Messiah of Evil (1973)
When a young woman travels to a small Californian coastal town to search for her missing father – an artist who has been researching the town’s strange history - she suspects something sinister is afoot. Before long, she discovers the town is home to a mysterious blood cult of moon-worshipping, living-dead people intent on summoning an ancient evil entity from the depths of the ocean… Written and directed by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, Messiah of Evil is surely one of horror cinema’s best kept secrets. Unfurling as a kindred spirit of Carnival of Souls and Night Tide , its story follows outsider characters who exist on the lonely peripheries of society, navigating liminal spaces and wandering, phantom-like, through an uncertain, dreamlike narrative. It’s an utterly bewitching film, replete with striking imagery, eerie lighting and sound design, and saturated in a morose atmosphere. Just the year before, Katz and Huyck had written American Graffiti (directed by George Lucas), a no...