Movie Diary 6/1/2024

Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck, 1974). Had never gotten around to seeing this Huyck-Katz underground semi-cult picture, which apparently was not finished, and then edited by somebody else. Which is how it plays. That low-budget quality is part of what’s effective about it, even as there are extremely slow sections and lousy acting. There are definitely some unsettling images in a post-Manson way, like the gas station attendant shooting his gun into the bushes at night – what the hell? Marianna Hill floats through it, Joy Bang is killed in a movie theater, and Royal Dano and Elisha Cook Jr. lend the movie-history cred. Not truly worthy of “late-discovered horror classic” status, but almost as interesting as Incubus or something.