The Visitor

The Visitor (Stridulum) (1979)

Runtime: 108 minutes

Directed by: Guilio Paradiso

Starring: John Huston, Lance Henriksen, Paige Conner, Glenn Ford

From: Several different companies

Here's a film that became infamous and much more known once the Alamo Drafthouse acquired it back in 2013. It showed up on TV late last night so that's how I was finally able to see it. I wasn't a fan, but I do understand why it has its fans; I am not irrational about such things unlike too many out there. The review from Letterboxd is below, minus the first stanza where I say to everyone on Letterboxd that if you follow me and you spam my feed with like 500 plus likes of other reviews in the row, you'll get unfollowed immediately. I'll be back tomorrow night.

Via TCM Underground showing this film late last night I was finally able to see this 1979 film that had mainly been forgotten until the Alamo Drafthouse remastered it and put it on the big screen in late '13, with a disc release a few months later. It fit in with my month of foreign film watching, this Italian production filmed in Atlanta, Georgia.

I had heard this was really weird, and that was not a lie. Franco Nero as pretty much Space Jesus talking to a bunch of bald kids about a longstanding cosmic feud and now the evil Sateen is basically reincarnated as a random 8 year old blonde girl on Earth (w/ a hawk that helps her out) and John Huston has to go to our planet to make sure good prevails in the end... and this nonsense also has Lance Henriksen, Mel Ferrer, Shelley Winters, Glenn Ford and even Sam Peckinpah. I was not expecting such things as a pro basketball team, Atlanta's old arena The Omni, and an iceskating rink (what a befuddling and goofy scene that was) to be involved also, but they were.

While I do understand those that like it, I really didn't. Even for an Italian horror movie it made absolute zero logical or story sense and hilariously stupid moments and memorable scenes aside, this was too often a slog to get through so I can only give it two stars, drug-fueled lunacy aside. I also have to note that while the score is fine-of course there's a ripoff of Also Sprach Zarathustra-it is not used right in the movie; it too often doesn't fit the scene and it's WAY too loud and overbearing to the point of absolute distraction. There's another reason for the rating right there.