About this Event
A KIND OF HUSH: Cinema of Ambient Dread
October 9th-27th
It’s in the air…a shadowy footstep behind a locked door, a stranger’s dead-eyed stare, a glimpsed figure at the edge of an empty lot, a whisper from the other room. Something felt before it is seen. Something not quite right.
There’s an uneasy stillness that settles over a certain strain of horror, where the slightest sound, movement, or suggestion of a presence can become almost unbearable. This October, 7th House presents A KIND OF HUSH: Cinema of Ambient Dread, a six-film series devoted to movies that unsettle less through shocks than through atmosphere: quiet rooms, empty streets, unfamiliar landscapes, troubled dreams, and the uncanny feeling of being not quite alone…
Spanning the ghostly memory palace of (1980), George A. Romero’s occult portrait of suburban disquiet (1972), the grief-haunted isolation of , 1977), the somnambulant seaside nightmare MESSIAH OF EVIL (1973), the rain-lashed Gothic fever dream of (1982), and the hypnotic pastoral dread of (1971), these are films saturated in an atmosphere of gentle dread, where unease lingers long before frights are delivered.
Join us throughout October for six singular excursions into the quieter reaches of horror, where silence draws us closer, shadows beckon, and the waking world slips into nightmare.
As part of their October series A KIND OF HUSH: Cinema of Ambient Dread, 7th House proudly presents Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz’s MESSIAH OF EVIL (1973), one of the films that first inspired the series and one of the most singularly atmospheric American horror films of the 1970s: a visually ravishing, profoundly strange nightmare of empty streets, nocturnal wanderings, salt-breezed seaside desolation, and gathering dread, where a sleepy California town seems to have slipped quietly out of the waking world and into a strange, hazy and unnerving dream.
Marianna Hill stars as Arletty, a young woman who travels to the isolated California coastal town of Point Dume in search of her missing father, an artist whose increasingly disturbing letters have abruptly stopped. She finds his house abandoned but filled with enormous, unsettling paintings and fragments of a diary describing a darkness gradually descending upon the town. As Arletty searches for answers, she falls in with an eccentric trio of fellow outsiders and begins encountering the town’s inhabitants: pale, silent figures who gather at night and seem to be waiting, with unnerving patience, for something—or someone—to arrive.
To call Messiah of Evil simply a horror film hardly begins to describe it. Made by Huyck and Katz just before their breakout success writing AMERICAN GRAFFITI, the film approaches genre with the sensibility of European art cinema, unfolding less through conventional suspense than through dislocation, architecture, color, sound, and an accumulating sense that reality itself has gone strangely dormant. Huyck and Katz resist ever fully explaining the strange, Lovecraftian forces at work, allowing that uncertainty to become part of the film’s atmosphere. Its deserted streets, fluorescent supermarkets, empty movie theaters, modernist interiors, and vast painted rooms form a landscape at once recognizably Californian and impossibly unreal—a somnambulant world somewhere between Antonioni’s RED DESERT and Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, with echoes of CARNIVAL OF SOULS, Mario Bava, and the disaffected dream-world of late-’60s and early-’70s counterculture.
Long marooned in battered prints and public-domain transfers, Messiah of Evil can now be experienced in a 4k restoration sourced from the best-surviving film elements held by the Academy Film Archive, revealing just how visually extraordinary this singular American cult film has always been. Vibe-drenched and hypnotic, it is one of the great waking nightmares of ’70s American horror, and one whose strange nocturnal spell is difficult to shake.
Dirs. Gloria Katz and William Huyck, 1973, 90 mins, USA, English, Unrated (Adult Audiences), Digital.
Tickets: $12 (All Screenings Are In Person Only)
Please email [email protected] or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.
ADVISORY DISCLAIMER
With some exception, The Philosophical Research Society’s 7th House Screenings does not typically provide advisory warnings about potentially upsetting content or subject matter, as sensitivities are particular to each viewer. Please be sure to read event listings, research on the web, or visit Common Sense Media, IMDb, and DoesTheDogDie.com for thorough info on content and age-appropriateness. If you have any specific content advisory questions, please email [email protected].
CONTENT DISCLAIMER
The views, opinions, and thoughts expressed within exhibited works are solely those of their creators and may not represent those of the Philosophical Research Society (PRS), its affiliates, or any individuals associated with PRS. Screenings are intended for educational and entertainment purposes.
ACCESSIBILITY
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REFUND POLICIES
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In the event that PRS is forced to cancel an event entirely, tickets will be refunded or vouchers offered for a rescheduled event.
PARKING
Limited parking is available onsite at PRS in both the front lot (entry from Los Feliz Blvd. when heading east), as well as street parking on Griffith Park Blvd. and (after 7 PM) on Los Feliz Blvd. We encourage attendees to consider carpooling, walking or biking to events if possible, and please be considerate of our Los Feliz neighbors when parking.
PRS EVENT POLICIES
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Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard, Los Angeles, United States
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