The Visitor, 1979.
Directed by Giulio Paradisi (Credited as Michael J. Paradise).
Starring John Huston, Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, Shelly Winters, Joanne Neil, Sam Peckinpah, and Paige Conner.
SYNOPSIS:
The soul of a young girl with telekinetic powers becomes the prize in a battle between the forces of good and evil.
I should have a better introduction to set the scene for today’s review, dear readers, but I honestly don’t know where to start. So let’s just dive into it. This is the supremely surreal sci-fi, horror, acid trip that is The Visitor.
Imagine gathering parts of The Bad Seed, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Birds, Star Wars, Dune, Holy Mountain and The Bible. Then, you take all of that and stuff it into the biggest, grooviest bong you can find and take a nice long, deep hit. Then, in your bleary-eyed hallucinating state of madness and confusion, you might have a rough idea of what The Visitor is.
The plot, which seems like it was written by a five-year-old on a cocaine binge, is simply bollocks. Telling the story of a centuries-old religious battle between the evil Zatteen (Satan) and the good Yahweh (God) but filtered through a surrealist sci-fi lens involving psychic powers, shape-shifting birds and Franco Nero as Space Jesus with an army of bald child disciples. Then, space wizard John Huston arrives on Earth to find Katy, an evil child with psychic abilities. There is also a plot involving Katy’s stepfather Lance Henriksen who is in league with Satanists who want him to impregnate his wife to create the Anti-Christ, and in return, they’ll… help his basketball team? And somehow, this all culminates in a battle involving a flock of pigeons which I think come from space. Believe it or not, the film makes even less sense when you watch it.
The set pieces are strange and often hilarious. There is John Huston, on what looks like Arrakis from Dune, getting in a staring contest with a cloaked young girl who then becomes a child sized pile of maggots. There is an extended basketball game that ends with a sizeable and possibly deadly explosion that the referees decide still counts as a point. Then there is the part where, for several minutes, a high-as-hell-looking John Huston watches stars whizzing around the sky while occasionally throwing his arms up in the air like he’s just given up trying to make sense of it all.
This is just some of the surreal shit The Visitor throws at you with the sincerity and seriousness with which the film takes itself, making it all the more bizarre and funny. And that’s without the odd dialogue, which seems to love casually throwing in references to child molestation or, in one, frankly, unnecessary piece of “romantic” dialogue, “cripple molesting”. Did I mention this film is fucking weird?
Although an Italian made film, unlike others I’ve reviewed which are almost always dubbed, The Visitor has an entirely English-speaking cast. Although, even when not dubbed, the performances from the surprisingly star-studded cast are just plain strange and I can’t tell if this is either down to an awkwardly translated script or just its sheer stupidity.
As our Space Wizard hero Jerzy Colsowicz, Oscar-winning director John Huston (seen here in his fascinating side career as a player in Italian B-movies) gives a fun and laid-back performance. Huston, thanks to his distinctive voice (which, by the way, is immensely fun and surprisingly easy to imitate) and very fetching Safari suit, manages to give his strange character and even stranger dialogue an air of authority, regardless of the sheer absurdity of what he sometimes has to spout.
There is fellow Oscar winner Shelley Winters, in one of the film’s better performances, as a star sign-obsessed housekeeper, managing to make her unusual nonsense dialogue sound somewhat normal, and there is a creepy turn from Italian B-movie regular Mel Ferrer as a Satanist businessman, his quiet and relaxed delivery making his dialogue about Zateen sound suitably ominous, even if it’s still ridiculous. Also keep an eye out for a surprise cameo from Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs director Sam Peckinpah who, due to a possibly alcohol related inability to remember his lines, is very obviously dubbed in a weird quasi non-linear scene that feels like it was lifted from a forgotten Steven Soderberg film. And, the weirdest part of his scene is that it’s one of the few “normal” moments in the entire film.
The film moves along at a weird pace that veers sharply between glacially slow and so fast that you’ll become sick from the G-force. One minute it will be quiet and somewhat boring, and then, suddenly, Glenn Ford dies in a horrible car crash after being pecked to death by an eagle in the backseat. Then there are more long stretches where not a lot happens aside from maybe a screeching bird or Katy being a little terror. And while these moments are so dull that you might feel tempted to look at your watch, don’t ever look away from the screen because The Visitor has a habit of throwing random weird shit at just as your tempted to look away, like the aforementioned Glenn Ford being pecked to death by an eagle in the backseat.
These dull moments might make the film something of a tough sit for some, but, when the film really hits the gas and embraces the sheer silliness of its premise, there is a lot of fun to be had just laughing the bizarre bullshit on the screen. I mean, come on, the director credits himself as “Michael J. Paradise”.
Much as in the introduction, I honestly don’t know how to wrap things up with The Visitor. An often incomprehensible mess of ideas that is among the dumbest films I’ve watched this month. Check it out if you’re curious. Just don’t expect any of it to make sense.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Graeme Robertson
