The Visitors (1972)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Absolutely the worst movie.

A Major Disappointment

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This curio is a low budget drama directed by Elia Kazan from a script by his son. This is probably one of the first times audiences got to see James Woods in a leading role. He plays Bill, a young man, just back from the Vietnam War and living in a rural menage with his girl, her older husband, and his child. The older guy is a Hemingwayesque writer with a penchant for booze, and Patrick McVey plays the role with aplomb. At their door appear a couple of Bill's old army buddies, and one of them has a grudge to work out, since Bill ratted him out something back in the war zone. The young woman gets into it too, and the tension grows to an inevitable confrontation. There are no revelations here, but it is worth a look.

There are some mild spoilers here. I really liked this film. It has a lot in common with Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, which came out a year before. I have no idea if it is accidental or not. No one seams to talk about the similarities. Both films are about the moral bankruptcy of masculinity. Both film feature a sexually confused woman and a battle between a soft man and super masculine men.The idea for the film supposedly came from the same story that Brian De Palma's Casualties of War was based on. This is a fictional version of what could have happened after everything in the story Casualties of War is based on. Two of the men who raped the girl in Vietnam come home to the person (Bill Schmidt) who reported them to have their revenge.I loved the character battle in this film. Bill's father in law is a writer of western books. This is important because he stands for the old west, the old time, the culture of violence, where you took what you wanted, no matter if it was yours or not. He hates Bill because he thinks he is too soft, not enough of a man and definitely not worthy of his daughter. He even wonders if his grandchild is his grandchild since it has a blood of a sissy in its veins. He however falls in love with the guys who come for a visit to take revenge, the Vietnam war criminals! And when he hears about what Bill Schmidt had done to them (reporting how they raped and killed an innocent girl) he replies: Why did you not kill him? So no sympathy there.Bill Schmidt's wife Martha Wayne is rather confused. She is daddy's little girl but still not blindly so. She is kind of torn between two world-views and can't make up her mind.And now let the battle begin... :)And jumping forward in time. I wonder if this film influenced Funny Games (1997). Two visitors with bad intentions come for a visit and a power play between them all. Sounds like Funny Games to me :)I have no idea why this film is so underrated. I was on the edge of my seat while watching it. Maybe my expectations were just so low that it caught me off guard?

The Visitors (1972) ** (out of 4)Bill (James Woods) and his wife Martha (Patricia Joyce) are spending time with their son when two of Bill's former Vietnam buddies (Steve Railsback, Chico Martinez) show up. The wife isn't sure what the two are doing there but the secret is that both of them just got done doing time for rape, which Bill turned them in on. THE VISITORS isn't really the type of film you'd expect from someone like Elia Kazan but after viewing the film and seeing that he was going for a psychological type thriller, I can see why he was hired but in the end I don't think the film works. What we basically got is a thriller that doesn't want action but instead it wants to make the viewer think and it wants to turn these thoughts into a nightmare. I don't think there's any doubt that Kazan, working with a screenplay written by his son, wanted the viewer to sit in the dark fearing what these two dangerous men were going to do to the man who turned them in. Kazan directs the film in an extremely slow way as all of the scenes just drag on and it really does seem that the thing runs much longer than its 88-minutes. Kazan's slow style wouldn't have been a problem had the dialogue been better. The majority of the film is just slow, drawn out dialogue sequences but the problem is that they're boring. Not once did I get caught up in anything going on and in fact the highlight of the movie is a sequence where the wife's father (Patrick McVey) has a neighbors dog killed. The film is trying to say something about Vietnam, friendship, loyalty and several other things but everything just gets so muddled that you can't help but start yawning. The performances from the five people are all good and it's this that keeps the film working. THE VISITORS isn't quite as graphic as its reputation would have you believe but it does have the feel of something like THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. In fact, the visual look of this film compares highly to the Wes Craven shocker that was released the previous year.

Although the production values are those of 1960s and 70s films which make The Incredibly Strange Film Festival, that is to say not good, this one is still worth watching if you happen to like film noir and see it on your cable TV schedule. A ex-Vietnam veteran lives with his girlfriend Martha and their baby, and nearby her father, a world war II veteran. Then in the snow covered winter landscape two Vietnam buddies show up in their car, and its obvious they are psychologically warped. They get on well with dad but when it is revealed they were part of a gang rape of a 16 year old girl in Vietnam, needless to say Martha isn't very comfortable. The tensions build. Martha gets around in a miniskirt and boots and the regular glimpses of her thighs are a fairly strong clue about events near the end of the film. 6/10