Ha ha, it’s Burl here to tell you about a really rather
unusual movie! It’s called The Visitor,
and whatever other genres you might place this one in, and there are many, it
fits very nicely in a personal genre of my own, Movies With Weird, Amazing
Casts! This picture’s got John Huston, Glenn Ford, Shelley Winters, Mel Ferrer,
Lance Henrikson (who played a similar role in the superficially similar Damien: Omen II around the same time), and featuring the director of The Killer Elite, Sam Peckinpah (!), as a casual doctor, plus Franco Nero from Die Hard 2 as Jesus Christ,
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar from Fletch as himself, and with a special appearance by right-wing
jibber-jabberer Neal Boortz, who plays an ill-fated ice skater and has his name
misspelled as “Bortz” in the credits! Ha ha!
It also fits nicely into the genre of Movies I’m Sort Of
Glad I Saw The Shorter, More Incoherent Version Of! Ha ha, I just watched my
VHS copy, but there is a DVD out there with the full meal deal on it,
apparently! It’s ten minutes longer and letterboxed, but somehow VHS was good
enough for me on this one - it was a cover I looked at with intrigue many a time in the video store, but never rented! And, naturally, it’s a Multiple Genre Movie; aside
from the ones already listed, this is a horror picture, a religious fable and a
sci-fi head trip!
It’s crazy clown time for sure! Huston plays an elderly
space hobo who planet-hops about in colourful Bruno Bozzetto animations! He’s
concerned in a sort of beatific way about a mean little girl in Texas, who is
some sort of diabolical telepath in addition to being naturally unpleasant!
Meanwhile, the girl’s mother is under pressure to marry Lance Henrikson, and is
paralyzed in a terrible freak accident involving a mysterious loaded gun! Soon
Inspector Glenn Ford is on the case, and Shelley Winters appears as a
housekeeper who strolls about singing the most menacing rendition of
“Short’nin’ Bread” possible! The little girl tells Glenn Ford to go fuck
himself, and calls Huston a bastard multiple times!
Then we get some Omen
deaths! Glenn Ford is attacked by a bird in his car, has his eyes gorily pecked
out, crashes through a chain link fence and rolls down an incline, and is
trapped by the chain link as the car burns and explodes! Yowch, ha ha! There
are some other strange incidents, a few odd dream sequences or something, a
growing conspiracy plot involving Mel Ferrer, his butler, and a roomful of
grim-faced Satanists in suits; and a counter-plot co-orchestrated by Huston and
Jesus, and staffed by a horde of bald-headed children who live on a rooftop!
Huston shows up at Lance Henrikson’s house in the guise of the world’s oldest
babysitter, and he and the girl have a confrontation that plays like Obi Wan
Kenobi facing down Regan from The
Exorcist!
There’s more, but you get the idea! I realized part of the
way through that the movie was actually scaring me a little, and I realized
that was because it had created a world in which absolutely anything could
happen! By the time John Huston gurns insanely at a series of coloured,
flashing shapes, Mel Ferrer is found dead with slime on his face and the
house fills with killer birds, you really know you’ve seen something!
There are all sorts of little treats on offer! The
Winters/Huston pairing is one of them, and was cleverly imported straight from Tentacles! As well, there’s some lovely
cinematography courtesy of Ennio Guarnieri, who shot movies for Fellini, Wertmüller
and De Sica! There’s a shot of a truck on a highway that might be the most
beautiful I’ve seen! It’s not a good picture, but it’s weird, and sometimes
weird is enough! I give The Visitor
two and a half exploding basketballs!
PS: I saw the movie again recently, this time in a theatre! I was better able to appreciate the fine cinematography of Guarnieri, who, don't forget, also shot Pasolini's Medea, De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Wertmüller's Swept Away and Fellini's Ginger and Fred! Ha ha!
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