Messiah of Evil
Messiah of Evil is a 1973 film from the USA, directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, running 90 minutes. reelscum files it under zombie and occult & satanic panic.
- Year
- 1973 · 1970s films
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 90 min
- Director
- Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (51/100)
- Also known as
- Revenge of the Screaming Dead · Messiah of Evil: The Second Coming · Blood Virgin · Deep Swamp · Messiah of the Evil Dead · Messiah of Evil
Defined in the glossary: Zombie, Occult & satanic panic
Made by the couple who then wrote American Graffiti. A nightmare that never explains itself.
Written and directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who went on to write American Graffiti and the second Indiana Jones, which is not what you would guess from this fever dream. A young woman arrives in the coastal town of Point Dune looking for her painter father and finds the locals slowly turning into something moon-driven and hungry. There is barely a plot, only atmosphere: a supermarket at night, a cinema that fills up behind an oblivious woman, red light where there should not be any. The distributor hacked it to pieces and slapped a dozen titles on it, so every surviving print is compromised, and it is still one of the great American mood-horrors. See it for the two or three set-pieces that people have been quietly stealing for fifty years.
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