H.P. Lovecraft meets "Night of the Living Dead
In the California town of Pointe Dune, Arletty Lang (Marianna Hill) is looking for her reclusive artist father (Royal Dano.) So, what's with the undead town's people? And who is the Messiah of Evil?Night of the Living Dead meets the works of H.P. Lovecraft in Will ( writer of"American Graffiti") Hyuck's underrated cult classic. While you won't finds piles of gore here, you will find a creeping sense of dread and a nice little Gothic horror tale made for about $80,000 or $100,000.
What works in the movie,as I mentioned already, is the sense of dread. You know there's something about the townspeople-they are flat, emotionless, pale, and bleeding from the eyes. When something does happen, it leaves an impression, especially in two set pieces: one in a supermarket, the other in a movie theater. The movie also gets away with some social commentary. The supermarket scene-the undead feasting upon uncooked meat-anticipates Romero's commentary on consumerism found in his masterpiece Dawn of the Dead. Also, like Let's Scare Jessica to Death, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, I Drink Your Blood, and Simon, King of the Witches, "Messiah of Evil" serves as a commentary of the hippie movement. Here, the dead seem to be not only a veiled commentary on consumerism gone mad, but also the fact that in the end, the hippie movement, no matter how it denied it, was a sense of conformity.
The movie does have it's flaws-poor acting, an annoying, warbly song-but the one flaw that hurts the movie some is the narration. We don't need a narrator to explain what's going on here people. Still, it's an underrated gem, and deserves a look.
*update: The new special edition removes the annoying song, so the movie has been bumped up a star.
score 9/10
lovecraft231 25 September 2008
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1951307/35658
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