Revisiting The Visitor: A Cliffs Notes of Suck

Back in November, I watched the 1979 movie The Vistor, which is a work of science fiction that is maybe also horror and it has birds in it and Shelley Winters plays a character who may or may not be intoxicated the whole time. That’s maybe the most accurate thing I can say about The Visitor. It’s a tough movie that goes from “Oh, wow, this is so bad!” to “Oh, wow, this is so bad,” and the scattered moments of what-the-fuckness don’t quite make up for a plot that so vehemently resists sensible direction. That said, the movie isn’t a complete waste of time, because those what-the-fuck moments really linger with you.

Thus, following the success of my Cliffs Notes version of the also terrible Invitation to Hell (a.k.a. “the worst line readings, the shittiest special effects and all of Susan Lucci’s outfits”), I decided to condense The Visitor down to the best-worst parts, so you can see them, appreciate them and then move on with your life. I’m happy to report that I cut down the original film’s running time of 101 minutes down to just 7:37.

Enjoy!

And no, you’re honestly not missing out of that much. Any of the seemingly unexplained plot points go more or less equally unexplained in the real version. Only now you didn’t have to sit through a stuffy Cinefamily screening to see Lance Henriksen get murdered by a bird.

You may rightly be wondering how a film like this ever gets made. Per the Cinefamily screening (and per my original post), the director was fired and then threatened the producer at gunpoint not only to hire him back but allow him to continue seeing through this collection of weirdness and baffling line readings. And that, my friends, is how a movie like this gets made.

For those who dare, you can rent the full film on iTunes.