There are vaults around the world filled with movies that time has forgotten, ambitious endeavors that missed their mark and seeming failures that are actually perfect midnight movie programming. 1979’s “The Visitor” might be all of that, and we’re going to soon find out.
Wildly described as a mix between “The Omen,” “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind,” “The Birds,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Fury” and “Star Wars” — seriously, WTF — the film stars the legendary John Huston as (get this) “an intergalactic warriorbattling alongside a cosmic Christ figure against a demonic eight-year-old girl and her pet hawk, as the fate of the universe hangs in the balance.” Um, yes please. The film was directed by then and still unknown Giulio Paradisi, who still managed to round up Shelley Winters, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, Franco Nero and Sam Peckinpah (!!!) to star in this thing.
So yes, we’re curious, and we trust in Drafthouse Films who are bringing the new HD restoration of the movie to theaters and VOD later this year. They’re the guys who resurrected the bonkers ’80s martial arts/musical/bromance “Miami Connection,” so they know a thing or two about movies that are not quite ahead, but perhaps beyond their time. Here’s the poster and below a fan made trailer with some good audio/visual context and now a proper teaser trailer too.
I saw that one on it´s release back then in Germany at age 14….and you can be sure that this is really bonkers. But it had also a strange interesting quality despite its many flaws. Far from being a good movie back then I found it quite entertaining.
I saw it again a few years later on VHS. I still found it entertaining but to be true – it´s a mess, a very interesting one but still a mess. Call it a guilty pleasure but don´t expect to make much sense out of it.