The Visitor (1979)

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

From producer Ovidio G. Assonitis comes this rip-off of THE OMEN which may be lacking in coherence and plot structure, but makes up for that in having a mainly famous American cast to give it some box-office draw. The only difference this time is that the child is a girl instead of a boy, but the usual accidental deaths are all present, along with a number of people on the sides of both good and evil fighting over her.This surreal movie opens with John Huston facing a snow-covered girl with reptilian eyes in a barren desert where the sky is green and a huge storm brews around them. I think this symbolic opening is supposed to remind us of THE EXORCIST and that movie's prologue with Max Von Sydow facing Pazuzu in the desert. The special effects are unconvincing but nonetheless interesting, giving the movie a weird, surreal kind of look, a theme which runs throughout. After this we are introduced to Jesus Christ (played by Italian favourite Franco Nero) who tells a group of skinhead boys the battle between good and evil is still going on! A bizarre prologue to be sure but things are just going to keep getting weirder.Finally, after about twenty minute, the plot begins for real. Barbara Collins is visiting a basketball game with her daughter, Katy, and her lover, Raymond (Lance Henriksen). Katy makes the basketball explode and thus her favourite team wins. We soon learn that the girl is possessed by evil and has a familiar, in the form of an eagle, to do her bidding. Her eyes also turn silver occasionally via some spooky-looking contacts. Henriksen, it soon transpires, is part of an evil organisation and has been charged with the task of getting Barbara pregnant again (as she gives birth to evil babies).It's pretty hard to watch this film and keep track of what's going on, because of the sheer lack of coherence in the plot and the wealth of ultimately unexplained things that happen. The evil group that Ferrer leads is never fully explained as to its roots or why it affects them when the child dies. Similarly, the character of Huston is never fully explained or the bald-headed boys in the 'hospital'. The movie is pretty dated, with some appalling fashions (especially in the gigantic sunglasses that Katy wears occasionally) and a cool funky '70s music score (a highlight). Two black accident repair men turn up for a spot of wisecracking comic relief! The special effects are lacking but imaginative, and there's a fine stunt involving Ford crashing his car which is executed well.The various deaths are about as gory as in THE OMEN, with brief flashes of a bloody eyeball being pecked or a knife driving into a throat. There are some standout moments involving Katy making a metal partition crash down onto a hot dog stand in her attempt to kill Huston, the aforementioned green sky dream sequences, and the ending, in which Katy is attacked by hundreds of birds. There's also a fun hall-of-mirrors sequence seemingly stolen from ENTER THE DRAGON.The cast is a good one and makes up for the script's deficiencies. Mel Ferrer, a genre staple in this period, makes good use of his cold, creepy eyes as the chief villain. Lance Henriksen basically reprises his role from DAMIEN: OMEN II but is underused. Shelley Winters is good value as a bible-bashing nanny, while director Sam Peckinpah makes a brief cameo as a doctor. Glenn Ford is pretty good as a detective hot on Katy's trail who comes off the worse for wear, while John Huston is excellent and understated as the central crusader for good.Paige Conner, though, goes over the top as Katy and comes off more as annoying and whiny than frightening or evil; she's pretty unconvincing and not a patch on Linda Blair. The final chief cast member is the familiar-looking Joanne Nail who struggles through an awful role which subjects her to a ton of abuse, like being accidentally shot, propelled into a fish tank, thrown down a flight of stairs, and garroted; it's pretty disturbing the amount of misfortune that happens to her, especially when she's in the wheelchair, and in this the film echoes Lee Remick's unfortunate character in THE OMEN.I would liken this movie to EXORCIST II in that, overall, it is a flop and disappointingly disjointed, but it has some key artistic scenes that make it worth a watch. Of course, if you're a fan of any of the actors appearing in it then I would recommend it too, to see how they handle being in such a film. Sometimes boring and sometimes fascinating, THE VISITOR is worth tracking down for fans of the bizarre.

I tried, I really did, to watch this thing, but writing this review is a better use of my time on earth than the movie. I admit, that's pretty pitiful.People here have ventured that they did it for the paycheck. Of course it's true. All the stars had already made their names and their fortunes. It was an easy paycheck. Atlanta is a nice town and easy to get in and out of.This was what prompted the likes of John Huston and Glenn Ford and Mel Ferrer to have their names on the credits. Nobody would take it seriously. But being pros they earned their pay -- they found their marks and did their lines. The producer/director/editor did the rest.By the way, Huston had done this kind of nonsense before, in Beat the Devil. He and Truman Capote made it up from one day to the next. The great cast would party, while Capote, also partying, would slap together tomorrow's script, which Huston wouldn't see until that morning. Despite this, the brilliance across-the-board turned out a pretty good flick.Alas, in the case of The Visitor, think Manos: the Hands of Fate, with an all-star cast.

The plot, as I hopefully understand it, is that Satan (or Sateen, as this film calls him) fathers children with supernatural powers. One of these children is 8 year-old Katy, who has telekinetic powers and a heavy Southern drawl. An intergalactic traveler called The Visitor must battle the child for the fate of the universe....or something like that. There's also some stuff about an evil hawk, some bald aliens, and a crazy-eyed Jesus with a bad blonde wig.Nonsensical Italian-made claptrap that combines '70s fascinations with the occult and aliens. It's an awful movie that rips off many better movies, made watchable by some striking imagery and interesting casting. John Huston, Lance Henriksen, Sam Peckinpah, Mel Ferrer, Shelly Winters, and Glenn Ford are all in this. That says more about the state of their respective careers at the time than it does about the quality of this production. Incoherent but good for some laughs. Dig that terribly out of place soundtrack, too.

Mind numbing in its awfulness. Director Giulio Paradisi concocts a ridiculous mixture of horror and mysticism while roping in a sad cast of actors, both over AND under the hill. John Huston, whose performance consists of walking into rooms, spouting a few philosophically tinged lines of inane dialog and then vanishing, leads the cast as a "visitor" sent from someplace "beautiful" to "rescue" a little girl who is evil incarnate (and apparently the vessel-in-waiting to start a new race under the guidance of creepy doctor Mel Ferrer and a bunch of corporate goons). The girl, who is a curiously talented gymnast and ice-skater, cripples her mother, kills a couple of teenagers, uses foul language when yelling at both Shelley Winters and Glenn Ford and keeps an attack eagle as a pet. It's filmed in Atlanta but the little girl is the only one with an southern drawl. A real mess. In addition to the slumming Huston, Ford, and Winters, Lance Herickson, Sam Peckinpah and Franco Nero are in it too. Director Paradisi even has the moxie to pay homage to the likes of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE as well as THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI.