Messiah of Evil

Director: Willard Huyck

1974 / 90min / DCP

One of the most sui generis American horror films of the 1970s, Huyck and Katz’s baroque chiller follows a young woman named Arletty (Marianna Hill) who, in response to a series of mysterious missives from her estranged painter father, heads to the small California coastal town of Point Dune, only to find it a city of drug-addled miscreants, eccentric aristocrats, sinister supermarkets, occult intrigues, and still more terrifying secrets waiting to be discovered.

“This film is atmospheric and melancholic and creepy, a nightmare of a post-Summer of Love, post-’68 national hangover set offseason in a beach town. The supermarket and the movie theater scene are two of my absolute favorites in horror history, both huge influences on the broken suburban landscape of TV Glow.”—Jane Schoenbrun

Introduction by Jane Schoenbrun Friday, May 3

Part of Jane Schoenbrun Selects