11 December 2024
Messiah of Evil (1973)
90 min.
Directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz.
With Marianna Hill, Michael Greer, Joy Bang, Anitra Ford, Royal Dano, Elisha Cook, Jr., Charles Dierkop, Bennie Robinson.
An excellent, vastly neglected drive-in style horror which proves to be an imaginative zombie gem.

Arletty (Hill) travels to the small California town of Point Dune to visit her father, but arrives to find the poor man missing and the locals mysterious and uncooperative.

After she meets wayward Thom (Greer), the two set out to discover the truth about Arletty's father. But instead they uncover a town inhabited by the flesh eating undead!

Clearly inspired by Romero's Night of the Living Dead - this owes its hypnotic sleepwalking vibe in part at least to 1971's Let's Scare Jessica to Death.

Thoroughly trancelike, with some superb original scenes including a cool mass zombie rush attack in a movie theater and an atmospheric living dead chase through a neon supermarket.

Also known as either Dead People or Revenge of the Screaming Dead.

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