Besides the occasional shadow person who creeps into my room once a fortnight, nothing paralyzes me quite like deciding what to watch on Oct. 31. In my mind, Halloween is a horror movie marathon month where veering in and out of subgenres and quality metrics is highly encouraged. So how do you close it out on actual Halloween?
I’ve come to think the answer might always be Messiah of Evil. Where else can you get Stephen King, Cannibal Holocaust, giallo, Possession, and eldritch nightmares all rolled into one? More than 50 years after its feeble release, when it was overlooked by audiences and eye-rolled at by critics, the film looks like a major synthesis of everything happening in horror up to the 1970s and a predecessor to everything else that would come.
Written and directed by married couple Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck (significantly better known for writing American Graffiti, Temple of Doom, Howard the Duck, and doing punch-ups on Star Wars) Messiah of Evil doesn’t feel too far off from George Lucas’ own exploration and remixing of genre tropes. But instead of 1930s sci-fi serials, Katz and Huyck set out to sew together the ultimate Frankenstein’s monster of literary and cinematic horror. The plot does not reinvent the wheel: When Arletty visits a small coastal town to reconnect with her estranged father Joseph, she becomes embroiled in the exploits of Thom, a mythology buff whose digging into a local cannibalism legend will get most of them killed. If “dream logic” sounds like a crutch narratively limp horror movies use to skate by, take my word for it: this is a movie that feels like being all-too-awake, drenched in sweat and choking up a little vom at 3 a.m. Everything is off from minute one and only gets weirder.
As Arletty, Thom, and their two other disposable cohorts peel back the layers of Point Dune, Katz and Huyck lead us through a house of mirrors that is at once appealingly low-budget and tricked out with master artistry. There are moments in Messiah of Evil where stiff performance and overdramatic shadows send it deep into Tubi’s ripped-from the VHS vintage horror bin section. Then Arletty and Thom might wander into Joseph’s Escher-esque home, filled with expressionistic ink portraits and other oddball art, and you’d swear you’ve just stumbled into a Euro horror movie. The soundtrack and provocative outfits never let you forget this is the swinging ’70s, yet a wraparound narration, unabashedly gothic, curdles the miasmic drama into something out of Poe or Lovecraft. Then there’s a set piece that you’d only expect to ever see in a Wes Craven picture. It’s weird!
Messiah of Evil wouldn’t be anyone’s 2026 definition of “elevated horror,” but it certainly has the bona fides: cinematographer Stephen Katz, who graduated from the Roger Corman school of low-budget genre grime to later become a collaborator of director John Landis, shoots above his weight class with every frame. Same goes for production designer Jack Fisk, who was just getting started with Messiah of Evil, would later work on Carrie for Brian de Palma (and meet his wife Sissy Spacek on set), and become a four-time Oscar nominee thanks to work with David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Josh Safdie, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Terrence Malick. Eraserheadheads will no doubt see shots in Messiah of Evil that will make them exclaim “LYNCHIAN!” but let it be said that Katz and Huyck’s movie predates the director’s debut by six years.
I would never recommend a pure art film on All Hallow’s Eve. Not the right vibe. But again, Messiah of Evil gives you everything, and that includes car mechanics flopping over in pools of blood, flash-frame stabbings that would make Dario Argento giggle, and a so-creepy-it’s-funny moment where one eventual victim wanders into a grocery store to find zombified locales chowing down on raw sirloin by the meat counter. Not surprising, distributors desperate to sell Messiah of Evil to the mass public years after it was in the can retitled it Return of the Living Dead for at least one release.
For all its jagged edges, Messiah of Evil never feels like a cultural mash-up or a childhood fantasy of playing with every toy in the box. In the same way Katz and Huyck built Temple of Doom and Star Wars with reverence, but propelled them forward with their own logic, the cake-and-eat-it-too approach to Messiah of Evil coheres in the end. It is genuinely scary because anything really could happen next. And if anything is seeping through its crack, it might be the fire and brimstone of hell itself. On Halloween, that’s the dream.
Messiah of Evil is currently streaming on Shudder and Prime Video, and for free with ads on Tubi and Pluto TV.