Writer's Note: For my latest Flashback Friday, I decided to take a look at two semi-obscure 70's-era flicks, both of which are exquisitely weird, to say the least. This one has never been published anywhere- lucky you!
Okay, maybe so- though I don't profess to know what all of you are into out there (and don't want to know, quite frankly) but I'm talking intentionally horrific, not silly and/or cartoonish. Though the heart-ripping in IJ&TTOD certainly comes close, and, if I remember correctly, was one of the films that brought the whole PG-13 thing into being, for better or worse.
Anyway, the writers in question are Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, the rare husband-and-wife writing team, which has always been a source of fascination for me. It seems like you'd get sick of each other after a while, you know?
And writing is such a singular thing, so the idea of a couple writing something together is totally foreign territory. I can almost wrap my head around brothers or sisters doing it- they fight anyway, and usually end up forgiving each other (I know, I have several)- and I'm well-aware that most TV shows are written by committee, but a husband and wife? Seems like a recipe for disaster to me. What's next- human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!???
Okay, moving on...
As far as I can tell via the internet, the two are still a married couple, and if two people can survive Howard the Duck, as far as I can tell, they can survive anything. (I should talk- I own it on DVD, lol.) Huyck also directed that bad-movie gem, along with several other of their collaborations, including the Dudley Moore/Eddie Murphy vehicle, Best Defense and French Postcards, which I'm not familiar with, but features an interesting cast that includes a young Mandy Patinkin and Debra Winger.
Messiah of Evil, however, is the only one they directed together, and after seeing it, I can see why. It's a great, weird little movie, but the tone is nothing if not a bit schizophrenic, as if it can't quite decide where it's going at any given time. That meandering leads to something akin to David Lynch territory, but not quite THAT good, mind you, or as purposefully bizarre. It's more like the film lurches into being strange than it intends to be that way, if that makes any sense.
For one thing, the art direction in this thing is nothing short of spectacular, particularly at the protagonist's artist father's house, which is covered with more super-eye-catching art that you can shake a Suspiria at- and mind you, this came out years before that landmark in horror cinema. Not that it's nowhere near as good as that all-time classic, but it definitely preconfigures the whole artsy, colorful approach that would come to define Dario Argento's work in the years to come.
The story, such as it is, involves Arletty, played by Marianna Hill, then best-known for her work on damn-near every 60's TV show known to man, but who will be a more familiar face to horror fans from Black Zoo, The Baby, Schizoid and the immortal Blood Beach. Hill had some notable brushes with fame, however, popping up in supporting roles alongside Elvis in Paradise, Hawaii Style and Roustabout, Robert Forster in the Tarantino fave Medium Cool, Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, and even as a Corleone in The Godfather II.
Alas, her career never quite took off, though she continued to work steadily throughout the late 70's and early 80's before petering out shortly thereafter. Be that as it may, she has a nice quality here, one that wouldn't at all be out of place in a 70's-era Jess Franco flick- think Soledad Miranda, circa Vampyros Lesbos or She Kills in Ecstasy. In other words, for those unfamiliar with Miranda (which I recommend you rectify sooner than later), she seems like someone constantly living in a waking dream. (Shades also of Candace Hilligoss in Carnival of Souls, which I'm guessing may not have been unintentional.)
Anyway, Arletty arrives in the small coastal town of Point Dune in California, which is not unlike Antonio Bay in John Carpenter's classic The Fog, which this also isn't too far removed from. (Ditto the work of author H.P. Lovecraft.) She's looking for her missing artist father, but doesn't get much help from the locals, all of whom act very strangely, especially the town drunk, Charlie (prolific character actor Elisha Cook, Jr, House on Haunted Hill, Rosemary's Baby), who warns of the impending "Blood Moon" and tells Arletty to leave town before it's too late, implying that it already is for her father.
Arletty also runs afoul of the hipster/swinger type named Thom, because Tom isn't pretentious enough. Interestingly, the role is played by the openly gay Michael Greer, a former cabaret performer who did shows with none other than Judy Garland, and who did an impression of Bette Davis that was so spot-on he was brought in to dub her lines in several movies when she was unavailable at the time!
Unfortunately, Greer's being out of the closet in a time where such things were more frowned upon tended to limit his film and TV roles to stereotypically "gay" ones like drag queens in movies like the Bette Midler vehicle The Rose, though he continued to do the cabaret thing for three decades, and ghost-write comedy for the likes of Phyllis Diller, Debbie Reynolds and Rip Taylor. Indeed, Messiah would mark his last major "leading man" role, but what a one to go out on!
Thom rolls into Point Dune accompanied by not one-but two lovely ladies: the melancholy, petulant, older Laura (Anitra Ford, of The Big Bird Cage and Invasion of the Bee Girls "fame"- though she did have a small role in the Burt Reynolds prison football movie The Longest Yard) and the jail-baity Toni (the delightfully-named Joy Bang, who, alas, wasn't a former porn star, but was featured in the likes of Pretty Maids All in a Row, Night of the Cobra Woman and the Woody Allen/Diane Keaton flick Play It Again, Sam).
Laura doesn't seem too on-board with the whole swinging lifestyle thing and is less-than-enthused when Thom takes an interest in yet another woman- the aforementioned Arletty. At first, his interest seems more related to her father, who he is also in town looking for, as he is a big fan of his art, but it quickly shifts to Arletty herself, much to Laura's chagrin.
The not-so-groovy threesome eventually end up crashing alongside Arletty at her dad's pad, which is covered wall-to-wall in his hallucination-inducing artwork, which is something to see. Interestingly, the art director was the renowned Jack Fisk, who would go onto work alongside none other than David Lynch, beginning with his short films and continuing on through his delightfully bizarre debut feature, Eraserhead, in which Fisk also played the "Man in the Planet," and movies like The Straight Story and Mulholland Drive. The art featured in this movie was reportedly painted by Katz' college roommate, by the way.
It doesn't take long before freaky stuff starts to happen, and the bodies start dropping. But will they stay dropped? Though the film stops short of going too much into detail, the end result seems to be a bloodthirsty cult of townspeople infected by something or the other than seems to go back to the early days of the town, when a Donner Party survivor and self-proclaimed "messiah" (also played by Greer, who implied his present-day character might be a relative of the "Dark Stranger") arrived to "spread his religion."
Ultimately, the film plays like a hybrid of a zombie and a cannibal flick, with some genuinely creepy scenes set in a seemingly-deserted supermarket and, in the film's most memorable set-piece, a movie theater, which must have played like gangbusters at the time in one. The film, like most 70's horror, does move at a slower pace than those zombies, but the general atmosphere of dread and foreboding is so strong and unrelenting that you might not mind in this case.
I'll allow that the film could have done with some judicious editing, to be sure, but overall, I enjoyed it, thanks to that anything-can-happen-at-anytime vibe and undeniable weirdness throughout. Like I said, if you're a David Lynch or Dario Argento fan, or are looking for something in the vein of Carnival of Souls, you could do a lot worse. It's a shame Huyck and Katz didn't do more horror- it would have been interesting to see what they came up with next.
Meanwhile, we have Oliver Stone's gloriously wacked-out debut feature, Seizure, aka Queen of Evil. Just trying to describe this one will be quite an endeavor. It's like something out of one of SNL character Stefan's fever dreams- this one has everything! A hallucinating writer played by "Dark Shadows"-vet Jonathan Frid; Warhol "Factory Girl" Mary Woronov in a bikini; TV "Friends" Ross and Monica Geller's mom, Judy, aka Christina Pickles as a beleaguered wife with the biggest necklace you'll ever see; former sex symbol Troy Donohue as a pervy swinger-type; two-time Bond Girl Martine Beswick as the Queen of Evil; a giant, dark, scar-faced executioner with an axe and a menacing midget named Spider played by none other than "Fantasy Island" star Hervé Villechaize!
If that description doesn't make you want to see this, nothing will, but to be fair, the film isn't as fun as I probably made it sound there. Don't get me wrong, it's a hoot-and-a-half, for sure, but like a lot of 70's flicks, it does have its slow moments. Now, as then, TBH, 70's movies are a decidedly acquired taste. I think because of the aforementioned Tarantino's affection for the era, many younger viewers may be disappointed at how slow the pacing of a lot of these movies are, but I'm not gonna lie- I love this sort of thing, even while I allow that, being a child of the 80's, that much-more fast-paced era is more my jam.
That said, for a debut feature by no less than Oliver Stone, this has a lot to offer, and is certainly his most out-there feature, next to perhaps the decidedly more frantic Natural Born Killers, which is like the biggest-budget student film ever, and I actually mean that as a compliment. (Perhaps I'll get into that one in a future review.) While it may be slower-paced, it does, like Messiah, have a dream-like quality that isn't easy to achieve, which makes sense, as it's one of those dream-within-a-dream type movies, where a character's dream comes true in "reality."
Indeed, that's basically the whole plot: a struggling author with writer's block has a nightmare about three evil figures- an evil woman and her psychotic sidekicks, Spider and Jackal- that soon seem to come to life in the "real" world. But is it a dream, or is it happening for real? You can probably guess the answer, but the journey is something, that's for sure.
Obviously, it being his first feature, this isn't quite the Oliver Stone we all know and some of us love, but it's also not too far removed from it, either, with some definitely over-the-top qualities that would later mark his most ambitious works later on. It has a charming low-budget, by-the-seat-of-our-pants vibe to it where it almost seems made up while it was being filmed, which may well be the case to a certain degree. Whether or not that works for you is up to the viewer, but I dug it overall, and that cast is something.
So, there you go- a nice little double-feature for the next time you're feeling out-of-sorts and not quite sure of the fabric of your reality. They're not perfect films, and there's definitely room for improvement, but they are unique and well-worth checking out for the filmically adventurous. I'm sure you know who you are.
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