The Visitor (Stridulum)
A Garden of Space Angels
Directed by Michael J Paradise
Italy, 1979
Che casino … what fresh hell was this?! Where to start: deranged masterpiece or shameless Hollywood knock-off? The Visitor is an offshoot of the Italian Giallo tradition of the 1970s. Typically a blend of murder, horror, and mystery, with bucket loads of blood and gore thrown in, classics of the genre include: ‘A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin’ and ‘Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key’. What they have in common are themes of madness, sexuality and the supernatural and there is plenty of that on display in The Visitor. Directed by Giulio Paradiso, former assistant director to Fellini, he credits himself here as Michael J Paradise – whether that was an attempt to boost the US market or simply out of embarrassment is unclear.
The plot is a fusion of intergalactic space battle and religious epic, though strangely set in Atlanta Georgia, and shot in Rome’s renowned Cinecittà Studios. The background: evil space villain Zatteen is locked in battle with good-guy Commander Yaweh. Zatteen escapes to Earth and mates with a bunch of women, transmitting his … ahem … evil spirit, and siring a host of offspring just before Yahweh catches and kills him. Of course none of this happens on screen. An Aryan Jesus-figure delivers this exposition to a squad of bald children in an Outer Space Eden. Still with me?
Meanwhile down in Atlanta Zatteen’s followers, a besuited board of the pale, male and stale, has identified Barbara Collins as the woman they believe could be the maternal host of a reincarnated Zatteen. Why Barbara? Because she has an eight-year-old daughter, Katy, who flaunts her psychokinetic abilities with ease and has a twinkle in her eye that signals danger. To get the action going we are treated to a ten minute basketball sequence climaxing with an exploding slam-dunk triggered by you-know-who.
The Visitor is a smorgasbord of classic sci-fi and horror tropes. The Exorcist is the obvious source but there are plenty of other ‘influences’:
The Omen
The Birds
Rosemary’s Baby
The Warriors
Lady from Shanghai
Close Encounters of a Third Kind
Star Wars
Despite the distinctly low-budget feel the cast is made up of a number of Hollywood Greats, seemingly on the downhill slope of their collective career trajectory. In fact, they look like they could have just finished shooting Airplane II. Shelley Winters, Lance Henriksen, and Glenn Ford head the roster alongside two actor/directors: Sam Peckinpah, and in a strangely inspired casting decision we have John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, African Queen, The Dead) playing Yahweh as the world-weary space warrior attired in a safari suit. Paige Conner plays Katy, the diabolical daughter. She actually out-horrors Linda Blair from the Exorcist, and stayed in Atlanta to become a cheerleader for the Falcons and latterly owner of the Luxury Lash Beauty Spa and Lounge.
Tonally The Visitor is all over the place. The score veers from ambient sci-fi to an afro-wearing funk percussion that bursts from the screen whenever Yahweh shows up. We had a mixed reaction to the editing and camera-work. Was the chaos-inducing use of irregular cuts, distortion of time, and fast moving point of view photography a masterful creative decision challenging established rules? Or were we simply watching an Ed Wood-style schlockfest, a parody of 70s genre cinema that was actually shot in the 70s? Director’s vision or outright plagiarism – the debate continues but nonetheless there are a number of striking and imaginative scenes.
The sweeping wide-pan rooftop vistas are visually arresting and ‘Katy vs the Jocks’ on the ice-rink is a vital, though histrionic set piece. The Hall of Mirrors scene owes a lot to Orson Welles but is well executed and what can you say about the cataclysmic onslaught of the pigeons? However these notes of near-brilliance are countered by the repeated use of ill-matching stock footage and dialogue such as this:
“Aren't you a cripple molester?”
“Well, I would be if you gave me a chance.”
The rather blunt religious allusions left us searching for the subtext:
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Matthew 5:5
A take-home message for the shaven-headed space angels perhaps. Or is The Visitor an anti-capitalist tract? After all, the board of directors is wiped out in the finale. Maybe not, but regardless this is a film that could have gone either way: lauded on the European avant-garde circuit or as actually happened, condemned to late night one-off showings at the local fleapit. It was nuts, and in many ways terrible but it had some laugh-out-loud moments and yes, we would watch a sequel.
Reids’ Results (out of 100)
C: 60
T: 58
N: 62
S: 50
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