This is one of two pieces for which I was awarded the 2022 New York Film Critics Circle graduate student prize for criticism.
One thing you should definitely know about The Visitor is that it makes no sense. I’m not sure why Drafthouse Films decided to restore the mostly forgotten 1979 science-fiction/ horror/ domestic drama (?) with an unusually stacked cast of power hitters, but I’m glad this historic wrong has been corrected. The cosmically bizarre film is directed by Giulio Paradisi (who is credited as “Michael J. Paradise” in the original release), previously a camera assistant and background actor on Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 ½ (1963). Without having seen Paradisi’s other directorial work, I cannot tell you exactly what he might have picked up from the Italian maestro, though The Visitor’s clownish surrealism certainly shares a certain kinship with Fellini’s devotion to the extraordinary of the everyday. Trying to describe its plot is a bit like trying to tell a friend about the craziest nightmare you had, an exercise that inevitably ends with the storyteller saying, “you just had to be there,” but let’s try anyway.
The titular visitor is the evergreen and perpetually flawless John Huston, a warrior from outer space with the inexplicably Polish-sounding name Jerzy Colsowicz. He’s a man whose all-beige safari suit is more indicative of the director than of the character, except he’s not a man, he’s an alien who has come to prevent a luciferian child from helping her parents birth Satan’s baby. Jerzy is on Earth on behalf of an intergalactic, cult-like version of Jesus Christ played by an uncredited Franco Nero, whose long flowing blonde locks of hair stand in stark contrast to the legion of bald children that sit on bated breath while he proselytizes in a cloudy room; the whole thing feels like if Tarkovsky’s science fiction sets were reimagined by Jodorowsky and Weird Al Yankovic. Add into this mix Lance Henriksen, who is the mysterious new owner of the Atlanta basketball team (not the Hawks, as it turns out, but the Rebels), and has, apparently, made a deal with a boardroom of sinister old white men in suits who have promised to deliver a championship in return for the deliverance of Satan’s progeny. If that’s not enough to fill your kooky quota, Shelley Winters (!!) plays the demonic child’s babysitter whose Mrs. Doubtfire-like exterior is jarringly complicated by her extraordinarily harsh disciplinary measures; fellow legendary auteur Sam Peckinpah has a late entry as the abortionist tasked with ridding the threat of Satanic takeover; and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has an uncredited cameo as the dominant center for Atlanta’s rival team, the San Francisco Niners. Oh and most of the violence is carried out by pet birds. Glenn Ford is in there, too, as a detective pitifully tasked with investigating this inter-species religious war, but I don’t want to confuse you too much.
Much of this would be easily dismissed as hallucinogenic late seventies Hollywood pablum were it not for the absurd amount of on-screen talent and the inescapable fact that it's a mesmeric journey painted with a stunning palette of burnt orange and midnight blue. Shot by workhouse cinematographer Ennio Guarnier, whose curriculum vitae of over ninety films includes collaborations with more esteemed directors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Lina Wertmüller, Vittorio De Sica, Franco Zeffirelli and Fellini, The Visitor’s saturated vistas and stark shadows wash over the narrative’s more head-scratching moments, such as when the little child, Katy (Paige Conner), uses her telekinetic powers from the stands to make the glass on a basketball hoop shatter like she was Shaquille O’Neal. Moments throughout its run time, you might wonder what it is you’re watching, but the creeping dread and softly-focused asymmetry of this cosmic battle ultimately wins, lulling you into a meditative journey unlike any other. You really do have to be there.