{Blu-ray Review} Is The Visitor (1979) Really That Weird?

“Power corrupts, Raymond. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. But we must have that power.”

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When trying to convey this film’s reputation to my spouse (without having seen it yet myself), I called it “the movie famously written, produced, and directed by cocaine.”

Having now watched it, I owe an apology to cocaine, which would never have made something so turgid.

The Visitor was produced (and its story co-written by) Ovidio G. Assonitis and, for some, that will tell you everything about the movie that you will ever need to know. Assonitis’s other credits include such notorious schlock as Beyond the Door (1974), Tentacles (1977), The Curse (1987), and the fourth and fifth American Ninja movies (1990 and 93, respectively).

Maybe more so than any of Assonitis’s other movies, The Visitor has accumulated no small amount of notoriety as a gonzo, so-bad-it’s-good film. And that reputation isn’t entirely undeserved. I’m not sure Assonitis ever produced a normal movie, and The Visitor is weirder than most. From its opening minutes, it concerns a New Age-y tale of good versus evil in the form of interstellar versions of classic Abrahamic religion – think The Omen by way of Star Wars by way of Jodorowsky.

On the good guy side, there’s John Huston as Obi-God Kenobi, who hangs out on rooftops and in what looks like a greenhouse with Franco Nero as Jesus Christ and a bunch of bald kids. (It’s probably worth the price of admission to hear Nero, or whoever is dubbing him here, pronounce the word “mutant.”)

Opposing them are Lance Henriksen as a sinister basketball team owner, Mel Ferrer as a sinister doctor, a boardroom full of businessmen, and Satan’s (sorry, Zatteen’s) precocious, foul-mouthed eight-year-old telekinetic daughter, played with an extremely southern accent by Atlanta native Paige Conner.

Other members of the unlikely cast include Glenn Ford as an ill-fated detective who gets cussed out by a little girl, a dubbed Sam Peckinpah as another doctor, and Shelley Winters as a housekeeper who gets involved in the battle between good and evil and sing’s James Whitcomb Riley’s “Shortnin’ Bread.”

Caught in the middle, of course, is this film’s Rosemary, played by Joanne Nail of Switchblade Sisters, who happens to be the only woman left on Earth who can pass on Satan’s (sorry, Zatteen’s) genes. Why she doesn’t exhibit the same sinister powers or deranged personality as her daughter is one of the film’s many unanswered questions.

As has probably already been made abundantly clear, there’s a lot of weird stuff in The Visitor. There’s a pointless ice-skating fight that culminates in a kid getting thrown through a window. There’s a handgun at a child’s birthday party. We learn that Satan (sorry, Zatteen) is weirdly invested in the outcome of basketball games, and that bird attacks make you incapable of stepping on the brakes, apparently.

And speaking of bird attacks, there are so many of them. For an entity supposedly killed by birds the first time around, Satan (sorry, Zatteen) seems to have a real affinity for them.

The list goes on and on. There is no denying that The Visitor is a weird movie that goes some considerable distance towards earning its midnight movie reputation. But is it weird enough to actually be fun? Sometimes! There are moments that are hilariously deranged, and others that are surprisingly effective. Unfortunately, they are sandwiched into a film that, at 106 minutes, often drags between the weird bits.

As Craig J. Clark says on Letterboxd, “it’s insane, not inexplicable,” and that’s maybe a good way to distinguish between this and some other weirdo movies that I, at least, found more entertaining. Even among Assonitis’s filmography, I found more valuable weirdness in Beyond the Door, which also has the benefit of being a better movie. (Seriously, as weird as The Visitor is, it’s never as weird as the kid drinking pea soup with a straw, or that nose flute sequence.)

Even when The Visitor bogs down, though, it never goes very long without something intensely odd happening. How much mileage you get out of it will maybe depend upon how much entertainment you derive from children cursing, John Huston rambling, extremely obtrusive music, sinister games of Pong, and bird attacks. So many bird attacks.

Shot almost entirely in Atlanta, Georgia (where Assonitis had filmed Tentacles, also with Huston and Winters, just a couple of years before), the movie actually thanks some local politicians before the opening credits. And you will never forget that you are in Atlanta.

The Visitor is crammed to the gills with shots of the Atlanta skyline, and events that take place in Atlanta landmarks, from the early basketball game at what was then the Omni to the ice-skating rink at CNN Center to rooftop scenes in which city skyline’s iconic Equitable Life Assurance Building is prominently visible.

For that reason alone, The Visitor is a fascinating watch, especially given that many of those landmarks no longer exist, at least in their earlier configurations. (The Omni was demolished in 1997 and now the State Farm Arena stands in its place. The Equitable building is still there, but its primary tenant is now Georgia’s Own Credit Union, and the sign seen in The Visitor has been replaced by an LED display that usually reads “Georgia’s Own.”)

The rest of the movie may be bloated nonsense, but it’s surprisingly straightforward nonsense, and I can tell you what was going on at least most of the time. Even after watching the new Arrow Video 4K, though, I still can’t explain the giant eyeball or the three-fingered monster hands on the film’s memorable theatrical poster.