Overview: You may think you’ve seen it all, but nothing can prepare you for The Visitor, an excursion into the realms of cinematic insanity! Producer extraordinaire Ovidio G. Assonitis, creator of such delicious guilty pleasures as Beyond the Door and Tentacles, brings together an extraordinary ensemble cast in a mind-bending tale of a girl and her pet hawk.

Killer birds! Psychokinesis! Satanic conspiracies! Exploding basketball hoops! Any attempt to explain the exact plot of The Visitor is an exercise in futility, but in the maelstrom of madness and mayhem is the tale of an ancient intergalactic entity capable of bearing Earthly children endowed with great powers. Powers which some are keen to harness and some to destroy. Eight-year-old Katy Collins is one such child, and as her powers emerge, the battle for her soul is about to begin.

A bizarre collision of The Omen with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Exorcist, The Visitor is a veritable cult phenomenon that combines stunning imagery and breathtaking set pieces with a jaw-dropping cast that includes John Huston (Chinatown), Mel Ferrer (War and Peace), Glenn Ford (Superman), Shelley Winters (The Night of the Hunter), Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch) ... and Franco Nero (Django himself) as Jesus!

4K Blu-ray Verdict: From producer Ovidio G. Assonitis comes this rip-off of THE OMEN which may be lacking in coherence and plot structure, but makes up for that in having a mainly famous American cast to give it some box-office draw. The only difference this time is that the child is a girl instead of a boy, but the usual accidental deaths are all present, along with a number of people on the sides of both good and evil fighting over her.

This surreal movie opens with John Huston facing a snow-covered girl with reptilian eyes in a barren desert where the sky is green and a huge storm brews around them. I think this symbolic opening is supposed to remind us of THE EXORCIST and that movie’s prologue with Max Von Sydow facing Pazuzu in the desert. The special effects are unconvincing but nonetheless interesting, giving the movie a weird, surreal kind of look, a theme which runs throughout. After this we are introduced to Jesus Christ (played by Italian favorite Franco Nero) who tells a group of skinhead boys the battle between good and evil is still going on! A bizarre prologue to be sure but things are just going to keep getting weirder.

Finally, after about twenty minute, the plot begins for real. Barbara Collins is visiting a basketball game with her daughter, Katy, and her lover, Raymond (Lance Henriksen). Katy makes the basketball explode and thus her favorite team wins. We soon learn that the girl is possessed by evil and has a familiar, in the form of an eagle, to do her bidding. Her eyes also turn silver occasionally via some spooky-looking contacts. Henriksen, it soon transpires, is part of an evil organization and has been charged with the task of getting Barbara pregnant again (as she gives birth to evil babies).

It’s pretty hard to watch this film and keep track of what’s going on, because of the sheer lack of coherence in the plot and the wealth of ultimately unexplained things that happen. The evil group that Ferrer leads is never fully explained as to its roots or why it affects them when the child dies. Similarly, the character of Huston is never fully explained or the bald-headed boys in the hospital.

The movie is pretty dated, with some appalling fashions (especially in the gigantic sunglasses that Katy wears occasionally) and a cool funky 70’s music score (a highlight). Two black accident repair men turn up for a spot of wisecracking comic relief! The special effects are lacking but imaginative, and there’s a fine stunt involving Ford crashing his car which is executed well.

The various deaths are about as gory as in THE OMEN, with brief flashes of a bloody eyeball being pecked or a knife driving into a throat. There are some standout moments involving Katy making a metal partition crash down onto a hot dog stand in her attempt to kill Huston, the aforementioned green sky dream sequences, and the ending, in which Katy is attacked by hundreds of birds. There’s also a fun hall-of-mirrors sequence seemingly stolen from ENTER THE DRAGON.

The cast is a good one and makes up for the script’s deficiencies. Mel Ferrer, a genre staple in this period, makes good use of his cold, creepy eyes as the chief villain. Lance Henriksen basically reprises his role from DAMIEN: OMEN II but is underused. Shelley Winters is good value as a bible-bashing nanny, while director Sam Peckinpah makes a brief cameo as a doctor. Glenn Ford is pretty good as a detective hot on Katy’s trail who comes off the worse for wear, while John Huston is excellent and understated as the central crusader for good.

Paige Conner, though, goes over the top as Katy and comes off more as annoying and whiny than frightening or evil; she’s pretty unconvincing and not a patch on Linda Blair. The final chief cast member is the familiar-looking Joanne Nail who struggles through an awful role which subjects her to a ton of abuse, like being accidentally shot, propelled into a fish tank, thrown down a flight of stairs, and garroted - it’s pretty disturbing the amount of misfortune that happens to her, especially when she’s in the wheelchair, and in this the film echoes Lee Remick’s unfortunate character in THE OMEN.

In closing I would liken this movie to EXORCIST II in that, overall, it is a flop and disappointingly disjointed, but it has some key artistic scenes that make it worth a watch. Of course, if you’re a fan of any of the actors appearing in it then I would recommend it too, to see how they handle being in such a film. Sometimes boring and sometimes fascinating, THE VISITOR is worth tracking down for fans of the bizarre. [L.D.]

4K UHD BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS:
Brand new 4K restoration of the 109-min European version of the film from the original 35mm camera negative by Arrow Films
4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
Original lossless mono audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Brand new audio commentary by film critics BJ & Harmony Colangelo
A Biblical Battle for the Cosmos, a brand new visual essay by film critic Meagan Navarro
A Cosmic Right to Choose, a brand new visual essay by film critic Willow Catelyn Maclay
Archive interview with actor Lance Henriksen
Archive interview with screenwriter Lou Comici
Archive interview with cinematographer Ennio Guarnieri
Theatrical trailer
Image gallery
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Erik Buckham
Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing by Marc Edward Heuck, Richard Kadrey, Craig Martin and Mike White

Official Purchase Link

www.arrowvideo.com