Offseasonal Depression

 

It can sometimes be challenging to be a horror fan with little interest in HP Lovecraft. There you are, enjoying a book or movie, fully invested in the story, and suddenly, there are tentacles. You wonder why there are tentacles only to find fan reviews praising said property as being "Lovecraftian." Oh, you say, so that's why there are tentacles.

Onto the feature.

Quick Plot: Marie Aldrich has been summoned to Lone Palm Beach, an isolated Florida town separated from the mainland by a decisive drawbridge. When spring hits, it's a thriving tourist mecca but in the titular Offseason, things are a bit dreary.

It's fitting, since Marie's return stems from unpleasantries. Her late mother, once a successful though eventually unstable film actress, was buried in the island's cemetery and her grave has recently been desecrated. Marie enlists on-again/off-again boyfriend Peter to join her to straighten the matter out but when they arrive, they can't seem to find a single helpful soul.

Sure, there's Emily, the creepy florist who wanders the graveyard with a too-big smile, and the town's only restaurant is popping with revelers who seem ready for a verse of The Landlord's Daughter until Marie and Peter sour their mood. Rightly unnerved, Peter and Marie decide to leave, which goes about as well as you think. 

Written and directed by Mickey Keating, Offseason owes more than a few dinners from the frozen food aisle to the great Messiah of Evil and perhaps an order of fried calamari to HP Lovecraft. As you may have guessed, the sweet little town of Lone Palm Beach carries a deep darkness (and I don't just mean the fact that the movie's lighting is extremely absent). Some time ago, the townspeople made a pact with an aquatic demon and if there's one thing aquatic demons don't appreciate, it's betrayal. 

Marie didn't grow up in Lone Palm Beach and only learned of its existence during her mother's last home hospice days. She assumed the unusual stories were a side effect of her mother's derailing mind, but as she searches for the separated Peter and a path back to the mainland, Marie realizes you can't escape your heritage. 

I'm of very mixed mind on Offseason. I was fully involved and never bored but in truth, I can't exactly call this a well-constructed film. I'm a sucker for this kind of story but if I step back and objectively look at its construction, it comes up pretty short. 

We can barely see what's going on in its first act. Genre stalwart Jocelin Donahue is always a sympathetic presence, but the film is so deliberate in limiting her character specificities to the effect that we have no idea who she actually is (there's a throwaway line about her being a "problem child" that doesn't in any way fit the woman we're presented with). There are neat touches in some of the visuals (particularly some mannequin reveals) but they feel better in concept than execution. Overall, this left me thinking it was a better script than end product.

And yet, all that being said, I ultimately enjoyed my time watching Offseason. I'd say I saw what Keating was trying to do rather than experienced what he accomplished, but I liked what he was aiming for, if that makes any sense. It reminded me of the experience watching Dark Waters, another Lovecraftian folk horror involving a young woman discovering a secret island where her parent owed a debt. That film made less sense but for me, cast the right spell so that the mood overcame its storytelling shortcomings. Offseason doesn't quite have that, but I appreciate the effort.

High Points

Right as I was noting how strange it was that Keating's Carnage Park was effective because it was so gorgeously sun-drenched and how strange it was that Offseason's color palette was basically denim during a wash cycle, I reached a genuinely interesting visually directed scene where Marie confronts the town's shifty handyman illuminated in spurts by the flashing red light of the bridge. It's unique and effective, and shows much better instincts than the entire first act

Low Points

But that doesn't entirely excuse aforementioned denim wash cycle

Lessons Learned

Just because you're cursed doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you

VCRs will forever be the most durable home media technology

The bigger the curse, the better the flowers

Rent/Bury/Buy

Offseason doesn't really hold together, but if you're a sucker for this kind of story like me, you'll still probably find yourself entertained. Streaming now on Shudder. 

Zombie Cleanup In Aisle 5

When any film made in the ‘70s opens with a young girl sporting a Marcia Brady-like patterned dress slitting the throat of a grown man, it probably doesn’t have to work too hard to win me over. Thusly do we enter 1973’s cult classic, Messiah of Evil. 

Quick Plot: Arletty heads to a small coastal town in search of her father, a renowned painter who came to the remote seaside town of Point Dune, California, to work in peace. While she doesn’t find her dad, Arletty does discover his diary, in which he recorded the odd happenings that plagued him in recent months. 

Rather than sit down and FINISH reading the increasingly ominous journal entries, Arletty wanders the mysterious town to ask suspicious locals if they can help. Soon she stumbles upon a trio of swinging hippies, led by the seductive Thom and now spending the night in her father’s modern mansion. When one of Thom’s lady partners decides to split, we see that the town of Point Dune is in the slow process of descending into some sort of zombie-like state of cannibalism.

Messiah of Evil is a strange, strange little film, and ultimately, it’s all the better for it. Written and directed on a minuscule budget by William Huyck and Gloria Katz (screenwriters for Indianna Jones and the Temple of Doom and Howard the Duck), the movie suffered a good deal of financing woes and may (according to some reports) have been edited and released by a team not associated with the original production at all. Oddly enough, such confusion seems to help the overall effect of the film.

The plot is a mess. Motivations are hardly explained. The history of Point Dune’s human-eating cult is somewhat tossed in in the film’s final act (though much of what comes before seems to assume the audience already knows) and there’s the lingering issue that if Arletty had just sat down for twenty minutes and finished her dad’s very detailed diary entries, this whole situation could have been avoided and our pretty redheaded protagonist could be sipping daiquiris on a beach not oozing with the carnivorous undead. 

And yet, the messiness of Messiah of Evil may be part of its charm. The pacing is so inconsistent that the film puts you in a constant state of unease. Scenes of horror, as especially evidenced by Thom’s second girlfriend’s ill-fated trip to the cinema, unfold slowly, quietly, and in such a way that it turns audience impatience into brilliant tension. 

High Points

The film’s ending (hinted at with its opening framing device) does a great job of making the events of Messiah of Evil all the more cruel

Low Points

I suppose the film could have explained or even planted stronger seeds about its blood moon/cannibal cult/devil’s descendent/zombie plague mythology earlier on, but what can you do?

Lessons Learned

You don’t just unzip a man and say good night

Being sleep deprived and going insane due to mutant demon bites will do wonders for your penmanship

Popcorn buckets were gloriously bottomless in the 1970s

Look! It’s—

Royal Dano, always and forever known to be as the first victim of those pesky Killer Klowns From Outer Space playing the part of Arletty’s long-suffering zombified dad

Also, who knew! A founding member of The Blue Man Group

Also of note: the production design is credited to none other than Jack Fisk, he of such noted De Palma classics as Carrie and Phantom of the Paradise (and yes, also the husband of the one and only Sissy Spacek)

Rent/Bury/Buy

I’d long seen Messiah of Evil show up on forgotten movie lists, and I’m quite glad I finally gave it a go (streaming free for Amazon Prime users). The film is something of a mess, but as discussed, those elements somehow work together to create a strange nightmare of sorts that stands quite high in the post-Night of the Living Dead surge of zombie horror. It’s definitely worth a go.