The Visitor (1979) Five movies glued together in an act of rebellious, surreal madness (Review)

Usually, when the credits roll, you’ll have a fair idea what you thought of a film, maybe it’ll take a while to settle but the basis of an opinion is there. Sometimes, though, sometimes an opinion is as far away as the horizon. Sometimes you have to talk it out at depth to figure out your opinion. 2014 had such an experience with Jonathan Glazer’s maverick Sci-Fi/Horror, Under the Skin. Arrow Video also have some skin in the game with Giulio Paradisi’s undefinable The Visitor from the peak of Italian eccentricity in the late 70s. His film could be the work of a mad genius and it could just as easily be a horrid explosion of over-ambitious mediocrity, there are equally valid arguments for both sides of the fence.

Undefinable as it is, let’s take a stab in the dark at effectively surmising this wild animal of a film. ‘Michael J. Paradise’ presents a potentially dangerous 8-year old girl, Katy Collins (Paige Connor) in the middle of the battle between good and evil – the lighter end is bizarrely figure headed by Franco Nero as Jesus and his ethereal underlying Jerzy (John Huston) with the opposite end of the spectrum led by Dr Walker (Mel Ferrer) and Raymond (Lance Henriksen). Such details were cannibalized from the promotional blurb as getting anything concrete from the film after one watch is close to impossible.

The reason for this is the schizophrenic ideal the director brought to the shoot. Lance Henriksen, in his interview, talks about how the director wanted to get as much footage as possible to be covered for all eventualities. The endgame of this resembles the process one would expect if 5 films where being produced at once and in a flurry of madness Paradisi edited them all into one weird whole. There is a police investigation of a mysterious birthday party shooting, John Huston wanders around the inner city being mystical, a relationship drama with Lance Henriksen and the wheelchair-bound Joanne Nail (Barbara) in the presence of Shelley Winters housekeeper. There’s more, there is a vague bad seed horror vibe which is drawn together by an army of violent birds, akin to Damien (The Omen) and his dominion over animal kind. There is no telling where the visitor is heading from one scene to the next.

It’s for that exact reason that the film has a ramshackle charm to it, a film that endears itself to be this liberating different can’t be all bad. Take the score – picture the brand of score found in the closing scores of 70s police dramas or even certain Blaxploitation films and their triumphant victory coda then use it to accompany the film’s dramatic and more specifically horror moments. Franco Micalizzi’s composition with its string and horn section is yet more proof, if it was needed, that we are dealing with a rebel.

As improbably charming as Giulio Paradisi (or Michael J. Paradise to use his Americanized credit) was in the production of the Visitor, the qualities of this film aren’t all found in its contrariness there are some traditional strengths to be found. To dip back into the Blu-Ray’s interview with genre favourite Lance Henriksen, on the set Paradisi often flamboyantly reminded his crew and cast that he worked with Fellini. Fellini and many of the upper echelon of Italian director were afforded some of the best cinematographers that world cinema has ever seen, and credit to Italian cinema there was no separation between high art and trash. They were all afforded the same technicians and artists behind the scenes. The camera work is constantly intriguing, the set design inspired and most notably the depiction of otherworldly power is unforgettable. The desert bound face-off between John Huston and the young Paige Conner (Katy) reminds of Richard Stanley’s Namibian set Dust Devil.

Sprinkles of greatness aside, the Visitor is a mess held together by the glue of its principal actors. The only real distinctions that can be made going into the film are split between whether you can appreciate the caterwauling insanity of cinema’s “undefinables” and laugh along with the film or whether you are hit so hard by these incomprehensible films that confusion is the only answer. That split to one side, Arrow has afforded it a wealth of extras, articles and artwork complimenting a gorgeous restoration that is seeing the UK favourite ‘crack America’.

Thanks for reading our review of The Visitor 

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