If you're not in the market for a moody, atmospheric horror film, Messiah of Evil might not be for you. The script is nothing to write home about and a lot of it can be rather confounding, but it more than makes up for it with some of the spookiest set pieces I've ever seen on screen.

Two sequences stand out in particular. 1.) a woman enters a grocery store late at night to find a horde of zombie-like creatures eating all the raw meat in the freezer section and 2.) another woman goes to see a late night movie and finds herself swarmed by the living dead in a sleek homage to a moment from Hitchcock's The Birds.

Messiah of Evil is a well crafted, creepy, and very memorable experience akin to a nightmare from your childhood. You won't be able to remember all the little details, but you'll remember how it made you feel.

Eerie, dream-like zombie picture that anticipates both Romero's consumerism subtext and Boyle's agile undead. Full of quirky touches, it should be much better known than it is. Strange to think that one year later husband-and-wife team Huyck and Katz would co-write American Graffiti

A young woman named Arletty moves back home to find out what happened to her estranged father an artist.However as she arrives in the California beach house she runs into some decidedly odd behavior.Her father is gone but the house is full of his paintings.She meets an aristocrat played by Michael Greer and his two sexy groupies when they are asked to leave town they remain staying at her father's house.Things get completely crazy as the moon turns red with the townspeople turning into flesh-eating ghouls and the dead coming back to life as the Messiah of Evil,a former minister turned cannibal and Satan worshipper rises from the darkness to claim the town.Rarely seen and rather unknown zombie flick with strange surreal atmosphere and some strikingly eerie moments.The whole movie is a flashback from a foregone conclusion.The film is highly influential:it somehow reminded me "Dawn of the Dead",Fulci's "City of the Living Dead" and "In the Mouth of Madness" several times.Check out this extremely effective mood piece.