#OneHundredPercentingMyCollection
#Hooptober9

💀 NUMBER THIRTY FOUR 💀
💀 SIX COUNTRIES (Italy) 💀

"The Visitor" (1979)
* dir: Giulio Paradisi
* Science Fiction / Horror / This Movie Is For The Birds (Please Flap)
[ ★★★ / ★★★★★ ]

I'm either too high for this shit or not nearly high enough.

Giulio Paradisi's "The Visitor" combines the languid pacing of a lesser giallo with the nonsensical, nigh-impenetrable logic of an Italian possession flick and the basic thematic trappings of the demonic child subgenre (with some vaguely cosmic gobbledygook sprinkled on top for good measure). In other words: as ambitious as it is Not For Me!

There's some nice imagery here for sure (and the cinematography is superb), but not nearly as much as I was expecting given this thing's reputation as some sort of wild trippy ride that was passed around in cult circles for years and spoken of in hushed and reverant tones. And definitely not enough imagery to keep me engaged during the many leisurely drawn out sections where nothing much at all is happening beyond a vastly overqualified cast monologuing nonsense at eachother in an atmosphere of vaguely unknowable weirdness. And if you know me, you know I'm a pretty easy mark for some pretty goofy bullshit as long as it looks even moderately visually compelling! I can absolutely get down on some aesthetically strong, style-over-substance filmmaking!

But this thing? Eh.

From moment to moment it could sometimes manage to grab my attention with an interesting camera movement (dig those elegant tracking shots and jarring handheld flourishes) or exciting set-piece (that car accident spurred on by the decidedly unexpected bird attack is something else). But taken as a whole, I just couldn't really get on board here despite going into this thing fully ready to end up calling it another woefully unheralded cult classic. Even poor Lance Henriksen looks like he made a wrong turn somewhere back in Albuquerque and ended up in this movie by total accident, seeming just about as lost as I was in any given scene. And he was in multiple "Pumpkinhead" sequels and "Hellraiser 8"!

"Hellraiser 8"!