small cult following. It's almost unfair to simply call it a horror movie; it's something much more unusual than that. A poetic and haunting journey into nightmares, and an unlikely hybrid of Antonioni and H.P. Lovecraft, Messiah of Evil is a film that pushes the artistic boundaries of its genre in a way that few American horror films attempt, and all on an incredibly low, drive-in-movie budget. It is a film that demands rediscovery. And now, fortunately, Radiance Films is leading that charge, with a stunning new edition of the film – in both limited-edition and standard variants – boasting a beautiful new 4k restoration. Finally, horror fans everywhere will be able to journey to the eerie dreamscape of Point Dune – so let’s take a look at the film itself, and Radiance’s new disc.
THE FILM:
On the surface, Messiah of Evil is about a small seaside town which has been overtaken by some sort of evil force that turns its inhabitants into pale, flesh-eating creatures somewhere between vampires and zombies. But that's just on the surface. Really, this is a film about the oppressive, individuality-crushing nature of suburban small-town America, and the dark undertones of hopelessness, panic, and unease lurking below the nostalgia-induced facade of Americana. The villain in the film is the town itself, and the zombies are just what its inhabitants have allowed themselves to become by embracing its hollow lifestyle. The protagonist is a young woman who has come to the town to find her estranged artist father, whose letters to her have become increasingly panicked and ominous. It appears that he has fallen victim to a Lovecraftian force which is reaching out from the sea and taking control of the town’s entire population; but then again, it's equally possible that there's just no room for a unique, artistic personality in this forcibly-ordinary vision of small-town perfection.
It is somewhat ironic that Messiah of Evil was written, directed, and produced by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, the husband and wife filmmaker duo who – that same year – scored a massive mainstream hit with their screenplay American Graffiti. Messiah is the absolute antithesis of that film: if American Graffiti is all about nostalgic remembrances of growing up in a small suburban town, Messiah of Evil is the nightmare about the parts of that childhood that scarred you, and made you want to escape that town as soon as you could. Both films use similar images of Americana, but to vastly different effects: in Messiah of Evil, classic sights like a shiny new supermarket and a main-street movie theater become oppressive chambers of horror, shot from off-kilter angles that make them seem very unsettling and somehow wrong. A memorable scene in which the zombie-like creatures prowl the supermarket is every bit as subversive a social commentary as anything in Dawn of the Dead, and almost more effective because it's played for serious dread rather than dark humor.
Katz and Huyck have excellent eyes for eerie visuals, and a flawless sense for crafting atmosphere, both of which allow the film to pack a real punch despite its limited production resources. As the two filmmakers have revealed in interviews over the years, the film's style was influenced not by other horror films – indeed, they say they don't particularly like horror films – but by European art cinema. When they were given the opportunity to make a horror movie for the drive-in circuit, they saw the possibilities in making an Antonioni/Fellini-esque art-house nightmare which also fit into American drive-in horror criteria. Nowhere is this ambition more evident than in the film's excellent 2.35:1 cinematography, which uses every inch of the widescreen frame in its wonderfully haunting shot compositions. Many of these compositions make use of the huge, eerie murals that the main character's artist father painted all over the walls of his home and studio. By framing the actors against the paintings, Huyck and Katz further add to the film's feeling of dreamy unreality. The visual lushness and European art-house aesthetic of Messiah of Evil make it feel very much like a contemporary of Dario Argento’s more phantasmagorical films like Suspiria and Inferno, but in fact it predates those films by several years.
It is fairly miraculous that this film exists at all: that they were able to create such an utterly unique fever-dream within the constraints of a drive-in-movie budget, and that they were able to do so with their ambitious art-house vision intact and not dumbed down or made more commercial. There are certainly places where their budgetary limitations show: notably, they ran out money and were unable to film a much more elaborate intended finale, and had to improvise with the fractured but effectively dreamlike conclusion that we wound up with. But what wound up on film still absolutely works, given the slippery dream-logic and Huyck and Katz so deliberately crafted, and these small compromises ultimately feel insignificant compared to how boldly original and audacious the rest of the film feels. The end result is an absolute masterpiece of American indie horror, and there exists nothing else quite like it.
THE RADIANCE SPECIAL EDITION:
Messiah of Evil has always struggled to get the kind of top-tier distribution that it deserves. The VHS era was very unkind to the film, with its stunning 2.35:1 shot compositions brutally cropped down to 4x3 in a way that badly damaged its immaculate visual style, and then the film lapsed into the public domain, and spent most of the DVD era stuck in those same awful pan-n-scan transfers. It briefly enjoyed a widely-available, top-quality special edition in the form of Code Red’s beautiful-for-its-time 35th Anniversary DVD and blu-ray, which presented the film in its original 2.35 aspect ratio for the first time on home media, in a transfer supervised by the filmmakers using what was then the only known surviving 35mm print. But (with the exception of a limited DiabolikDVD-exclusive repress in 2022) that disc has been out of print for many years, and very rare, expensive, and hard to get your hands on. And while it was a beautiful disc for its day (especially given the circumstances), the picture quality on the Code Red release undeniably was held back due to being sourced from a theatrical print that wasn’t quite ideal for a modern HD transfer.
Enter Radiance Films, at long last giving Messiah of Evil another proper wide-release edition, in both limited and standard variants (the difference being a hardbox with a book for the limited edition – the discs themselves are identical). Since the days of the Code Red disc, a far superior 35mm element has been found, and Radiance has painstakingly restored it in 4k. Their new transfer is a revelation: a massive upgrade from Code Red’s which is unquestionably worth a double-dip. While Huyck and Katz’s color-grading on the Code Red disc looked great (and has been pretty faithfully replicated here), that theatrical-print-sourced disc looked quite muddy in dark areas of the screen, with a notable lack of fine detail, and parts of the picture which would disappear into undefined blackness entirely. Radiance’s disc, on the other hand, is rich with fine detail, and the dark areas of the screen have much more nuanced detail and dynamic range with plenty to see within the shadows. This transfer truly allows you to see details and areas of the picture which were invisible before. This new restoration has excellent contrast and saturation levels, doing beautiful justice to the film’s rich color palette in a way that makes it look better than ever. It is a very filmic transfer, and it does not look like Radiance has used any DNR. They simply knocked it out of the park with this restoration: it looks pretty much perfect to my eyes.
The extras have some pros and cons in comparison to the Code Red disc, but all of Radiance’s new extras are absolutely excellent. Let’s get the cons out of the way first, since they are not really Radiance’s fault, but are definitely worth mentioning: Radiance was unable to port over any of the extras from the Code Red edition, which means that we lose Code Red’s excellent half-hour interview with Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, and their audio commentary. I am almost positive that this is due to licensing issues, since Code Red sadly died with the late Olsen brothers, and I suspect that this makes any original content that Code Red produced a legal nightmare (if not an impossibility) to access. Still, it really is a bummer that Huyck and Katz are barely present on the extras for this new disc at all. Katz, who passed away in 2018, is not present in any of the extras, due to the absence of archival material featuring her which Radiance could access, and Huyck is only present in a half-hour audio-only archival podcast interview from 2018. Unfortunately that’s just how the legal realities work sometimes, making special features from past editions inaccessible for newer editions to port over, but this does mean that if you’re a fan of the film who already has the Code Red disc, you should hang onto it alongside this one to keep the exclusive extras.
The new extras that Radiance produced for this set make up for that by being very thorough and excellent. They are all film scholar/historian material diving into the context, production, and legacy of the film, rather than first-hand accounts by the filmmakers, so some might find those first-hand voices missing, but they are outstanding extras. First and foremost there is What the Blood Moon Brings, a new, very thorough almost-one-hour documentary by Kat Ellinger and Dima Ballin, which not only covers the production of the film, but also does scholarly analysis of it and places it within the larger context of various horror subgenres and thematic movements in American independent film. Fans of the film will love it, and it absolutely will expand even the most dedicated fan’s appreciation of the movie in all its nuances. It feels a bit like Severin’s Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched documentary about folk-horror – that kind of a very scholarly and literate analytical documentary. Kat Ellinger then provides an additional video essay specifically about Messiah of Evil’s place within the American Gothic literary tradition, and specifically Female Gothic. It is another extremely valuable and fascinating piece, which acts as a wonderful companion to the larger documentary, and essentially fleshes the doc out to feature length. Rounding out the extras is another film-scholar perspective in the form of an audio commentary from horror film scholars Kim Newman and Stephen Thrower. An excellent roster of new extras, which complement Radiance’s stellar transfer and make this a must-own disc. If you already have the Code Red disc I would not get rid of it, since its exclusive extras featuring Huyck and Katz are extremely valuable, but I think this release is an essential double-dip: it is such a substantial upgrade in every other way that it is well worth it.
IN CONCLUSION
Somehow Messiah of Evil has always stayed just under the radar, remaining a deep-cut and never really growing into the well-known cult classic that it deserves to be. It is time for that to change. Anyone who loves both horror and art-house films should consider it essential viewing, and even people who usually aren’t fans of drive-in horror will likely love it for its ethereal fever-dream style and compelling themes. Part Lovecraft-infused zombie movie, part American existential nightmare, part Antonioni and Fellini homage wrapped up in drive-in trappings, this has got to be one of the most interesting horror films that the 1970s – or any decade – ever produced. And now, after years of erratic distribution, and the previous Code Red edition being far too rare for far too long, Radiance have given us a truly spectacular restoration, widely available again at last. This is an absolute must-purchase disc, if you think this film sounds even remotely interesting. Get it immediately.
- Christopher S. Jordan