‘The Visitor’ on Blu-ray and DVD March 4th!
In this unforgettable assault on reality–fully restored and presented completely uncut theatrically for the first time ever in the U.S.–legendary Hollywood director/actor John Huston (The Maltese Falcon; Treasure of the Sierra Madre) stars as an intergalactic warrior who joins a cosmic Christ figure in battle against a demonic 8-year-old girl and her pet hawk, while the fate of the universe hangs in the balance. Multi-dimensional warfare, pre-adolescent profanity and brutal avian attacks combine to transport the viewer to a stat unlike anything they’ve experienced… somewhere between Hell, the darkest reaches of outer space, and Atlanta, GA. THE VISITOR fearlessly fuses elements of The Omen, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Birds, Rosemary’s Baby, The Fury, and even Star Wars, creating the most ambitious of all ’70s psychedelic mindwarps. Its baffling all-star cast includes Shelley Winters (Night of the Hunter), Glenn Ford (Superman), Lance Henriksen (Aliens), Franco Nero (Django) and Sam Peckinpah (director of The Wild Bunch).
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Incredibly ambitious but derided and largely neglected upon its initial release in 1979, THE VISITOR is an unforgettable assault on reality, a phantasmagoric sci-fi/horror/action hybrid. From writer-producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (Tentacles) and director/actor/body builder Michael J. Paradise (aka Giulio Paradisi – Fellini’s 8½),the film artfully fuses elements of some of the biggest blockbusters of the time (The Omen, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Fury, Star Wars, The Birds) and features a fittingly unique cast that includes Shelley Winters(Lolita), Glenn Ford (Superman), Lance Henriksen (Aliens), Franco Nero (Django), Mel Ferrer (War and Peace), Sam Peckinpah (director of The Wild Bunch) and, in the leading role, legendary director-actor John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, Chinatown).
Huston plays an intergalactic warrior who joins a cosmic Christ figure in battle against a demonic 8-year-old girl and her pet hawk, while the fate of the universe hangs in the balance. Multidimensional warfare, pre-adolescent profanity and brutal avian attacks combine to transport the viewer to a state unlike anything they’ve experienced – somewhere between hell, the darkest reaches of outer space and … Atlanta.
The result is an entertainingly hallucinatory and inscrutable mash-up that repertory cinema programmers around the country have rediscovered for late-night bookings. THE VISITOR now stands as “the Mount Everest of insane ’70s Italian movies” (Mondo Digital). In its program notes for the film’s recent run, Los Angeles arthouse The Cinefamily said, “Just when you think you’ve nailed down which direction the film is heading in, it completely shatters your notion of the time-space continuum.” The Village Voice
‘s Aaron Hillis called it “ridiculously entertaining … the schizophrenic mother of all ’70s drive-in oddities.
Special Features on THE VISITOR include:
Order The Visitor 0n Blu-ray!
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