Arrow releases Guilio Paradisi’s 1979 Italian WTF-anything-goes sci-fi experience The Visitor in a new Limited Edition, arriving on Earth to defeat “Zateen” on February 17th.
In Atlanta, Katy, an 8-year-old girl, may be the newest daughter of “Zateen,” so Jesus (surrounded by bald kids in a white room out of 2001), sends an angel/Polish-tailor/babysitter/? to stop her powers from manifesting. All while a board of Satan Capitalists tries to get Katy’s mom pregnant to bring forth a Zateen boy, and Katy learns about her powers and becomes terrible to her housekeeper and others.
Or something like that. Describing plot details might not be the strong suit of Giulio Paradisi’s 1979 film. The Visitor is a wonderfully inane collection of weird scenes with enough plot to string the audience along. The Visitor is a hell of an entertaining film with its anything goes, what-the-fuck, Italian weirdness. Ice skating madness, bald dudes on roofs in flesh-like cages, Pong!, killer birds, a drunken and dubbed Sam Peckinpah, the world’s longest escalator ride, and so much more (dare I spoil details? NO!) Do we have Big Goblinesque Score moments almost randomly dropped in, usually over mundane moments? Damn right. Does it make sense? Eh. Is it wildly entertaining? Oh hell yes.
As is often the fashion in Italian genre cinema, The Visitor is a bunch of earlier American hits: The Bad Seed, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, 2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and a little bit of Exorcist and its first sequel attempt for good measure, all poured into a blender with some ice and a hefty helping of J&B. The resulting mixture is a weird mash that, despite its mash of ingredients, goes down surprisingly smooth. “That was a weird drink, but… I liked it!” your movie mouth will say. It’s not hard to see all these genre conventions working in a weird tandem. Heck, Paige Conner as Katy even looks like young Linda Blair! Conner is similarly fantastic; she carries (and “Carrie”s in the King/DePalma way) the film with a lot to work through, and she does so with amazing skill. It’s too bad she didn’t do much more after this.
To bring this smorgasbord of weird together is one hell of a cast. Legendary director and occasional actor John Huston brings gravitas as Jerzy Colsowicz, the bearded force of good with an amazing voice. It has such timber that it lends an immediate “listen to me” whenever he talks. An early lead (ish) for Lance Henrikson! The -ish there? After essentially following him for a while, he vanishes from the film for most of the back half! (Funny enough, the same year he was in Damien: The Omen II, a movie with a lot of similarities to The Visitor) Spaghetti western legend Franco Nero as a Jordowsky looking Jesus! (he was downgraded to the Pope recently in the highly entertaining trope-a-thon The Pope’s Exorcist) Evil Mel Ferrer leading the cabal! Shelly Winters is doing her thing! Glenn Ford for a few minutes when it becomes a police procedural! And Sam Peckinpah… well, you have to see it.
A kaleidoscope of oddity that is The Visitor is so hard to explain, thus the brevity of this review (compared to my normal). But if you’ve not seen it, hopefully this will tell you if this is your jam or not. It’s a mess, but a wild trip of a mess. Giulio Paradisi has made a fascinating mixture of 70s horror (and sci-fi) cinema, coming out as a highly interesting jumble.
The Package
Arrow presents The Visitor in a limited edition single disc 4k UHD, imprinted with an image of an eye. There is no Blu-Ray option. The disc is housed in a black 4k case. The plastic case has a reversible sleeve with the original artwork and new art by Erik Buckham. A slip cover features the original artwork. It also contains a booklet (see features for more).
The Presentation
Arrow presents a new 4k restoration from the original 35mm of the 109-minute European cut (when it originally came to the States, it was cut to even more nonsensical. That edition is not presented here). It looks fantastic, hyped with 70s groove in all the best ways. It’s a very noticeable upgrade from the 2014 Blu-Ray release. Ennio Guanieri’s color odd use of colors (often using what’s actually there) makes a special love. The audio is original mono, with subtitles in English.
The Features
Arrow adds a slew of new features to build upon the 2014 Drafthouse release (the one that brought The Visitor out of obscurity to horror fans again).
Commentary (new)
Film critics BJ & Harmony Colangelo have a highly entertaining conversation about the film. They dig into the weirdness and the total mess, but do so with a reverence of appreciation. It’s nice for a commentary not to pretend a film is a masterpiece. Gives more credibility. A joy to listen to.
A Biblical Battle of the Cosmos (new)
The visual essay by film critic Meagan Navarro is a highly informative and thought-provoking discussion of the intersection of sci-fi and religion, two aspects that are normally rather separate but slam headlong into one another in the Visitor. (22m)
A Cosmic Right to Choose (new)
Another visual essay, by Willow Catelyn Maclay, feels a little short at only 12 minutes (probably from just watching the 22-minute one above). As the title suggests, it looks at abortion and gender politics within The Visitor. Also put together very well.
Interviews (archival)
Lance Henrickson – The horror legend speaks very freely over the mess of a production, but notes it’s before he got the hang of what he was doing (though he was just in featured roles in Dog Day Afternoon and Close Encounters, with Damien: Omen II coming out around the same time, I digress). Anyway, he’s a lot of fun to listen to, as anyone who has seen him at a convention can attest. (9m)
Screenwriter Lou Comici is just as open, talking about how he was warned it was going to be a wild script, as the director was shooting from the hip with a wild abandon of ideas, he was expected to go along with it. Very telling of the production. (9m)
Cinematographer Ennio Guanieri’s interview is a short bit, only 4 minutes, discussing the look of the film and using the locations in Atlanta.
The image gallery presents BTS, stills, and posters.
Trailer
Booklet
A 42-page booklet featuring cast and crew, stills from the movie, and four writings. The Hawk and the Dove, by Richard Kadrey; Barbara is a Miracle of Nature, by Marc Edward Heuck; Unadulterated Evil: A Brief History of Monster Children in Cinema, by Craig Martin; and A Turkey Made Out of Cement, by Mike White. All are fantastic.
Final Thoughts
Arrow’s new release, The Visitor, coming February 17th, gives this crazy quilt of weirdness a proper view with an updated presentation and a slew of new features (and porting over all the old ones). A pick up for those who love the weird end of (Italian) cinema.