Le visiteur de la nuit

Max von Sydow plays Salem, wrongly convicted of a murder and sent to stay in an asylum for the criminally insane. As the movie opens, he has successfully pulled off an escape, and he wreaks vengeance upon his hapless family. However, because he is able to actually return to his cell in time, suspicion falls upon his brother in law, Anton (Per Oscarsson), instead. An inspector played by the always solid Trevor Howard must solve these baffling crimes.

Slasher fans might hear of this one and get their hopes up, due to the violence suggested in certain scenes, but we never see any actual killings. This is more of a straightforward thriller. It overcomes a rather trite story set up to deliver an incredibly engaging yarn; it's what director Laslo Benedek ("The Wild One") and company do with the material that matters. It's filmed on location in Denmark and Sweden, in some mightily forbidding looking country; you can practically feel the cold while you watch. The atmosphere is stark and impressive, helped all the more by an unusual but amazing Henry Mancini score. It's deliberately paced but fascinating, especially when Benedek and screenwriter Guy Elmes (who works from Samuel Roecas' original story) lay out for us the tons of preparations that Salem has to go through in order to pull off each escape from and return to the asylum.

Von Sydow is typically excellent, as is Liv Ullmann as his sister, Oscarsson as the volatile, panicky Anton, Rupert Davies as a savvy but sickly lawyer, Andrew Keir as the asylums' head doctor, and Arthur Hewlett as the genial old Pop. Watching this, it's easy to root for Von Sydow, especially during the finale where he must "beat the clock", and the tension is undeniable. This intoxicating film sure does keep you on your toes at times. And "The Night Visitor" does end on an irresistible, rather humorous note.

It could definitely stand to be better known.

Eight out of 10.

It has been thirty years since I first saw this title, at a drive-in movie theater, with my girlfriend. She and I both had eyes glued to the screen. The "feeling" of the setting still lingers and we could almost experience the cold. But what I remember the most is that The Night Visitor gave new meaning to the old line,

"a little birdy told me...".

Superb direction and wonderfully twisting ending!

A man is running away from a large brick building surrounded by a high wall. He's running across rocks and snow in his underwear and boots. He sneaks into a farmhouse and steals some odd items, and sneaks into another house where he kills a woman. It's not the last person he'll kill either; he's trying to frame someone, but why - and how is he getting away from the place that establishes his alibi?

This is a very good movie. As a horror movie, it doesn't have a very high body count, or much gore, and there's no on screen violence - it cuts away from that. Some horror movies benefit from that, some don't; this one doesn't need it. The locations: isolated locations surrounded by snowy fields are very nice to look at. Acting is very good, as is the musical score by Mancini.

Definitely deserves to be better-known. I'm surprised some critics didn't like it. Some didn't like that the movie gives some things away early on that could have been withheld. I don't agree; not every movie that has secrets needs to save them for a big reveal at the end. Others felt that the characters' motivations weren't established. I can only suppose they weren't listening to the dialog, because that was fully discussed.

I guess that if Ingmar Bergman had ever made an out-and-out horror film, THE NIGHT VISITOR is what it would have looked like. This obscure USA/Sweden co-production brings together two of Bergman's favourite actors (Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman) in a tale of madness, desperation, revenge, and sinister murder. It's quite a vicious film even though the on-screen violence is limited and the viewer never sees much of what's actually taking place.

The film's chilly, snowbound northern setting (Jutland) is as much a character as the cast themselves, and the story certainly has a unique feel to it: slow, stately, very much like an art-house film, but with dark revenge/thriller plotting. I liked it; there's style to spare, and some ingenious situations as we see Von Sydow's character putting the impossible into action.

The film is also notable for an exemplary cast. Aside from the Swedish luminaries, we get a real old timer as the detective (Trevor Howard) alongside popular Swedish actor Per Oscarsson, and supporting roles for two Hammer star Brits, Rupert Davies and Andrew Keir. THE NIGHT VISITOR certainly isn't for all tastes, but it's an odd film indeed: quiet and yet spellbinding at the same time.

I remember catching 'The Night Visitor' on UK late night TV in the late 70's. At that time I'd not heard of it but was hooked from the outset. Many of the haunting images stayed with me and recently I got all nostalgic and started searching for either video or DVD releases of several lost gems from the early 70's, amongst them 'And Soon The Darkness', 'I Start Counting' and of course 'The Night Visitor'. Success!!! as all titles were available on DVD (some are deleted from obscure labels but all frequently pop up on Ebay for reasonable amounts). Strangely, having caught up with several long forgotten film or TV shows from my childhood, most have been disappointing, however 'The Night Visitor' retains it's menacing, almost surreal air and Max Von Sydow carries the film with great support from Trevor Howard (who seems to be setting the tone for his later appearance in 1973's 'The Offence') and I even recalled Arthur Hewlett as the prison guard with the gnome-like features. All in all a MUST for any Von Sydow fan and any lover of quirky psychological thrillers, low on budget but high on plot and intrigue.