Messiah of Evil (1974) Synopsis

A man (Walter Hill) runs frantically down a deserted residential street at night, from some unseen threat. A doorway in a walled-in yard opens, and a girl wordlessly allows the man to come in. He collapses next a swimming pool, exhausted, and the girl comes to his side, seemingly to help him. Instead, she suddenly produces a strait razor and slashes his throat.A vague female figure walks down a long hallway, while we hear her voice narrating. She is Arletty (Marianna Hill), confined to a mental institution. She warns of a town called Point Dume, where the moon turned blood red and caused some kind of change to come upon the residents. "They'll take you one by one and no one will hear your scream!" she says. The movie proceeds in flashback, with Arletty narrating occasionally in voice-over.Arletty explains that she was originally traveling to Point Dume to make contact with her father, a painter who lived and worked there in a beach house. He had stopped communicating with Arletty after a series of letters that became more and more bizarre, as he seemed threatened by some unexplained illness or madness. On her way to Point Dume, she stops for gas at an isolated Mobil station, where she finds the lone attendant (Charles Dierkop) firing a gun into the darkness at some unseen target. He holsters the gun and comes to pump Arletty's gas, when a pickup truck driven by an odd looking albino man (Bennie Robinson) also pulls up. While refueling the truck, the attendant surreptitiously looks under a tarp in the back and discovers two dead bodies, one with the eyes ripped out and the other being the man from the beginning of the film with the slashed throat. He says nothing, but tries to get rid of Arletty quickly, sending her away without even paying for her gas. Some time after she leaves, the attendant is murdered inside the service station, which has its lights turned off at the same time, when a strange figure (Willard Huyck, the director) suddenly leaps out of the car he's working on.Arletty goes to her father's house and finds it abandoned. The walls are elaborately decorated with eerie murals depicting life-size human figures, and Arletty finds a journal her father kept where he discusses a sickness he seems to be enduring that borders on madness. Desperate to make contact with someone who may know his whereabouts, she goes into town the next day to an art gallery that used to sell his work, only to find that they now claim they never sold his art. The gallery curator refers her to three people who he says were just in the gallery earlier that day also looking for her father, and Arletty locates them at a local motel. They are Thom (Michael Greer), Toni (Joy Bang), and Laura (Anitra Ford), and when Arletty enters their room, they are interviewing a local vagrant (Elisha Cook, Jr.), who relates a story passed on to him by his father about a time when the moon turned blood red and caused the locals to revert to savage acts of violence. Thom presses him to elaborate, but he becomes afraid and leaves hurriedly.Thom explains to Arletty that he is a foreign aristocrat, a collector of regional legends, and a fan of her father's work. He says he stopped by the gallery and they had his work displayed in the window, but refused to sell it to him, which contradicts the gallery attendant's statement that they never carried her father's work. After Arletty leaves, she's stopped by the vagrant, who warns her that if she encounters her father, she must burn him in order to avoid becoming his victim. The next day, Arletty awakens to find Thom and the two women are in her father's house with her. Thom explains that the old man was found dead later that day, seemingly eaten by animals, and all the local motels suddenly refused to rent them a room, so they had nowhere to go.Arletty allows them to stay, and Thom seems to take an interest in her, which causes Laura to become annoyed and jealous. She tells Toni that she's leaving, and after setting out on foot, a vehicle stops to offer her a ride. It's the same pickup truck driven by the albino, with a small group of men sitting in the back who are staring emotionless up at the sky. Laura decides to accept the ride, but changes her mind once the albino pulls a mouse out of his pocket and eats it alive. She asks to be let out, and she walks the rest of the way to town on foot. She finds the town deserted, and she follows a lone figure into a Ralphs supermarket. Unable to attract the man's attention, she follows him through the market until she discovers a group of townsfolk gathered around a meat cooler, ravenously devouring the raw meat like animals. They suddenly notice her and chase her until they have her cornered, dragging her to the floor and eating her alive.The next day, Arletty is summoned by the police to identify her father's body, which has been discovered on the beach. Arletty is distraught, but behaving strangely. Toni becomes bored, and Thom sends her into town with the car so she can go to the movies. Back at the house, Arletty discovers that she is bleeding from her ear, and she has a strange experience where she burns her hand on the hot stove but doesn't feel any pain. She confides in Thom that the body on the beach was not her father, something she knows because she didn't recognize his hands. Thom suddenly becomes concerned about Toni.In town, Toni attends a screening of a movie called "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye". She buys a ticket from a ticket booth holder (Gloria Katz) who barely acknowledges her, and finds the rest of the lobby deserted. The minute she walks in, the attendant puts up a "closed" sign, and the lights on the marquee are turned out. Toni finds the large theater empty except for one or two other patrons. Having a seat in the center near the front, she watches a movie, a trailer for "Gone With the West", while the camera reveals more and more of the ghoulish townsfolk, including the albino and the ticket holder, gathering in the seats behind her, until the theater is nearly full. Finally two of the ghouls take a seat on either side of Toni, and she notices they are bleeding from the eyes. Suddenly she turns around and realizes just how many of the strange people are in there with her and starts to panic, rushing for the exits, which are now blocked from the other side. Trapped inside with the ghouls, the movie ends, the lights turn on, and the screen goes white, and suddenly they rush at her and eat her while she screams.Thom, who has arrived in town too late to help Toni, sees some of the strange townspeople. Two police officers in riot gear arrive and order a small crowd of them to disperse, after which the crowd advances on them. They start firing into them, but the ghouls are unaffected by the bullets. Suddenly, one of the officers starts bleeding from the eyes, somehow infected by the same thing the townsfolk have. The normal officer fires on him and runs off scared, but the other shoots him in the back. The mob, including the officer's former partner, descends on him and they eat his corpse. Thom runs off and is chased by a few of the mob. One of them attacks him and claws at his neck, but he is able to break away. He encounters a scared but normal woman who tells Thom her family and friends fell prey to the ghouls, but she instantly transforms as they speak, bleeding from her eyes.Meanwhile, Arletty discovers that the signs of her infection have worsened. She pokes a pin into her leg and cannot feel it, and she vomits a horde of insects and lizards into the sink. Finding someone else in the house with her, she realizes it is her father (Royal Dano), who tells her that the townspeople have been infected by a century-old curse brought on by a "dark stranger" who rode into town on a horse 100 years ago. A survivor of the Donner Party, this stranger brought with him a strange curse of cannibalism, after which he killed a hunter to make his point, and walked into the sea, promising to return in 100 years when the moon turned blood red. He warns Arletty to leave, but she refuses to go without him, at which point he becomes violent and tries to attack her. Remembering the words of the vagrant, Arletty sets him on fire and frees him from the undead curse.Thom returns to the house and discovers the charred body, at which point a terrified Arletty attacks him and stabs his arm with scissors. Thom manages to calm her and they bandage his wound, but ghouls start breaking into the house and trying to surround them. They escape to the beach, where they find others waiting for the arrival of the "dark stranger". Trapped by the mass of ghouls, who appear unaffected by the sunlight, they swim out into the water, where Thom drowns due to his wounded arm.The film ends with Arletty back in the institution, where her voice-over narration informs us the ghouls pulled her from the water and dressed her in a gown as an offering to the dark stranger, who returned as predicted. She says he let her go in order to carry his story to others, which is why she was institutionalized. Unable to convince anyone that she's sane, Arletty is forced to wait in the asylum until the undead infection that began in Point Dume reaches the rest of the world, plunging it into chaos and bloodshed. It is also implied that the contagion may have already reached the asylum.

A man (Walter Hill) runs frantically down a deserted residential street at night, from some unseen threat. A doorway in a walled-in yard opens, and a girl wordlessly allows the man to come in. He collapses next a swimming pool, exhausted, and the girl comes to his side, seemingly to help him. Instead, she suddenly produces a strait razor and slashes his throat.A vague female figure walks down a long hallway, while we hear her voice narrating. She is Arletty (Marianna Hill), confined to a mental institution. She warns of a town called Point Dume, where the moon turned blood red and caused some kind of change to come upon the residents. "They'll take you one by one and no one will hear your scream!" she says. The movie proceeds in flashback, with Arletty narrating occasionally in voice-over.Arletty explains that she was originally traveling to Point Dume to make contact with her father, a painter who lived and worked there in a beach house. He had stopped communicating with Arletty after a series of letters that became more and more bizarre, as he seemed threatened by some unexplained illness or madness. On her way to Point Dume, she stops for gas at an isolated Mobil station, where she finds the lone attendant (Charles Dierkop) firing a gun into the darkness at some unseen target. He holsters the gun and comes to pump Arletty's gas, when a pickup truck driven by an odd looking albino man (Bennie Robinson) also pulls up. While refueling the truck, the attendant surreptitiously looks under a tarp in the back and discovers two dead bodies, one with the eyes ripped out and the other being the man from the beginning of the film with the slashed throat. He says nothing, but tries to get rid of Arletty quickly, sending her away without even paying for her gas. Some time after she leaves, the attendant is murdered inside the service station, which has its lights turned off at the same time, when a strange figure (Willard Huyck, the director) suddenly leaps out of the car he's working on.Arletty goes to her father's house and finds it abandoned. The walls are elaborately decorated with eerie murals depicting life-size human figures, and Arletty finds a journal her father kept where he discusses a sickness he seems to be enduring that borders on madness. Desperate to make contact with someone who may know his whereabouts, she goes into town the next day to an art gallery that used to sell his work, only to find that they now claim they never sold his art. The gallery curator refers her to three people who he says were just in the gallery earlier that day also looking for her father, and Arletty locates them at a local motel. They are Thom (Michael Greer), Toni (Joy Bang), and Laura (Anitra Ford), and when Arletty enters their room, they are interviewing a local vagrant (Elisha Cook, Jr.), who relates a story passed on to him by his father about a time when the moon turned blood red and caused the locals to revert to savage acts of violence. Thom presses him to elaborate, but he becomes afraid and leaves hurriedly.Thom explains to Arletty that he is a foreign aristocrat, a collector of regional legends, and a fan of her father's work. He says he stopped by the gallery and they had his work displayed in the window, but refused to sell it to him, which contradicts the gallery attendant's statement that they never carried her father's work. After Arletty leaves, she's stopped by the vagrant, who warns her that if she encounters her father, she must burn him in order to avoid becoming his victim. The next day, Arletty awakens to find Thom and the two women are in her father's house with her. Thom explains that the old man was found dead later that day, seemingly eaten by animals, and all the local motels suddenly refused to rent them a room, so they had nowhere to go.Arletty allows them to stay, and Thom seems to take an interest in her, which causes Laura to become annoyed and jealous. She tells Toni that she's leaving, and after setting out on foot, a vehicle stops to offer her a ride. It's the same pickup truck driven by the albino, with a small group of men sitting in the back who are staring emotionless up at the sky. Laura decides to accept the ride, but changes her mind once the albino pulls a mouse out of his pocket and eats it alive. She asks to be let out, and she walks the rest of the way to town on foot. She finds the town deserted, and she follows a lone figure into a Ralphs supermarket. Unable to attract the man's attention, she follows him through the market until she discovers a group of townsfolk gathered around a meat cooler, ravenously devouring the raw meat like animals. They suddenly notice her and chase her until they have her cornered, dragging her to the floor and eating her alive.The next day, Arletty is summoned by the police to identify her father's body, which has been discovered on the beach. Arletty is distraught, but behaving strangely. Toni becomes bored, and Thom sends her into town with the car so she can go to the movies. Back at the house, Arletty discovers that she is bleeding from her ear, and she has a strange experience where she burns her hand on the hot stove but doesn't feel any pain. She confides in Thom that the body on the beach was not her father, something she knows because she didn't recognize his hands. Thom suddenly becomes concerned about Toni.In town, Toni attends a screening of a movie called "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye". She buys a ticket from a ticket booth holder (Gloria Katz) who barely acknowledges her, and finds the rest of the lobby deserted. The minute she walks in, the attendant puts up a "closed" sign, and the lights on the marquee are turned out. Toni finds the large theater empty except for one or two other patrons. Having a seat in the center near the front, she watches a movie, a trailer for "Gone With the West", while the camera reveals more and more of the ghoulish townsfolk, including the albino and the ticket holder, gathering in the seats behind her, until the theater is nearly full. Finally two of the ghouls take a seat on either side of Toni, and she notices they are bleeding from the eyes. Suddenly she turns around and realizes just how many of the strange people are in there with her and starts to panic, rushing for the exits, which are now blocked from the other side. Trapped inside with the ghouls, the movie ends, the lights turn on, and the screen goes white, and suddenly they rush at her and eat her while she screams.Thom, who has arrived in town too late to help Toni, sees some of the strange townspeople. Two police officers in riot gear arrive and order a small crowd of them to disperse, after which the crowd advances on them. They start firing into them, but the ghouls are unaffected by the bullets. Suddenly, one of the officers starts bleeding from the eyes, somehow infected by the same thing the townsfolk have. The normal officer fires on him and runs off scared, but the other shoots him in the back. The mob, including the officer's former partner, descends on him and they eat his corpse. Thom runs off and is chased by a few of the mob. One of them attacks him and claws at his neck, but he is able to break away. He encounters a scared but normal woman who tells Thom her family and friends fell prey to the ghouls, but she instantly transforms as they speak, bleeding from her eyes.Meanwhile, Arletty discovers that the signs of her infection have worsened. She pokes a pin into her leg and cannot feel it, and she vomits a horde of insects and lizards into the sink. Finding someone else in the house with her, she realizes it is her father (Royal Dano), who tells her that the townspeople have been infected by a century-old curse brought on by a "dark stranger" who rode into town on a horse 100 years ago. A survivor of the Donner Party, this stranger brought with him a strange curse of cannibalism, after which he killed a hunter to make his point, and walked into the sea, promising to return in 100 years when the moon turned blood red. He warns Arletty to leave, but she refuses to go without him, at which point he becomes violent and tries to attack her. Remembering the words of the vagrant, Arletty sets him on fire and frees him from the undead curse.Thom returns to the house and discovers the charred body, at which point a terrified Arletty attacks him and stabs his arm with scissors. Thom manages to calm her and they bandage his wound, but ghouls start breaking into the house and trying to surround them. They escape to the beach, where they find others waiting for the arrival of the "dark stranger". Trapped by the mass of ghouls, who appear unaffected by the sunlight, they swim out into the water, where Thom drowns due to his wounded arm.The film ends with Arletty back in the institution, where her voice-over narration informs us the ghouls pulled her from the water and dressed her in a gown as an offering to the dark stranger, who returned as predicted. She says he let her go in order to carry his story to others, which is why she was institutionalized. Unable to convince anyone that she's sane, Arletty is forced to wait in the asylum until the undead infection that began in Point Dume reaches the rest of the world, plunging it into chaos and bloodshed. It is also implied that the contagion may have already reached the asylum.

Published Time: 2022-01-20 00:22:17