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Sooie EVIL Sooie! “Pig Killer” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures & Darkstar Pictures / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

On This Farm There Was a “PIg Killer” now on Blu-ray!

Pig ranching landowner Robert “Willy” Pickton’s compulsions to pick up unprincipled women involved in prostitution and drugs and horrifically rape and murder them in the name of salvation stems from a severely abusive childhood with the father’s physically and mentally tormenting as well as a scornful mother sexually assaulting him.  Willy’s fanatical obsession threatens his drug-fueled, orgy-laden, rock-n-rolling Piggy’s Powwow party, a regular throwdown held at his ranch that has elicited a cease and desist letter from the city, but Willy pushes the party forward despite his brother David and their lawyer’s stern opposition.  Paralleling Willy’s story is Wendy Eastman who almost dies of an accidental drug overdose.  The incident stirs more the already contentious bad blood between her uncompromising stepmother and insecure father that leads to storm out and bump into Willy at a bar with the feeling of destiny bringing them together only to horrifically discover Willy’s unsavory secret the hard way. 

Part one of my reviews on serial killer biopics, headfirst we go into the psychotic world of Robert “Willy” Pickton, a pig former turned one of Canada’s most notorious serial rapists and killers living in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia.  While the extent of his butchery is vague at best and even in some ways evolving over the course of the last two decades, Pickton was able to be the filmic inspiration for the Chad Ferrin brazen biopic “Pig Killer.”  The “Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!” and “Someone’s Knocking at the Door” director wrote-and-helmed the interpretation of the egregiously presumed methods Pickton executed upon his female victims, mostly drug-addicted sex workers from the Eastside of Vancouver.  Once under the working ttile of “Pork Chop Rod,” Ferrin’s Crappy World Films, Girls and Corpses (of Robert Steven Rhine’s Girls and Corpses Magazine), and the post-production company Laurelwood Pictures served as co-productions with 50-year acting vet Robert Miano (“Malevolence,” “Giallo”) co-producing.

Even though this actor has portrayed serial killers in “Identity,” “The Hitcher II,” and “The Frighteners,” and even a deranged zealot in “Contact,” I would never have imagined in a million years “Starship Troopers” actor Jake Busey would have stepped into the sordid shoes of Willy Pickton in a Chad Ferrin production.  There’s something to be said for Jake Busey’s nerve in moving forward with eccentric and controversial and Willy Pickton is every fiber of those infamy traits and all that is in between.   Disheveled and dirty, maniacal and demented, prosthetic phalluses and dildo revolvers, pig masks and masturbation – Jake Busey doesn’t hold back on an exigent script important to Pickton’s state of mind.  Creepy and apathetic blanked by his deceased mother’s devout spitefulness and her incestuous sexual abuse, Busey secretes these irascible qualities held dormant in Pickton until the sleaze is sated and his patients runs out then it’s time to go hog wild, literally. Lew Temple (“Halloween,” “Devil’s Rejects”) plays Willy’s brother David who also has mother issues, but that avenue is not as profoundly travelled as Willy’s, both men see delusional visions of their mother’s tirades but definitely lopsided in disfavor of Willy and that leaves David left in the dust some to not have his mental faculties inspected.  Their flashback, foul-mouth, and Electral loving mother goes to an unabashed by former adult actress turned low-budget horror scream queen Ginger Lynn Allen (“Murdercise,” “31”) in what her scenes can only be described as uncut and uncomfortable lewdness as she bares it all at the ripe young age of 60 years old.  Another standout performance goes to Kate Patel as the debut actress, who in her own right is an Amazonian goodness buff beyond rebuff in black lace underwear, finds her voice as a young woman named Wendy Eastman in a complicated and dysfunctional household after the death of her mother, at odds with a wicked stepmother, and an insecure father with passive fortitude.  The only obstacle that can be rendered cleanly from her performance is how her character’s written to be drawn to Willy Pickton as because between age gaps and social differences, the two have nothing tangible to drawn them together mutually.  “Pig Killer” rounds out the cast with producer Robert Miano as Wendy Eastman’s father, Michael Paré (“Streets of Fire”) and producer Robert Rhine as Detectives Oppal and Schneer, Silvia Spross (“Parasites”) as Wendy’s disparaging stepmother, Jon Budinoff (“Someone’s Knocking at the Door”) as Wendy’s friend and drug source, Elina Madison (“Caged Lesbos A-Go-Go”) as a druggie sex worker, Bai Ling (“Exorcism at 60,000 Feet”) as also a druggie sex worker, and Kurt Bonzell (“Parasites”) as Willy’s disfigured and throat-cancer suffering friend Pat. 

Sensationalized for cinematic charm, the story behind the “Pig Killer” hits near the bullseye of all major bullet points from the escape of Wendy Eastman (actual person being Wendy Eistetter) and her coinciding her drug addiction to the wild gathers at the Pickton farm known as Piggy’s Powwow (actual title being Piggy Palace Good Times Society) where motorcycle gangs and prostitutes congregated for a drug-fueled good time.  If having viewed a few of Ferrin’s credits before, some of the unrestrained gore and shock will not come at a surprise.  The benumbing unconcern of misanthropy is poignant amongst Ferrin’s soft-pedaling of horror with a whimsical manner within a gritty film that doesn’t feel as gritty as it should be considering the subject and subject material.  Another mitigating moment, one that’s more counterproductive to the Pickton storyline, is the parallel melodramatics of Wendy Eastman that eventually rendezvous with the titular “Pig Killer” and become the rendition of Wendy Eistetter supposed personal backstory and escape from death.  Wendy’s overdose and family issues provide reason for her subsequent run away from home, but the extent of the backstory unnecessarily rivals Willy Pickton’s and the whole destiny meetup enlists some deeper rooted significance that isn’t neatly fleshed out, turning awkwardly impertinent that waters down their entanglement. 

Arriving onto a Breaking Glass Pictures and a Darkstar Pictures collab, “Pig Killer” oinks itself onto an AVC encoded, 1080p, High-definition Blu-ray.  Presented in an anamorphic widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio, “Pig Killer” under the warm glow and desert dry eye of cinematographer Jeff Billings (“The Deep Ones”) sundries the shot types in various techniques, such as closeup slow motion to be inside Willy’s moment of divination, to provide Ferrin’s feature with comely appeal even in the vilest of moments. Details are sharp and delineated nicely albeit the quick editing for intensity purposes and to float Willy in and out of psychosis. Coloring is more natural than anything else with a few gels scatter about to spruce up the vibrancy. The lossless English DTS-HD 5.1 master audio renders clear dialogue without any distortions or other audible disturbances; however, the strength of the dialogue favors an infirm conveyance to grasp a few exchanges, especially in the exterior. A maximal Gerard McMahon soundtrack scores the entire biopic from start to finish with a range of 80’s power ballads to 90’s pop rock; the 76-year-old not only scores the project but also has a concert performance role with his band G Tom Mac. Depth and range supplement greatly as sound design cater to the surrounding atmospheres, such as the echo vibrations under the Eastside bridge or the pig-pen oinks and frenzies when feeding bits and pieces of sex workers to his farmyard swine. English SDH is optionally available. Packed with extra content, supplements included are an interview intercut with scenes with Ginger Lynn as well as a few of her clothed adult industry spreads/modeling, a behind-the-scenes footage with Michael Paré, deleted and extended scenes, and Q&A from Cine Excess, the making-of the Pig Mask, a making-of the film entitled Canadian Bacon, an introduction to Spunky the Pig aka Willy’s pig, a screen test of Kate Patel in the role of Willy, which was considered before Jake Busey landed the role, “Pig Killer” auditions, and the trailer. The clear Blu-ray Amaray case sports a dark-and-dirty gilt image of a half-naked Kate Patel and a menacing pig-masked person holding a clever overhead. Reverse side contains a still image of the insides of Willy’s pigsty camper while the disc is pressed with the same menacing pig and clever but more prominent. The collab release has a region A playback, a runtime of 122 minutes, and is not rated. The back cover also lists a 2000 production date, conflicting with the 2023 release states elsewhere, but the 2000 date would be before Willy Pickton’s arrest and so that might be a misprint. Chad Ferrin and Jake Busey jointly tackling the monster that is brutal serial killer Willy Pickton with an inkling of lighter material coursing through its arteries, style secreting through the madness, and, of course, gore, the most important ingredient to the likes of a film entitled “Pig Killer.” 

On This Farm There Was a “PIg Killer” now on Blu-ray!

Ancestor’s Didn’t Quite Incinerate All the EVIL. “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” reviewed! (MVD Visual / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Burn While You Got’em. “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” on DVD home video!

Siblings Nathan and Mirra are reunited at their childhood farm home after their father suddenly passes away from drowning.  The self-well-kempt Mirra handles the business end of their father’s farmland estate as the recovering drug addict Nathan struggles with his past urges while also helping with the cleanout of their father’s things.  They meet farmhand Alice who still maintains the crops and who is close to her unusual and quieter sister Scarlett.  Soon after, Nathan begins experiencing vivid nightmares on drowning and an unknown woman crawling out from the depths of the ocean.  He also feels the presence of malevolent forces around him and digs into his father’s past only to find that his ancestors were once witch burners and that the farmhand and her sister’s family lineage had settled from Massachusetts long ago.  In the midst of piecing the clues together, the siblings find themselves in the lingering black cloud of darker forces seeking retribution of a fiery ancestral past.

“The Ones You Didn’t Burn” is the 2022 released, independent horror from writer-director-and-costar Elise Finnerty.  The first-time feature film director from Long Island, New York infuses a slow dread of psychological thrills with a painted American folklore maquillage where past imprudence and costly mistakes catch up with the future generations stuck in a rut of their own problems. Filmed in and around Finnerty’s hometown, “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” is a family affair film with the filmmaker producing her first film co-produced by the immediate Finnerty family of father Dennis, mother Diana, and brother Sean.  Nicolas Alvo and Brett Phillips also co-produce with executive producers lined up with Estelle Girard Parks, Maxine Muster, Shannon Gallagher, and Alec Phillips financially footing the feature under the banner of Red Booth Productions, founded by Estelle Girard Parks and Elise Finnerty.

With the smaller production comes an intimate cast working in a handful of public locations and only a couple of home interiors and about a third of the cast are also working multiple roles in front and behind the camera, such as Elise Finnerty and Estelle Girard Parks not only the chief governors of “The Ones You Didn’t Burn’s” creative process but also as the inscrutable sisters Alice and Scarlett.  In principal roles, you receive exactly what writer-director Finnerty intends with her happy-go-lucky helping hand farm manager that strikes a small odd chord within the adrift Nathan, son of the drowned father who never recalls his father mentioning Alice.  Nathan, played by Nathan Wallace, is clearly exhibited and stated as a habitual user attempting sobriety but the more delineated the dreams become and the uneasiness that washes over him, mixed with the sudden, subconscious grief of a lost father and being peer-pressured by an immature, drug-fueled, and degenerate high school buddy Greg (Samuel Dunning), Nathan becomes mentally bombarded to the point of using again and breaking, though ambiguity leads us to believe that some witchery might be subverting his faculties.  Wallace shows great range in a downward spiral character arc, complimented by sheer intensity when that strangeness takes hold and shape.  Also feeling the pressure, in a different manner, is Nathan’s sister Mirra, sequestered by Jenna Rose Sander to make Mirra go solo sorting all the postmortem to-dos of her father’s belongings, extending out any hope or chance of Nathan and Mirra to reconnect in light of death.  In fact, the siblings become even more estranged and tensions simmer, especially when Mirra finds comfort in newfound friends, such as Alice and Scarlett, lending to more loss and disconnect for Nathan and other, again, possibly witchery waywardness to divide and conquer in the name of rancorous retribution.

“The Ones You Didn’t Burn” certainly is a slow burn filled with more fluff and reoccurring scenes than desired in an intriguing face value premise of a pair witches setting the wheels in motion to rid the land of witch burning descendants.  Insidious dreams and ubiquitous tarot card dinner flavor the film’s underlining horror but there’s not a ton of dynamics between characters as progression evolves almost without interactive sway, relying heavily on those dream sequences and Nathan’s zippy scrutiny into his father’s past as he comes up with not a lot, or rather circumstantial, evidence to deduct Alice and Scarlett as witches.  Finnerty certainly parallels Nathan’s supernatural trepidation with a more relatable one, drugs, stress, and lack of purpose that could be instigating a false drive to put a stop to the evil at work, affecting the only family he, a money-less addict, has left to rely on.  Finnerty provides some lucratively strong visuals with the stark night beach scenes of an unfaced woman crawling from out of the surf toward a bewildered Nathan in only what could be described as psychosexual and ominous.  Does Nathan fear beautiful women who have influence or authority over him and his family now that the patriarch is gone?  Mirra loaned him money and is successful professionally that initiated a denotation of inferiority only aggressively exaggerated by Alice and Scarlett’s inclusion of Mirra into a trifold takeover that will inevitably exorcize his junkie backside for good.  In any case, whether you believe Finnerty’s intention is to ride a fine line between witchcraft payback, and one being cut loose from his threadbare support system, “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” is a character-driven story that needed more character development and story devices but has tuned in performances and some eerie dreamscapes. 

MVD Visual in partnership with Jinga Films and Danse Macabre release “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” on DVD.  Presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the MPEG2 encoded, single-layered DVD5 settles for mostly natural grading in the exteriors with interiors being hard-lit by the natural light blocking features with the low-lit nightmares casting tenebrous drapes with key lighting techniques to isolate main objects.  Compression on here is decent with pleasant detail to show for it and only a few patches of softer nuances around skin layers.  The back cover lists a 5.1 stereo audio mix but the sole English language available, per my player technical readings, on the DVD is a 2-channel Dolby Digital stereo and I do believe the latter over the former as there is no singular output from the multi-channels; however, what’s render is par for the course and suits the release well with ample volume in all regards:  range, depth, dialogue, and a brooding, melancholic, and, at time, tension building soundtrack from composer Daniel Reguera.  Dialogue renders clean and clearly throughout.  English subtitles are optionally available.  Only other MVD and Jinga Films trailers, along with this feature’s trailer, are listed on the static menu in regard to bonus content with trailers of “After,” “Midnight Son,” and “Gnaw.”  On the standard DVD Amaray case front cover is an illustrated and portrait compositional of Elise Finnerty’s Alice character overlapping with yellow and black branches that give it that folklore and woody-witch coating.  The disc is pressed a same art but cropped and there is no insert or reversible cover included.  The region free DVD has a runtime of 70 minutes and is not rated.  “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” debuts Elise Finnerty as a competent filmmaker with a retrained witch tale with payback overtones and dysfunctional family undertones. 

Burn While You Got’em. “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” on DVD home video!

EVIL Wants Your Brain Fluid! “Vile” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

These “Vile” Atrocities are now on Blu-ray!

What was supposed to be a relaxing camping trip amongst friends has turned into a torturous nightmare when four friends wake up to find themselves in the company of five strangers in a basement and learn they’ve all been kidnapped for a purpose.  Behind the illicit arrangement is an illegal drug manufacture whose formula is produced from the byproduct of the brain’s fear and pain induced chemicals.  With a 22-hour clock counting down from the first act of violence, the puzzled lot must fill a 100% quota before time runs out in order to be set free from the reinforced house they awoke in and the only way to do that is by hurting each other to fill the vials connected to the backside of their heads.  Framing a plan, a vote proceeds a numerical order of voluntary participation of torture, each contributing a fraction of the pain percentage needed to survive and be free, but egos, fears, and secrets cost them more than a few moments of unbearable pain.   

Before becoming Paramount Network’s golden nugget for creating the more recent acclaimed American television drama with shows like “Yellowstone,” “1883,” “1923,” “Tulsa King,” and “Special Ops:  Lioness,” Taylor Sheridan had first directed a small-time horror movie over ten years ago in 2011.  The title “Vile,” a play on words used to not only describe the cruel atrocities done from one character to another but also alluding to vial containers used to fill up with fear and pain fluid, is the brainchild of scriptwriters Eric Beck and Rob Kowsaluk.  Certainly, a different tone compared to hardnosed westerners and high-profile casted thrillers, Sheridan filmmaking roots from “Vile” mold his next stage directions of cruel character dynamics.  Beck produces the feature with Noël K. Cohan (“Into the Void”), Tina Pavlides (“100,000 Zombie Heads”), and Kelly Andrea Rubin (“Skeeter”) with presumably father Larry Beck footing some of the funding under the LLC of Vile Entertainment in association with Bosque Ranch Productions and Signature Entertainment.

An ensemble cast thrusts strangers into the throes of do-or-die but amongst the cast of characters, a delicate introduction of a core four put forth the wheels in motion of the sick extraction technique all in the name of drugs and profit.  The preliminary meet-and-greet of Nick (Eric Beck), Tayler (April Matson, “Primrose Lane”), Tony (Akeem Smith, “Holla II”), and Kai (Elisha Skorman) sets up love interests, Tayler’s secret pregnancy, Kai’s drug problem, and a playfully semi-morbid game of would you rather that foreshadows another choice pick of torture later the group has to contend with when joined with the other five test subjects – a dark and cryptic Greg (Rob Kirkland), a subtly anxious Julian (Ian Bohen, “5 Souls”), a selfish hothead Tara (Maya Hazen, “Shrooms”), a young and frightened Lisa (Heidi Mueller) and a level-headed Sam (Greg Cipes, “Deep Dark Canyon”). The variety of character provides varying shades of distrust, betrayal, and hope as factions form and convictions are about-faced, jostling those steadfast at first and solidifying principals for those teetering on the edge.  As whole, the cast works well together to provide adequate and satisfying suspicion as well as selling a particular attitude despite a couple of red herrings that are hidden really well within the framework. As individuals, lots of the dialogue pertains to self-explanatory states of the obvious that stick out like a sore thumb of colloquial filler with a story set in one location with the same nine people for approx. an hour long. ”Vile’s” cast rounds out with McKenzie Westmore and the unmistakable Maria Olsen (“I Spit on Your Grave 2: Deja Vu”) in a procedure-nothing televised head. 

As much as I disfavor comparing one film to another outside of sequels, series, or franchises, “Vile’s” voice is lost as an individual. Seven years prior, James Wan and Leigh Whannell began what would become one of the biggest contemporary horror franchises with “Saw,” spanning sequels through two decades, and concluding, thus so far, with this past year’s “Saw X.” What does this have to do with “Vile?” ”Vile” follows much of the same formula Wan and Whannel concocted in the earlier 2000s with a very to-the-manual approach of “Saw’s” collaring of individuals, media announcing a timed-task, and the players of the game have to hurt themselves, or others, in order to be set free. Fundamentally different with “Vile” has more to do pure greed and profit at the expense of those unfortunate to be in the path of profiteers whereas “Saw” forces transgressors into rebirth through pain and suffering. ”Vile” is also not as explicitly graphic with much of the torturous violence done out of sight, off screen, or in a blink of an eye. Nevertheless, the intriguingly staid premise takes the human condition to the limit and steps across the line of no return of committing what is self-destructively necessary to survive. Beck and Kowsaluk tweak the formula by a narrow margin but the manner of how the narrative plays out distances “Vile” to almost unitary means. For example, “Saw” almost always had a dual storyline that eventually converges with a shocking twist-tie conclusion. ”Vile’s” straightforward with a singular storyline that isn’t dichotomized with a parallel storyline, a periodization storyline, or any other type of storyline to be a crutch for the other, leaving audiences in the undivided present that’s an around-the-clock time crunch to live or die by the hands of themselves or at the mercy of others, and with a palpable enough twist that you’ll kick yourself in the chin for not predicting it ahead of time. 

“Vile” comes to Blu-ray from MVD Visual on the company’s Marquee Collection label. The AVC encoded, 1080p High-Definition, BD25 has the film presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Limited to a two-tone grading of steely blues and canary yellows, picture quality range has spasmodic bursts of interiority to agreeable presentations. More of the pre-ensnarement night scenes appear granulated by macroblocking, degrading the image to pre-high definition pixelated rate. Bitrate decoding jumps sporadically from mid-teens to mid-30Mbps, most likely due to an unstable data compression transfer. Compression appears better, though not flawless, later in the runtime with tighter contouring and a finer detail on a grungy, dirty, dilapidated house where the main set takes footing. The English Dolby Digital 5.1 and the uncompressed LCPM 2.0 are the available audio options, both of which lack commodious conviction with a suppressed volume. While the dialogue renders sufficiently with discernibility and clarity, much of the eye-averting torture sound design, the milieu audio, and even the rock-hard rock soundtrack retains an undeliberate lo-fi quality. English subtitles are optionally available. Special features include two deleted scenes that expand on more of the earlier character interactions, a behind-the-scene moment of director Taylor Sheridan mopping the kitchen set and singing, and the feature trailer plus other MVD Marquee Collection trailers. Tangible features include a cardboard O-slipcover, first pressings only, vaunting the nastiness to come and, again, appropriates a “Saw” cover with that nastiness of an extracted, bloody tooth in a pair of vice grip, a nod to the “Saw III” poster/home video art. The Amary case has reversible cover art with the original “Vile” artwork on the inside. The unrated, 88-minute MVD Marquee Collection feature has a region free playback. If “Saw” is deluxe imperial crab, then “Vile” is the suitable imitation equivalent with a steady pace of group-wrenching contrition and contempt that forgoes the games for straight up blunt force trauma. 

These “Vile” Atrocities are now on Blu-ray!

100-Year Return Brings a Plague of Flesh-Eating EVIL to a Small Town! “Messiah of Evil” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The “Messiah of Evil” has Come to Blu-ray Home Video!

Arletty travels up the California coast to a small beach town known as Point Dune.  The reason for her visit is to find her artisan father after a series of bizarre letters came to an abrupt stop.  She arrives at his mural-graffitied home to discover it empty and decides to stay a few days to ask around town about his whereabouts and to be present for his return home.  Her inquiries at art gallery shopkeepers lead to a motel where Thom, a wealthy collector of urban legends and spooky stories, and his two travelling female companions, Laura and Toni, have also sought out Artletty’s father for his bizarre experiences.  As the days pass, Point Dune slowly becomes a literal ghost town that forces Thom and his companions to stay with Arletty and, together, they experience the horrible truth of what’s really happening to the  residents of the west coast community who eagerly await the arrival of the dark stranger. 

Once married filmmakers Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz are the creative minds behind the stories of “Howard the Duck” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”  They also wrote “American Graffiti” in what was to become their link toward working on Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones sequel since both “American Graffiti” and “The Temple of Doon” were both produced by the father of “Star Wars,” George Lucas.  Yet, in the midst of “American Graffiti,” the couple also penned and Huyck came into the entrance of directing with the 1974 horror-thriller “Messiah of Evil” that pulled from various themes of mindless consumerism and the rising fears of dangerous and deadly cults in the U.S.  Also known by a variety of titles around the world, including “Dead People,” “Night of the Danmed,” “Messiah of the Evil Dead,” “Revenge of the Screaming Dead,” and “Blood Busters” to name a few, the Californian coast shot film is a production of the International Cine Film Corp and V/M Productions with Gatz producing and Alan Riche (“Deep Blue Sea”) serving as executive producer. 

“Messiah of Evil” slinks into the soul leaving behind dread’s unwashed pull against what we know as conventional horror.  In order to accomplish such a fear-induced feat, a cast must envelope themselves fully in world of weird and irregularities that nestle an uneasiness stemmed not solely from their performances but from how they react to the eccentric environment, to the crumbling small town society, and to ghastly behaviors of normal-looking people.  Like most daughters, Arletty has concerns for her father and seeks to understand the truth behind his unhinged letters.  Marianna Hill (“Schizoid,” “The Baby”) plays the quietly curious at a cat daughter dabbing residents with barely an effort in interrogational questioning of her father’s whereabouts.  Hill floats Arletty through stages of a slow descent into madness that simmers slowly to a boiling point understanding of what’s taking shape around her.  The same happens to Thom, played by Richard Greer (“The Curious Female”), who initially is a fraction of the nonconformity surrounding Point Dune with his obsession toward collecting strange stories and his polyamorous collection of women.  Of character, Greer is resoundingly in control without being dominating with Thom who has wealth and magnetisms but isn’t someone to be beholden to forever as we see with Laura (Anita Ford, “The Big Bird Cage”) who deserts him for his open-door intimacy policy in his pursuit of Arletty and with the childish Toni (Joy Bang, “Night of the Cobra Woman”) in her infinitely naïve opinions surrounding the dull Point Dune.  One actor I wish we had more of but is utilized perfectly as Arletty’s father and a harbinger of what’s coming is Royal Dano (“Ghoulies II,” “Spaced Invaders”) in a non-humorous nor drunken idiot role that seemed to typecast him later in his career.  Dano’s short but sweetly terrifying stretch divulges a man torn between his previous life and a new terror that now occupies him as he interacts with Marianna Hill as concerned and contaminated father holding it all within toward his frightened, confused daughter.  “Messiah of Evil’s” cast rounds out with Elisha Cook Jr (“Rosemary’s Baby”), Bennie Robinson, and Charles Dierkop (“Grotesque”). 

Huyck directs with colorful and verismo synergism that takes the positives of what should be life’s routine pleasures and turns them against us as fantastical and harrowin deadly elements of false securities.  The rolling crashes of Point Dune’s waves takes on a constant cacophony of sinister foreshadowing, a bright and welcoming supermarket becomes a vacant trap in every aisle, the entertaining movie theater darkens with blood on the screen, and an artist’s home, full realistic murals and colors, is an oppressive feast of lifeless eyes.  Point Dune becomes a dead town, literally, as the inhabitants succumb to dark forces from beyond their years, turning primeval in their contemporary three-piece suits and evening blouses.  Huyck and Gatz story pulls inspiration from U.S. history and folklore to mark the 100-year return of spreading evil amongst the land, an evil that resorts to cannibalism by either spellbinding archfiend, an internal infection, or the rise of the undead and not just any mindless, shuffling, flesh-eating zombie but a transmogrified plotter able to move fast and think as a single unit with the touched by evil masse with telltale signs of a single rivel of blood seeping from out of their eye and their insatiable need to consume other people. ”Messiah of Evil” is not overtly graphic like George A. Romero zombies or like the unbridled number of zombie films to follow inspired by Romero’s zombie game-changing wake for the last 60 plus years, separating the flesh-eaters from Romero’s gut-gnashing, pale faced, and slow-walking undead and Huyck and Gatz’s transmitted pestilent receiving horde running fast in their best church shoes with vastly different traits. Huyck and Gatz dip into more eldritch means with the return of a paganistic dark stranger in a pared down explanation without explicitly being definitive who or what the dark stranger (a demon? Antichrist?) is that is driving foreboding signs to a doomsday-disseminating end. ”Messiah of Evil” thrives as the mysterious and strange fulcrum of the beginning of the end told through the point of view of young woman left to tell the world of what’s to come only to be about as believed as much as a man wearing a polka-dotted tutu who has delusions of unicorns dancing the waltz with garden gnomes in his front yard. 

United Kingdom distributor Radiance Films releases a new restoration transfer of “Messiah of Evil” also on their U.S. line. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 presents a 4K scan of the best-known surviving 35mm print from the Academy Film Archive in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. As noted in the release’s inserted booklet, the restoration processes used was the Digital Vision’s Phoenix Finish and DaVinci Resolve was used for color correction, under the supervision of Sebastian del Castillo at the Heavenly Movie Corporation. Audio was also restored with the Izotope RXB. For a surviving print, the original elements look pretty darn good with barely any celluloid hiccup. No vinegar syndrome, not significant tearing, or exposure to name a few issues of possibility. There are a few minor blemishes and missing or damaged frames that seem to provide an unwanted cut but most of “Messiah of Evil’s” film problems stem mostly behind the camera with a rework of the story during the stop-and-go production and conflicts in marketing the film, hence the various title aliases of the film from around the globe. Other detail low points are when the film is bathed in blue and purple gels and tint for to set an apprehensive wander and wonder while retaining more natural grading in its majority throughout. The resorted audio is a lossless English LPCM mono mix. Really focusing on the electronic score of Phillan Bishop (“The Severed Arm”), the low-frequency score sets a perpetual and durable tone of dread out of place in a prosaic small town, much like the Arletty’s father’s work-of-art home that sticks out amongst the mediocrity. In design, dialogue remains robust yet delicate when the scene calls for it, such as Elisha Cook Jr. story of how he was born in what is essentially him, as a vagrant paid for his story, making the only noise in the room. Dialogue in these moments is greatly discernible with negligible electronic interference. Depth layers the permeating isolation of a town gone mad in unison with the range stretching from the distressing design of rolling, crashing, oppressive waves to the scuffles of zombies’ consuls and heels scuffing against asphalt, pavement, and shattering through panes of glass. Radiance provides English subtitles with their release. Bonus features include a new audio commentary by film historian and horror archetype authors Kim Newman and Stephen Thrower, an archived interview with director Willard Huyck, and a new, feature-length documentary showcasing “Messiah of Evil’s” background, themes, production, and influences by various horror scholars, including Kat Ellinger who also voiceovers a visual essay on American Gothic and Female Hysteria, which if I’m being honest, parallelly treads on similarities with Ellinger’s Motherhood & Madness: Mia Farrow and the Female Gothic on Imprint’s “The Haunting of Julia.” Radiance has in the short time poured their heart and soul into their releases and “Messiah of Evil” is no different with a sleek cladded and clear Amara Blu-ray case that’s subtle in showing less but feeling more on the cover art, opposite of the reverse side that houses a classical black and white compositional illustration of characters. Inside the 28th release for the label is a 23-page color booklet insert with the appraisal writings of Bill Ackerman, transfer notes, release credits, and acknowledgements. The disc is pressed red, much like the red moon in the film, with a stark black title. The Radiance release is unrated, region free, and has a runtime of 90 minutes. ”Messiah of Evil” uses cult fears, satanic panic, and the loss of ordinary life to penetrate the spirit by way of slowly eating at it. The crawling, creeping dread meanders, much like Artletty who is seemingly held in place at Point Dune, and we’re glued to the engrossing rate of the terror to come orchestrated by the captivations of a once married couple on a fast track toward success.

The “Messiah of Evil” has Come to Blu-ray Home Video!