Before he had a funny turn and made Howard The Duck, Willard Huyck turned in this ultra lowbudget treat, a zombie movie set in a rundown coastal town which owes as much to Poe and ’40s noir as it does to Romero.

The story is slight (a woman searches for her father) and the production values crude, but Huyck’s script is unusually literate and Messiah matches Herk Harvey’s Carnival Of Souls in the grubby poetry stakes. If only all desolation was this lyrical.

Argh! Slowly, silently, a cinema fills with ghouls.

Remake rights: Guillermo del Toro can always find magic in malevolence.