Halloween is coming and wouldn’t you know; there sure are a lot of horror films to be uncovered on Youtube. This includes films that fell into the public domain, potentially due to a lack of interest or reason to renew its copyright notice. From my research, Messiah of Evil (1973) has long fallen into patent limbo, the most recent Blu-Ray release is out-of-print, and the directors behind it don't own a print.
So far, Illicit Film Club hasn’t touched on the sprawl of films in the public domain. If you’re unaware of what that means, it means a piece of art’s alloted copyright protection has lapsed, and it then belongs to the public. It’s also a complex issue. I’m nowhere near understanding how each country’s copyright laws function, let alone puzzling out what actually is and isn't considered “public domain”.
Husband-and-wife team Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck are part of cinema history, thanks to a close professional relationship with George Lucas: co-writing American Graffiti (1973), script-doctoring Star Wars (1977) and being part of the Indiana Jones brain trust. (It ain’t all good: they pitched the monkey-brain dinner in Temple of Doom (1984). This was a bad idea then, and remains a bad idea today.) Before becoming part of Movie Brat legend, Katz and Huyck were two Los Angelenos finding their creative bearings. Katz experimented in stop-motion, fucking about with Barbies a few decades before Todd Haynes (A Day in the Life of Barbie and Ken, year unknown). Huyck rewrote dialogue on Hammer Horror releases for US audiences, helping turn Witchfinder General (1968) into The Conqueror Worm (1968).
Katz and Huyck’s directing feature debut came through a number of extenuating circumstances: the rise of the horror cheapie, Hollywood taking chances on film graduates, Katz and Huyck being asked to write a script under one condition (make sure it was a horror). They took the job, making it in between stints polishing off the script for American Graffiti. One year after the workprint was taken away from Katz and Huyck in a U-Haul van and two years after filming finished, Messiah of Evil was released. And critically neglected. (Variety: "A pretentious horror cheapie.") Then, it was re-released under different names as the copyright lapsed: Dead People, Return of the Living Dead, Revenge of the Screaming Dead. In the end, Katz and Huyck’s became notorious for Howard the Duck (1986), a Marvel movie about a talking duck that plays guitar and fucks.
However, way more people should know about Katz and Huyck because of Messiah of Evil. From the opening moments, you’re dropped into a cold open where a nameless frightened thirty-something (played by The Warriors director Walter Hill) seeks solace from a teenage girl. She takes him in, cradles him and proceeds to slit his throat. This graphic scene is not explained by the end of the film, and we never get a backstory for Hill’s character. All we know is he’s running from something, and whatever it is, you should be worried about it.
After a paranoid prologue (“There’s so little time left, you’ve got to listen...”), we’re thrown into the story. Arletty (Marianna Hill) arrives at Point Dune, a town on the coast of California, looking for her artist father (Royal Dano). Estranged from his daughter, he communicates only through letters, each one slowly becoming more erratic; she’s there to find out just what’s wrong with him. However, he’s not there when Arletty arrives at his creepily painted pop-art studio, which looks like the Tanz Dance Akademie for beach-bums. Where is Arletty’s father? Who is the aristocratic bullshit-artist (Michael Greer) in town with two younger women? What’s the deal with this weird coastal town and its inhabitants?
There’s a turn in the film’s second act that is disgusting and eerie, but leaves you wondering whether it’s a story about zombies, cannibalism, or something different, and it does not entirely jibe with the earlier scenes of ritual murders. But Messiah of Evil doesn’t need to make sense. From the moment Walter Hill dies on-screen, it’s evident that it’s reaching for something super-surreal, even illogical. Huyck and Katz knowingly litter the film with tributes to their film school inspirations: Antonioni here, Hitchcock there, a scene that transforms Godard’s silliest moment from Pierrot le fou (1965) into something disturbing.
Interestingly, Messiah feels closer to Italy’s giallo films, even if it predates Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) by four years. Like that absurd classic, it stacks incredibly weird setpieces and mythology at a rapid pace: cannibalism in the meat aisle of a 24/7 supermarket; rats being eaten alive; gothic windows filled with mysterious shadows; talk of old Gods and blood moons that have existed long before California did. By the culmination, it feels genuinely overwhelming, and the unknowability of it all making sense is scarier than anything ever connecting.
The filmmakers never got to finish making the film due to budget constraints, and it does show: the finale turns into a strange, anticlimactic showcase of people running, standing and looking off into the distance. It’s not quite the Grand Guignol ordeal Huyck and Katz intended to end the film on. ($15,000 of the film’s intended budget was quietly stolen by investors, who spent it on re-roofing their houses.) But, like many of the filmmakers’ headaches, it helped to make Messiah of Evil even more idiosyncratic, leaving you feeling like this creepy film about unexplainable forces is being distorted further by things you can’t see.
With the film being in the public domain, it has an unenviable status: freely available yet wiped from any mainstream horror movie canon. It does not necessarily belong in the mainstream: its unholy, odd energy allows it to be the cult object whose soundtrack gets released on limited edition vinyl to a passionate, small audience. But it’s there, whenever you need it. And it’s like nothing else.
ELSEWHERE ON YOUTUBE:
Prince and the New Power Generation ‘Gett Off’ (Live at the MTV VMAs 91)
Recently, I was considering what my favourite three-song run is on any album - a great excuse to revisit the Prince discography. And Prince live performances, like this famous, orgiastic, ass-less (!) take on a mid-period classic at the ‘91 VMAs. If you’re wondering, my favourite three-song run is right at the end of Sign O’ The Times. God level shit.
Dailies: SoHo's Twin Peaks Farmer - Henrik Vibskov
As previously mentioned, I am obsessed with searching for clothes on eBay. This week, it’s Danish designer Henrik Vibskov that’s been popping up in my constant searches for disregarded designer gems. The only reason I’m bringing up this video of him chatting about his family’s history in pig farming is for someone to read this and hook me up with this fleece from his FW13 collection. HMU, as always.