Hello everyone, and welcome back to the site! How are all your weeks going? I’ve personally been working harder than ever, and actually feeling pretty good about it. By pushing most of my weekly busywork tasks from the weekend to the week proper, I’ve reassigned my weekends to more long-form projects, and thus have been making great strides in articles on Spirit Circle and Toradora. I’m looking forward to releasing those, but in the meantime, we munched through some interesting feature films, as well as an excellent recent cartoon. Let’s check ‘em out!

Our first screening this week was Messiah of Evil, a ‘70s horror film about a young woman named Arletty (Marianna Hill), who travels to a remote California town in search of her missing artist father. There, she finds the walls of his house painted with eerie collections of shadowed figures, as well as diary notes that allude to some strange transformation within him. Eventually, the trials her father faced begin repeating themselves, and she must triumph over an evil that’s lain dormant for one hundred years.

I had a pretty good idea I was going to enjoy this one going in, as I’d been given the impression that basically any fans of giallo horror would appreciate this American spin on the genre. Surprise surprise, I loved it – in fact, I don’t think I’ve loved a horror movie this much since I watched Suspiria itself. Messiah of Evil is phenomenal, a triumph of giallo-adjacent form that I’d recommend to any horror fans, particularly those with a fondness for either art-horror or Lovecraft.

Messiah of Evil’s most obvious strengths are its phenomenal cinematography and art design. The town of Point Dume is an alienating fever dream, with stark lighting casting an inhuman glare over its gas stations and multiplexes. Every other setup is some ambitious experiment in disorienting visual form, from the initial blurred shot down the endless hall of an asylum, to the harshly angled compositions that make a maze of the central house. And that house! The painted walls are a beautiful nightmare to behold, undercutting any sense of safety within her father’s walls, and turning even basic conversations into visual theater.

Messiah of Evil proceeds through a series of slow-burning setpieces with horrifying payoffs, the classic giallo format of “let’s walk through creepy, oddly lit hallways until someone murders us.” But rather than architectural grandeur or urban squalor, Point Dume makes the mundane monstrous, setting its major sequences at such unassuming locations as a local cineplex or supermarket. By contrasting the touchstones of small-town America with the horror of the possessed townspeople, Messiah of Evil evokes something like David Lynch’s focus on aesthetic corruption, and the nightmarish lurking beneath a veneer of civility. And of course, these sequences all benefit immensely from the film’s incredible cinematography, offering imagery that is simultaneously so unsettling and so beautiful that it’s guaranteed to stick with you.

And oh right, this movie also has a plot! Messiah of Evil also benefits from energetic dialogue and a lyrical script, with Arletty’s voiceover offering a sense of novelistic grandeur and mystery to the developing crisis. The plot is essentially a modernized interpretation of Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” with a quiet town inexorably morphing into a conduit of worship, a beacon calling for a dark god. Banking on its sumptuous cinematography, perverted landscapes, and distinctively vulnerable leads, Messiah of Evil is able to maintain the fundamentally unknowable horror of Lovecraft’s best work – and through doing so, stands as the best adaptation of his style I’ve seen outside it.

So yeah, Messiah of Evil is brilliant. One of the best films I’ve seen, and a welcome addition to my personal favorites. It’s always a thrill to make a new discovery that immediately feels like an old friend.

After that, I continued my journey through ‘70s horror with The Blood on Satan’s Claw, a film which is apparently known as one of the “folk horror essentials,” along with The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General. Well, I love folk horror, I loved The Wicker Man, and to the surprise of no one, I had a great time with The Blood on Satan’s Claw.

Satan’s Claw is a British period piece set in the 18th century, concerning a village where a young man named Ralph Gower (Barry Andrews) discovers a misshapen, seemingly demonic skull while plowing a field. Ralph rushes to inform the local judge (Patrick Wymark), but by the time the two return, the skull has vanished. The judge assumes Ralph was lying, but over time, it becomes clear a dark force has come to their town, and is threatening to draw all under its sway.

The film proceeds through a rapid accumulation of horrifying incidents, as the townsfolk suffer from disease, madness, and a strange compulsion towards devilish behavior. Artifacts of the beast provoke transformations among the people, with a young woman named Angel (Linda Hayden) leading the youngest away from God and into the forest. In the distance, the children’s voices ring out in song, punctuated by screams. Fear and distrust spread among the populace, and to those who’ve grown the hairy patches of “Satan’s skin,” there is no solace or relief.

In short, Satan’s Claw is absolutely brimming with all the folk-horror conventions you might hope for, executed with solid performances, excellent set design, and a welcome fondness for anxiety-provoking long cuts. The film comes with a triple-underlined content warning, as there is a graphic sexual assault scene halfway through, but those with a strong stomach will find many of Midsommar or The Witch’s highlights had their genesis in this nasty but undeniably effective film.

Our third film this week was The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, an adventure featuring a pocket-sized princess, vengeful cyclops, and plenty more fanciful attractions. Like our previously screened Jason and the Argonauts, the true star of this film is Ray Harryhausen, whose stop-motion monsters are always a delight in action. Harryhausen’s creations range from the aforementioned cyclops to a caged dragon, and the film maintains a steady procession of tightly constructed action-adventure setpieces; conflicts feel parsable, and victories feel tangibly earned. With Torin Thatcher putting in a scene-stealing performance as the nefarious magician Sokurah, Sinbad maintains a merry energy throughout its runtime. An easy and enjoyable watch.

Finally, with One Piece wrapping up, we at last started integrating some other cartoons into our schedule, beginning with the first season of She-ra and the Princesses of Power. I’d heard almost uniformly good things about this show, and I was delighted to learn the hype is right. She-ra is a charming show, whose scrappy aesthetics are more than elevated through its compelling characters and thoughtfully constructed narrative.

She-ra centers on Adora, an orphan who is adopted by the nefarious Horde, and grows up to be a young and capable warrior. However, on her first journey beyond her home, she discovers a magical sword that seems to resonate with her, as well as the knowledge that the people she’s grown up with might not actually be so nice. And so Adora defects, gathering magical princesses to fight her former allies, and maybe figuring out how to be a normal teenager too.

She-ra’s premise is ripe for both comedy and thorny emotional drama, and the show exploits these angles with relish. As a formerly brainwashed child soldier, Adora’s misconceptions about the world provide ample opportunities for both gags and growth, while her complicated relationship with former ally Catra gives the season structure and a poignant emotional core. Meanwhile, pretty much every secondary character proves to be a highlight in their own way – a couple of the secondary princesses are a little one-note, but all of Adora’s immediate friends are multifaceted and charming, and certain side characters like Scorpia basically steal every scene they’re in. The show is just really damn funny, and that’s not something you can shoot for in a structural sense – it’s built out of each individual line of dialogue, a testament to this show’s excellent writing team.

The overall narrative structure is likewise impressive. Apparently the team knew from the start that they had fifty-two episodes, and so the first season’s narrative feels purposeful throughout, as we gracefully transition from setup to princess-hunting to cataclysmic battles. Because the characters are all so likable and well-defined, the show is able to maintain clear stakes in spite of its relatively consequence-free violence. The changing tides of battle are framed in terms of personal advancement or defeat for characters we know and love, meaning that even when Adora wins, a part of me thinks “oh god, I hope Catra survives her next performance review.”

My one point of criticism with the show has nothing to do with its storytelling; frankly, I’m hooked, and can’t wait to see what these characters do next. That said, the show can frequently feel a little visually clunky, something I’d ascribe to a couple of factors. Most importantly, the show’s style of shading doesn’t really lend itself to a cohesive overall composite. While She-ra’s backgrounds are generally painted with a variety of colors reflective of local lighting conditions, the cast always maintains a consistent unshaded look. Because of this, there’s always a clear visual separation between background and foreground, evoking the sense that the characters are on a soundstage, rather than in an actual environment. When combined with a slight stiffness of movement in the character’s sharp-angled limbs, you end up with a show that can frequently look less than graceful. Still, a rough composite is a small price to pay for such a compelling story; and having already started season two, it’s looking like the show’s visual execution actually improves as the series goes on. Looking forward to it!