You can’t really “review” a film like The Visitor, because it would be like interviewing someone who’s insane. You’re not going to get any answers that make any kind of sense, because the subject is so utterly lost in its own impenetrable view of the world. Yes, The Visitor is insane. Depending on your mood (and possibly your substance intake) when you watch it, that could be either a good thing or…just a weird thing.
First, some context: The Visitor was originally released in 1979, directed by Giulio Paradisi (using the are-you-kidding name Michael J. Paradise) and written/produced by Ovidio G. Assonitis, the genius behind movies such as Tentacles, Piranha II: The Spawning (James Cameron’s directorial debut) and the infamous Exorcist rip-off Beyond the Door. With The Visitor, Assonitis seemingly attempted to leap onto the coattails of two other famous movies of the era: the demonic spawn thriller The Omen and Steven Spielberg’s UFO epic Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
John Huston (the first of many “WTF” casting coups in the picture) stars as Jerzy Colsowicz, a kind of extraterrestrial troubleshooter who is tasked by an angelic superbeing (Franco Nero) with defeating Sateen, an evil interstellar entity with designs on the Earth. Sateen has manifested itself in Katy Collins (Paige Conner), an eight-year-old girl who has a mouth like a sewer and whose mission is to manipulate her mom (Joanne Nail) into giving birth to a son who will carry the Sateen line forward. Eager to help is mom’s boyfriend Raymond (Lance Henriksen), part of a cult that worships Sateen and wants to unleash its power upon the world.
That synopsis – and we’re not even sure if it’s completely correct, but it’s close enough – does far more justice to the script that a viewing of the film does. We’ve watched it twice now (once, admittedly, under rather bleary circumstances) and we’re still not sure we know what the hell is going on. The opening scenes segue from Huston’s cosmic introduction to an Atlanta basketball game without much in the way of transition or exposition, while folks like Glenn Ford, Shelley Winters and even Sam Peckinpah come and go through the film like people stopping and staring for a moment at someone having a psychotic break on a street corner.
Specific scenes and imagery are lifted from the aforementioned The Omen and Close Encounters, as well as The Exorcist and Larry Cohen’s cult horror/sci-fi gem God Told Me To. All of it is funneled through an edit job that could charitably be said to add to the film’s surreal flavor, but in reality only heightens the film’s narrative incoherence. Even the occasional buffering on the streaming copy I watched seemed to contribute to the movie’s fragmentary nature.
Your ultimate response to The Visitor will be the same whether you love it or hate it: “What the hell was that?” Brought back to us from the cinematic grave by Drafthouse Films, the Texas-based company that has given us authentically important films like The Act of Killing and Bullhead, The Visitor is so unrelentingly baffling that it eventually becomes tedious – the one thing a truly crazy would-be cult classic never wants to be.
The Visitor shares almost nothing in common with Saturn 3 except that both were products of the bizarre late ‘70s/early ‘80s period in which a lot of studio and producers were desperately trying to cash in on the success of films like Star Wars and Alien. Yet while The Visitor was directed and written by men you may have never heard of unless you follow European exploitation, Saturn 3 was directed by Stanley Donen, a long way from his glory days of Singin’ in the Rain and On the Town. The film was a product of ITC Entertainment, a British company that specialized in TV, and arguably does bear a resemblance to a nutty U.K. TV series.
The 1980 movie stars Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett as lovers and researchers named Adam and Alex, who live an isolated and peaceful life away from an overcrowded future Earth on a remote station located on Saturn’s third moon. Unfortunately their idyll is disrupted by Captain Benson (Harvey Keitel), who arrives to test out a new robot named “Hector,” programmed via a mental link with Benson and theoretically capable of replacing one of the human researchers. What Adam and Alex don’t know, however, is that the real Benson has been murdered by their visitor, a homicidal maniac who has transferred his own sick impulses – including his burgeoning desire for Alex – into the robot’s mind.
A lot of people remember Saturn 3 for two things: a nude Kirk Douglas fighting with Harvey Keitel, and Farrah Fawcett at the height of her sex kitten powers, if not her acting abilities. The movie resembles a cheap Alien knockoff in many ways, with the eight-foot-tall Hector subbing for the latter film’s much more frightening xenomorph, and despite a few interesting designs the whole production suffered budget cuts as a result of being produced at the same time that ITC was filming the bloated Raise the Titanic!. Another notable element is the complete erasure of Keitel’s unmistakable New York-accented voice; Donen was unhappy with it and had British actor Roy Dotrice dub Keitel’s entire performance.
Douglas and Fawcett are utterly mismatched (and even creepy) as the scientist lovers, although the ponytailed Keitel oozes menace from the get-go. Some of the dialogue (from a script by novelist Martin Amis, no less) is unbelievable, however. Keitel (to Fawcett): “You have a great body. May I use it?” Fawcett: “I’m with the Major.” Keitel: “For his personal consumption only?” While Keitel is meant to represent a depersonalized Earth, this borders on camp (so does a deleted scene – available on the Blu-ray release – in which Douglas and Fawcett take a future form of Ecstasy and Fawcett dons some dominatrix gear).
Saturn 3 is just sleazy enough to hold one’s interest, and fairly violent once Hector gets up and running, but it lacks the atmosphere, suspense and subtext of Alien, the movie it desperately wants to emulate in many ways. The new Blu-ray release from the always reliable Scream Factory can’t do much with the TV lightning and sets, but at least offers a colorful and sharp print and handful of extras, including that Ecstasy scene, additional footage used for the television version of the movie, and an interview with Dotrice. At least with Saturn 3, you can follow the plot – although with both this film and The Visitor, the value of that is somewhat debatable.
The Visitor is playing in limited release around the country — check here for local playdates – and arrives on VOD on February 2, 2014. Saturn 3 arrives on Blu-ray/ DVD on Tuesday, December 3.