Stridulum

The plot, as I hopefully understand it, is that Satan (or Sateen, as this film calls him) fathers children with supernatural powers. One of these children is 8 year-old Katy, who has telekinetic powers and a heavy Southern drawl. An intergalactic traveler called The Visitor must battle the child for the fate of the universe....or something like that. There's also some stuff about an evil hawk, some bald aliens, and a crazy-eyed Jesus with a bad blonde wig.

Nonsensical Italian-made claptrap that combines '70s fascinations with the occult and aliens. It's an awful movie that rips off many better movies, made watchable by some striking imagery and interesting casting. John Huston, Lance Henriksen, Sam Peckinpah, Mel Ferrer, Shelly Winters, and Glenn Ford are all in this. That says more about the state of their respective careers at the time than it does about the quality of this production. Incoherent but good for some laughs. Dig that terribly out of place soundtrack, too.

Truly it saddens and astounds me how few comments (save ONE) of The Visitor are so drastically poor and give the impression of a commonly terrible low budget waste of time. Am I experiencing reality on such a drastically different

level or are people so cinematically ignorant it really

makes little sense to even bother living in this world (or this dimension) anymore? This film is brilliant beyond words. I repeat, this film is brilliant beyond words. Perhaps most of the viewers in here had only seen the badly chopped incomplete version of this film? (later released on video by HBO) If so it's an absolute tragedy,

the later video release had missing shots in sequences

which were among the best.

Ok, so this isn't an 'intelligent' 'coherent' prominently

received film in the realm of Friedkins Exorcist or Donners' Omen. I can say one thing, it is every bit as

entertaining and brilliant in it's own way. Why can't people see art for what it is? There are so many different forms of it. Is this a planet of completely inept, insipid, ignorant, robotically conformed brainwashed humans?

Affluent handsome doctor Raymond : Lance Henriksen and a powerful businessmen : Mel Ferrer, among others , conspire with grisly devil worshippers to conceive a devil child from a gorgeous divorced woman called Barbara : Joanne Nail . As the soul of a pre-teen : Paige Connor who has dangerous telekinetic powers becomes the prize in a violent fighting between two great forces , on a hand : God : Franco Nero assisted by Jerzy : John Huston and on the other hand , a nasty devil : Lance Henriksen along with hoodlums.

This is a strange film with suspense, thrills, chills, intrigue, demonic children and fantastic happenings. The picture takes parts here and there of famous films , as it catches scraps from The Exorcist by William Friedkin, The Omen by Richard Donner, The fury by Brian De Palma, Encounters of the third phase by Steven Spielberg and even The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock. The main amusement and excitement result to be the discovery about the images in which the movie is ripped off. The flick has a lot of absurd and embarrassing scenes and several thrilling set-pieces don't make sense. Support cast is frankly excellent with brief appearances of known actors and directors as Franco Nero, John Huston, Shelley Winters, and Glenn Ford as a detective who is attacked by birds at a thrilling scene. And filmmaker Sam Peckinpah who had problem remembering his lines and only worked a day.

Rare and anticlimatic musical score by Franco Micalizzi. Atmospheric but mediocre cinematography by Ennio Guarneri. The movie was produced by Samuel Z Arkoff from American International, though uncredited, and by Ovidio G Assonitis . Ovidio wrote, produced and directed a lot of B films, some of them were successful, such as Tentacles, Piranha 2, Choke Canyon, Lambada, Sonny boy, Out of control and Beyond the door.

The motion picture was lousily directed by Giulio Paradisi who uses the pseudonym Michael J Paradise. He has directed a few films such as Spaghetti story, Adventure in Montecarlo, Tesoro mio, and Ragazzi di Borgate. And he was a director assistant to Federico Fellini in classy titles as Fellini 8 1/2 and La dolce vita. Rating 4 /1o, inferior fantasy, Science fiction movie.

Weird movie, but it appealed to me. It does have plot elements and maybe even scenes that are derivative of other movies, but it puts them in such a strange blend that it comes out pretty original.

The movie opens with an old man on a barren otherworldly surface. It goes from him to a man with his girlfriend and her daughter at a basketball game. He's the team's owner. The editing and music in the scene are odd. The music throughout the movie tends to be incongruously more energetic and dramatic that the scene itself or its context. The young girl lowers her glasses to look one of the players right in the eye. He manages a dunk in the last second, and the ball evidently explodes in fire or light as he does so.

The old man from the opening (I believe he is The Visitor) shows up in an airport carrying a passport where he is met by a man with a shaved head. He's taken to the roof of a skyscraper where there are lots of people wearing identical outfits all with shaved heads carrying up large gray boxes. Later, there are white screens on the roof, behind which people's shadows move.

The basketball team owner has boardroom meetings with mysterious men who are unhappy with him. He is to get married to his girlfriend and have a son, but he is not having much luck with that.

The little girl has a birthday party. She sees the old man there, but maybe he isn't really there. When she opens a box that should contain a toy peacock that talks in a creepy voice (we saw it being bought earlier), it instead has a handgun. She takes it out happily, and throws it on a table, where it goes off, shooting her mother. Her mother is rehabilitated as much as she can be, which is inter-cut with the girl doing gymnastics routines.

The girl's eyes sometimes seem to have a white light in the irises, and she seems to have power over birds. There is a memorable scene with a policeman (who she swears at like a sailor) on a highway when he encounters a bird.

Many more weird scenes follow! The end leaves things a bit of a mystery, to say the least. If your usual horror fare is a remake or the latest installment in a seemingly endless series, best to avoid this one.

I am relieved to know that other people found The Visitor as confusing as we did. Over the years, whenever my husband and I have had some reason to mention this movie, we always call it "That weird movie with Jesus in a turtleneck." We spent hours afterwards trying to understand the plot; we never got as far as even trying to understand the meaning.

We went to see because it had such a good cast. The previews suggested it had a supernatural theme, which appealed to us. It was a mistake. We should have stayed home and rotated the mattresses.

I can watch really bad movies without a shudder. I even rather like very bad movies. But The Visitor is in a class by itself. It made absolutely no sense - none. I have read that part of the problem is bad editing. I would hope so. I hate to think that so many fine actors would waste their time on this mess as it is.