Harry in Your Pocket [1973]

HARRY IN YOUR POCKET is an American crime caper film that was directed by Bruce Geller and originally released by United Artists in September 1973.  It stars James Coburn, Michael Sarrazin, Trish Van Devere and Walter Pidgeon. It tells the story of two youngsters who are taught the art of the pickpocket by a pair of experienced criminals.

James Coburn was an intriguing man.  If you look him up on imdb you'll see he racked up 173 credits during his career.  Impressive.  But look a little closer and you'll also see that 62 of these, over a third, came before THE GREAT ESCAPE [1963] which was his big break in the film business.  He wasn't particularly good looking, he didn't have an impressive physique and he seemed to age prematurely.

James Coburn as Harry

What he did have was a suave manner, an anti-authoritarian attitude and a cheerful but 'don't mess with me' air exemplified by his shit-eating grin.  So he was perhaps lucky that his career coincided with a period in cinema when such heroes, like James Bond, were in vogue and on into the Vietnam / Watergate era when cocking a snook at the establishment was popular.  He could be described as a more debonair Steve McQueen.  He had a greater range than McQueen though.  McQueen was most at home in tough thrillers but Coburn could do the lot.

HARRY IN YOUR POCKET comes at what I reckon is the end of Coburn's peak period.  After the mid-1970s he increasingly seemed to make slick, superficial mainstream pictures.  He was approaching 50 at this point and too old to maintain the persona from his younger days. So it's perhaps a sign of things to come that he plays a father figure here, albeit one still young enough to have a father figure of his own.

Harry and father figure / mentor Casey

Harry is a pickpocket, specifically a cannon, which is to say he is the most important team member, the one who does the actual pickpocketing.  That's right: pickpocketing is apparently a team game.  Harry's mentor Casey (Walter Pidgeon) is the man who identifies the target and indicates where he / she is carrying the item.  Sandy (Trish Van Devere) is the distraction, which usually involves her bending over in a short skirt.  Ray (Michael Sarrazin) is the guy to whom Harry passes the item almost as soon as it has been pickpocket.

Sandy and Ray

It works this way because Harry's number one rule is 'Harry does not hold.  Ever.'  Which means he never holds on to the goods after he has pocketed them.  He always passes them on to Ray.  Obviously this is so that Harry can never be pinched by the cops while Ray who has played no part in the lift can wander off unmolested.  I love all this kind of stuff: the basic techniques of an activity which I would otherwise never know.  As such the natural home for it is the caper movie because it lends itself to scenes involving teaching or rehearsals.

Harry explains that they must always travel first class, stay in the best hotels and, excepting Sandy, wear a jacket and tie.  This way they cultivate the impression of being upper class and, therefore, above suspicion; which is a rather neat way of using class snobbery to your advantage.  Harry also tells them that, counter-intuitively, he dislikes working events where there will lots of rich targets; this is because such places usually have very tight security.  All of this knowledge and expertise comes together of course at the film's climax: a dressage competition (which is another signifier of class).

Caper films are more interesting than they initially appear.  They are generally the only crime films in which the audience hopes the criminals get away with it; imagine having that attitude for a serial killer picture.  Or indeed something like J. C. Chandor's MARGIN CALL [2011] about the economic collapse.  It's probably because there's usually a strong comedic element to the caper movie, as the name itself suggests.  That's not true is every case though: a film I wrote about long ago - Jean-Pierre Melville's LE CERCLE ROUGE [1970] is about as serious as they come but I was still rooting for Messrs Delon, Montand and Volonte.

Harry has his eye on Sandy from the word go (note Sandy beautifully framed in the mirror)

The other part of this film which works very well is the love triangle between Harry, Ray and Sandy.  Harry takes both of them on as students basically because he wants to get into Sandy's knickers.  But Sandy is a smart, loyal young woman who stands by her man, until he starts to get jealous of course.  If you have any experience of that emotion then you know how corrosive it can be; if you don't, this film will make it plain to you.  In my review of Vincent Sherman's ICE PALACE [1960] I wrote about how the film's most successful element is the torment felt by Carolyn Jones's character who is torn between the man she loves and the man she betrayed.  She ends up with neither and the heartache she suffers in consequence is palpable.  That would make a good themed double bill with HARRY IN  YOUR POCKET for this reason.  Two films which show the destructive power of love.

Trish Van Devere as Sandy

Trish Van Devere is terrific as the object of the men's desires.  Sadly she didn't make many films: according to imdb she hasn't had a screen role in over 20 years so the chances of seeing her again must be slim. Several of those she did make are with her husband George C. Scott.  The only other films of hers that I have seen are two of these, both ghost stories from 1980: Peter Medak's THE CHANGELING and George Bowers' THE HEARSE.  The former is miles better than the latter which is one of the most tedious and least frightening horror films I have ever seen.

Michael Sarrazin as Ray

Which brings me to Michael Sarrazin who stars in the least frightening horror film I have ever seen, namely J. Lee Thompson's THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD [1975].  It's terrible so I won't bang on about here; suffice it to say that if you feel compelled to seek it out you can't say you weren't warned.  Apart from that Sarrazin had what I think is a disappointing career which started big in Sydney Pollack's THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY? [1969].  he rode the wave of that film's success for another 7 or 8 years, encompassing only 10 films, and that was pretty much that.  A couple of Delirious and may (or may not) feature here in the future: the sci-fi thriller THE GROUNDSTAR CONSPIRACY [1972] and FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY [1973] an expensive TV movie of which the grand curmudgeon Leslie Halliwell remarked "It was never a true story in the first place."  Sarrazin continued to work of course, mainly in TV, and died in 2011.

Walter Pidgeon as Casey

The old-timer Casey, Harry's own mentor, is played by veteran Walter Pidgeon, whose career dates back to the silent era.  He is most famous though for his work in the 1940s, notably as Mr Miniver in MRS MINIVER [1942] and the lead role in HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY [1941], both of which won Oscars for Best Picture, the latter, notoriously, beating CITIZEN KANE.  Delirious fans will probably remember him more for playing Dr Mobius in FORBIDDEN PLANET [1956].  He's really good in this movie though, playing one of cinema's few septuagenarian coke-fiend pickpockets.

The behind-the-camera credits aren't remarkable.  Director Bruce Geller was a TV man for whom this film was his only cinema credit.  He did however create MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and thus made a mark which has lasted for nearly fifty years, if you include the Tom Cruise series of films.  Writers James D. Buchanan and Ronald Austin also penned the script for the shonky but fun TV movie THE HORROR AT 37,000 FEET [1973].  The score is by one of the all-time great film composers Lalo Schifrin and it is of course terrific.

Hannah, Queen of the Vampires [1973]

HANNAH, QUEEN OF THE VAMPIRES is a Spanish / American horror film that was directed by Julio Salvador and originally released in Spain in June 1973 under the title La tumba de la isla maldita. It is also known as Crypt of the Living Dead.  It stars Andrew Prine, Mark Damon and Patty Shepard. Prine is Chris Bolton an engineer who arrives on a remote Turkish island to bury his father, an archaeologist, who died while investigating a recently discovered tomb.  There he meets an old friend Peter (Damon) who is researching a novel and Peter's sister Mary (Shepard) who is teaching at the island's rudimentary school.  Through these, and the surly locals, he learns of the island's mythology and superstitions which eventually lead him to suspect that his father's death may somehow be linked.

As far as I can make out this is for some reason a pretty obscure film.  Despite being a big fan of Cinema Delirium favourite Andrew Prine I had never heard of it until I wrote about Patty Shepard in La noche de Walpurgis here.  I tracked it down and watched it a couple of days ago and can't see any obvious reason for its obscurity.  In fact it's rather good, sustaining an atmosphere of fear and mystery while creating a credible and consistent background legend.

The opening recalls the peerless THE WICKER MAN [1973] with Chris getting a very frosty reception as he arrives on the unnamed island.  Indeed it's some considerable way into the film before any of the locals even acknowledge him much less speak to him.  Chris represents the voice of reason amid the superstitious locals and is therefore shocked to learn that his father, a man of science, had started to believe some of the tales shortly before his death.  These are familiar themes of course - the fish out of water and the sceptic surrounded by true believers - and generally speaking, as in the case of THE WICKER MAN, it's not until the climax that the central character comes to recognise the power of superstition.

Chris Bolton arrives

In this film though the locals' superstition is underpinned by a specifically Christian faith.  The vampires can be held at bay by the trusty crucifix but that proves to be of limited use.  It's interesting that vampire movies are generally framed as good versus evil, the holy versus the unholy, and yet Dracula and his cohorts still run amok no matter how many crosses are brandished at them.

Yes it's true that in most cases good triumphs over evil but the body count is usually in Dracula's favour. Why then is faith, Christian faith, regarded as such an effective weapon and indeed defence? Is it better or worse than any other religion?  Does Dracula in fact represent not evil but non-Christian faith?  It would be interesting to know how this conflict is depicted in films from predominantly non-Christian countries.

Back, hellspawn!

Anyway, I digress.  I understand that while Salvador directed the lion's share of the film some additional footage, amounting to about 10 minutes, was shot by Ray Danton to beef up the English-language version. Inserting new footage to an existing film doesn't usually work; off the top of my head I instantly think of John Russo's execrable additions to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD for his "30th anniversary addition".  Obviously one would have to see both before and after versions to judge which was the more effective but it's fair to say that Danton did a pretty good job because I certainly couldn't tell where the new stuff was added.

Ray Danton in Si muore solo una Volta [1967]

Ray Danton had a decent if unspectacular 25-year career as an actor - notably, in the Cinema Delirium sense, as the title character in Jess Franco's decent spy caper LUCKY THE INSCRUTABLE [1967].  Once the leading parts dried up he had a desultory 10 years in US television which I imagine prompted him to effect a transition into directing.  His first feature was the horror flick DEATHMASTER [1972] starring Count Yorga himself Robert Quarry.  It's not bad actually although it didn't lead to much more film work: he helmed PSYCHIC KILLER [1975] a film which I recall from the horror movie books I had as a kid and which I've not yet got round to seeing. But that was that his film career and he spent the last 15 years of his professional life directing episodes of various TV shows.

Andrew Prine as Chris Bolton

Andrew Prine, as I say, is a favourite of mine and he has a very long career mainly in genre films. Patty Shepard was to Spanish horror as Barbara Steele was to Italian but for some reason is not as well known.  Perhaps it's because the perception is that Italian horror is better than Spanish.  I'd probably have to agree with that: in the main they look a lot better and managed to attract a better class of English-speaking star to their productions.  Some of that can perhaps be put down to the oppressive nature of the right-wing dictatorship Spain laboured under until the mid-1970s.

Patty Shepard as Mary

Mark Damon, like Ray Danton, is an interesting guy who switched careers, in his case from acting to producing.  As near as dammit he stopped acting around the time this film came out and after a slow start really got his foot in the door and ended up producing a lot of high profile films.  He's still working is Damon and if imdb is to be believed currently has a couple of films in production.  Good on him, he's 82 this year.

Mark Damon as Peter

One note about the crew: the special effects are the work of Antonio Molina who also worked in the same capacity on the previously reviewed THE WEREWOLF VS THE VAMPIRE WOMAN aka La noche de Walpurgis, which probably explains why the vampire women in both films look so similar.

Teresa Gimpera as Hannah, Queen of the Vampires

Sssssss [1973]

SSSSSSS is an American horror film (with sci-fi elements) that was directed by Bernard L. Kowalski and originally released by Universal in July 1973.  It stars Strother Martin, Dirk Benedict and Heather Menzies. David Blake is a financially embarrassed student (is there any other kind?) who takes a job with a Dr Carl Stoner, a brilliant but equally hard up scientist who is conducting snake-based research which he needs help with.  On the side, Stoner runs a snake-handling show at his isolated farmhouse / laboratory where he lives with his daughter Kristina. On his first day at work David is injected with what Stoner claims is a serum that will protect him from accidental snake bites... and that's when the problems begin.

SSSSSSS is one of those movies I first became aware of when I was kid poring over the pages of my horror books and magazines.  It had a startling image of a man-snake, an image that has stayed with me through the years.  It's only this year that I eventually got round to seeing the movie and inevitable its something of a disappointment.  The 10 year-old kid in me would have enjoyed a lot less than the current me because it's bloodless, talky, dull to look at and has too much love interest. He would have enjoyed watching Dirk THE A-TEAM / BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Benedict but wouldn't have paid any attention to Strother Martin who is the best thing in it.

Dr Stoner looks remarkably excited by the prospect of peeling dead skin from David's back

To be honessssssst it looks like a TV movie and I suspect that it what it was intended to be until the producers or the networks decided it was too out there for television and turned it into a cinema feature. That may explain the brief nudity and an entirely irrelevant skinny dipping sequence.

There's not a lot of horror in it and even if there were the low quality special effects would probably negate its impact.  In fact it's almost as if Kowalksi was determined to undercut any chances the film might have had so badly is it executed, the structure in particular.  What I mean by that is the 'who' is apparent from the outset, the 'why' is established shortly after that and the 'what' is shown halfway through.

Dr Stoner doing his snake tricks.  N.B. If you look closely on the left you can light reflected in the sheet of glass between the cameraman and the snake; there's a similar still of Harrison Ford in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK [1981].

The most effective sssssssequences are the two set in a fairground, which draw heavily on Tod Browning's FREAKS [1932].  In the first, David and Kristina are there on a date and are drawn to the Hall of Freaks, enticed by the barker's promise of a Snake Man.

Ssssssscream if you wanna go faster!

This sequence this still that I remember from my childhood and, in this specific context, it's unsettling but faintly comic.  In the second sequence, Kristina goes there alone determined to find out the truth; we basically see the same shots again but in this second context it is both revolting and pitiful.

I've just realised this snakeman looks like the husband of a girl I used to fancy at school

There's really not much else to say about SSSSSSS.  Everything proceeds very slowly and the audience is one step ahead of the script all the way.  Once in a while the film grinds to a halt to set up a murder by snake which are perforce contrived because it's extremely difficult to get any sane person to go within a hundred yards of a venomous snake.  Worse still the film's climax is so ridiculous as to be literally laughable.  I can't believe there's any other film which expects you to feel horrified by angry mongoose.

A snake's eye view of Dirk Benedict as David Blake.  And I'm not even kidding.

Dirk Benedict was a good looking man in his youth and the film exploits that as much as it can: he must be shirtless in about 75% of his scenes.  Consequently he's not required to do much acting other than act surprised at each stage of his progression into a snake.  I think he's a better actor than he's given credit for though - he must have something to have starred in two enormously successful TV shows.  Having said that, his film career never got going at all.  A quick scan of his career credits suggests that he has an ambivalent attitude towards acting and show business: for someone who has been around since the early 70s he really hasn't done much work, especially when you consider THE A-TEAM stopped in 1987.

Strother Martin as Dr Stoner.  Up to no good, as usual.

Strother Martin is a favourite of mine, as regular readers will know.  This a rare leading role for him and despite its cruddiness he really gets his teeth into it, if you'll pardon the expression.

Heather Menzies has two claims to fame: firstly, she was one of the von Trapp children (Louisa to be precise) in the staggeringly popular Nazi singalong THE SOUND OF MUSIC [1965]; second, I believe she was the first of said clan to later take her clothes off in a movie (in Joe Dante's excellent JAWS ripoff PIRANHA [1978]).  These two linked claims to cinematic immortality say an awful lot about the hand dealt to women in Hollywood, and an equal amount about what audiences want to see.

Heather Menzies as Kristina Stoner.  Wearing glasses in movies is shorthand for bookish, from which we can extrapolate virtue.  In every sense.

A couple of supporting players worth mentioning.  The first is Richard B. Shull who plays an inquisitive university administrator.  Shull was a consummate character actor who worked in mainstream and independent features, including one of my favourites: Monte Hellman's COCKFIGHTER [1974].  On top of that he was, by all accounts, one of those rare things - a character actor who was even more off the wall in real life than he was on screen, like Timothy Carey.  Keep an eye out for him because he's really good, like Walter Matthau but more so.

Richard B. Shull as Dr Daniels

Another familiar face is Reb Brown who plays the muscle-bound bully Steve Randall, in this his film debut. Brown gets stereotyped in tough guy roles, which is understandable when you have a physique like his, but he's a decent actor for all that.  He's probably best known for his role in Ted Kotcheff's UNCOMMON VALOR [1983] but he's been in loads of delirious movies too, working with directors like Bruno Mattei, Antonio Margherit and Albert Pyun.  I have a film on my 'to watch' pile called NIGHT CLAWS that was released last year.  Brown was dragged back to the screen after an absence of 15 years for this tale of a killer Bigfoot; it's got my name written all over it, so watch this space.

Reb Brown threatens our hero

Finally there's Tim O'Connor in a small role as the fairground proprietor who has a less than legit business partnership with Dr Stoner.  An almighty career he's had has Tim, dating back to the 1940s, although he will almost certainly be remembered as the slightly crotchety old bloke in the TV show BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY.

Tim O'Connor (L) as Kogen, inspecting his latest purchase from Dr Stoner

I should also mention Ted Grossman who plays the slightly dim-witted sheriff (is there any other kind?). Grossman, or rather Grossman's leg, is familiar to all lovers of delirious cinema from his, or rather its, appearance in JAWS [1975] as the poor bloke who gets his leg bitten off in the pond.  That's the second time I've mentioned JAWS in reference to SSSSSSS, which should come as no surprise because both films were produced by Richard Zanuck and David Brown.

Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1973)

It's almost impossible to overstate the influence of George Romero's 1968 landmark NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.  Not only is it responsible for the ubiquity of the zombie in popular culture but it also provided inspiration to countless filmmakers as a high quality, low budget, hugely successful independent feature.  Of course some of the films which followed in its wake were dreadful, as there will always be those looking to make a quick buck, but there were also minor gems like this one.

CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS was directed and co-written by Bob Clark in 1973.  It stars co-author Alan Ormsby as Alan, an egocentric leader of a theatre company, who takes his actors to a remote graveyard as part of a prank to fool them into thinking he can raise the dead.  But when they actually manager to do just that all hell breaks loose.

What I like about it is that Clark has the confidence to hold back on the horror for ages, taking care to establish his characters and setting, building the atmosphere and slowly increasing the tension; I'm struggling to think of another horror film which keeps the actual horror in reserve for quite as long as this one.  But I say "actual horror" advisedly because there is horror of a different kind in this part of the film.  Alan is a monster: he takes pleasure in belittling and humiliating his actors, thinks nothing of abducting the graveyard janitor, and sees exhuming corpses as harmless fun.  The entire 'Orville' sequence which starts out as black comedy turns into something far darker, more unpleasant and downright perverse.  More than anything, this part of the film reminded me of Brian De Palma's early films, particularly HI MOM! (1970).

When it does come though, the horror is swift, brutal and unstoppable.  No holing up in a farmhouse for days here; the living can only manage to fight off the dead for about twenty minutes before they succumb.  It's worth mentioning the make-up effects which were done by multi-talented Alan Ormsby.  They're really good for the most part and even more impressive considering the numbers of zombies shown.  A lot of films and TV series skimp on the effects by having only showing a few monsters onscreen at any one time (DR WHO and ALIENS are two examples that spring to mind); however, this movie has loads, which makes the final onslaught all the more impressive.

That said, I can understand why people don't like CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS.  The build up is very slow and will turn a lot of people off.  Even if you make it through that section you might feel the payoff wasn't worth waiting for.  It's also very much of its time with garish clothes, ugly hairstyles and would-be groovy dialogue.

Bob Clark, who died in 2007, had a patchy career but did make some memorable films.  BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) is a highly regarded early entry in the slasher subgenre, MURDER BY DECREE (1976) is a terrific Sherlock Holmes meets Jack the Ripper period thriller and most lads of my generation will have cause to thank him for PORKY'S (1982).  TURK 182! (1985) has its admirers too.  Alan Ormsby went on to have a wildly varied career in Hollywood mainly as a writer of films including MY BODYGUARD (1980), Paul Schrader's remake of CAT PEOPLE (1982) and the Tom Berenger schoolteacher / vigilante flick THE SUBSTITUTE (1996) but he also directed the Ed Gein biopic DERANGED (1974) and did the make-up effects for underwater Nazi zombie romp SHOCK WAVES (1977), a review of which will appear on this blog imminently.

Ganja and Hess (1973)

GANJA AND HESS was written and directed by (and co-stars) Bill Gunn in 1973.  It stars Duane Jones (best known as the hero of George Romero's landmark NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)) as Dr Hess Green, a wealthy academic who is stabbed with an ancient African dagger by his assistant George Mada, who then commits suicide.  After the incident Hess finds that he has contracted a disease with symptoms similar to vampirism.  To compound his problems, Mrs Ganja Mada (Marlene Clark) arrives demanding to know where her husband is.

GANJA AND HESS is a difficult film for several reasons.  First off, until recently it was very difficult to get hold of.  Second, if you did manage to get hold of it, as I did, it was usually in a severely cut form which more or less ruined it.  Third, it is deliberately slow-paced and there is little incident.  That third reason is perhaps the most important because GANJA AND HESS has often been lumped in with the blaxploitation films of the 1970s - because it was produced by and concerns black people - and also with the horror genre - because of the vampirism angle.  In actual fact those categorisations, while understandable, are not a particularly good fit for GANJA AND HESS, which is a world away from, say, SHAFT (1971) or THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA (1974).  It has the grainy look of an experimental feature and the social and emotional concerns of John Cassavetes.  That said there are undeniably horror elements that call to mind other oblique genre films, such as George Romero's MARTIN (1978), which deals with a disturbed young man who may or may not be a vampire, and Harry Kumel's DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (1971), in its depiction of vampiric desire. 

Gunn's concerns in GANJA AND HESS are not vampires per se, but the idea of preying upon others.  Hess is shown to be a respected but aloof man who seems distanced from his ethnic roots, surrounding himself with the trappings of the white upper-middle class and even employing a black butler.  Ganja is a woman who having experienced a troubled childhood has become determined to do whatever it takes to survive.  Therefore when she learns Hess's secret she uses it to what she considers to be her advantage.  The two characters, now linked by their shared 'disease', feed off other marginalised characters - black and white - for sustenance.  So the film is perhaps less a celebration of black identity than a critique of the extent to which ethnic minorities are perhaps too ready to prey upon themselves, while at the same time understanding that their often limited opportunities give them no alternative.  It could also be argued that the ancient African dagger that spreads the disease is a metaphor for the curse of being of an African-American in modern US society.

It's an interesting and unusual film then but it's not easy to like.  There are some sequences which go on far too long - sermons at the volunteer church, for instance - and the lack of any sympathetic characters is alienating.  However, the acting is terrific, which is unusual for a semi-experimental low-budget production.  Some of the cinematography too is good - particularly the exteriors - but the interiors are very dimly lit and consequently rather ugly.

I've lost count of the number of times on this blog that I have had to bemoan the fact that directors of quality films have had painfully short careers.  Bill Gunn directed only one more project after this but enjoyed some critical success as a playwright.  He died in 1989, aged just 54.  Duane Jones , despite appearing in two landmark genre movies, also had a short career in acting but became a drama teacher and champion of ethnic theatre.  He too died young, in 1988 aged 52.  Marlene Clark on the other hand had a long and varied career in film and television, including some fondly remembered genre movies including SLAUGHTER (1972), ENTER THE DRAGON (1973) and the daft British horror THE BEAST MUST DIE (1974).

Messiah of Evil (1973)

MESSIAH OF EVIL is an obscure but influential American horror film that was directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz.  It was shot in 1971 at various locations in California but wasn't released until 1973.  It stars Marianna Hill as Arletty, an inmate at an asylum who recalls the series of events that led her to be incarcerated there.  She had travelled to a small coastal town called Point Dune to meet her estranged father, an artist.  Finding no trace of him, she fell in with an aristocratic drifter and his two female companions.  Gradually the four of them came to realise that the town harboured a terrible secret.

What's interesting about it is that it eschews the traditional model of Hollywood narrative cinema and instead goes for the more European method of communicating the story through vivid imagery.  In actual fact the narrative is entirely secondary to the atmosphere; what lingers in the memory is not the dialogue or important plot moments but a series of startling images.  In that respect it replicates the seemingly random but internally coherent logic of a dream - or in this case a nightmare.

Given the film's visual focus, the production design and photography are superb.  The artist's home is designed within an inch of its life, almost becoming a character in its own right.  There are also some very simple but eerie widescreen shots of supermarkets, gas stations, movie theatres and beaches - which to my mind must have been a major influence on the look of John Carpenter's THE FOG (1980).  Not only that but the theme of an ancient evil stirring to wreak havoc on a seaside town is pretty much what Carpenter's film is about.

Another couple of films it reminded me of are Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's PERFORMANCE (1970) and Harry Kumel's DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (1971); the latter film was the first film I wrote about on this blog.  Both of those movies are marked by a sort of gender fluidity and frankness about sex which is reflected, albeit in a less overt way, in MESSIAH OF EVIL.  The relationship between the drifter Thom and his two companions - are they girlfriends, groupies, disciples? - and the ease with which they integrate into Arletty's life is, again, a theme more commonly explored in European cinema.  Perhaps the name Arletty is a nod in that direction.

Something that has occurred to me while adding stills to this review is the repeated use of imagery to do with seeing or looking.  Arletty's father is an artist and we see plenty of artworks in his studio; Elisha Cook cameo is delivered, sitting next to a television set, almost as a 'performance' to Michael Greer (see still below); Joy Bang goes to the cinema and we watch her while see watches the movie.

Anitra Ford (L) and Joy Bang (R)

The cast is a cult movie fan's dream.  Marianna Hill was in one of Howard Hawks' final movies, RED LINE 7000 (1965), appeared in an Elvis Presley movie, played opposite Robert Forster in Haskell Wexler's ground-breaking MEDIUM COOL (1969) and is in the really odd cult horror THE BABY (1972).  Apparently she moved to Europe later in life and taught at the London branch of the Actors Studio.  Michael Greer was an openly homosexual actor at a time when, in Hollywood at least, that was an incredibly brave thing to be.  He had a few good roles early in his career but, perhaps inevitably, found that quality parts didn't seem to come his way.  Nevertheless he was a noted performer on the comedy circuit and in theatre productions.  He died in 2002.

Michael Greer

There are also a couple of interesting supporting players, including two of Hollywood's finest: Elisha Cook Jr and Royal Dano, who were both in one of my (and my Dad's) all time favourite American movies ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE (1973).  There's also Joy Bang who epitomised the free spirited, sexually liberated young woman of the 1960s, both on screen and off.  She played variations on the same role in several films around this time before packing it all in and going to work as a nurse in Minnesota.

Elisha Cook Jr

The husband and wife team of Huyck and Katz were part of the Dirty Dozen group of film students at the University of Southern California, in that boom time for young film-makers.  Their careers have been patchy but they notably wrote the scripts for George Lucas's AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973) and Steven Spielberg's INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984).