Nostalgia Kinky

I recently rewatched Giulio Paradisi’s batshit crazy classic The Visitor (1979) for the first time in well over a decade via Arrow’s recent 4K edition. This remains one of the most baffling films of the seventies, a strangely mesmerizing experience brought to vibrant life via Arrow’s fresh from the negative scan. Simultaneously revered by fans while actively despised by many of the main figures that made it, The Visitor has a legacy nearly as strange as the film itself. Nearly.

If I was asked to quickly describe The Visitor, I’d say it was a weird Sci-fi/Horror homage to The Omen that’s cast like an Airport sequel. Of course, The Visitor is much more than that brief description, but, well, it does fit. The Visitor does indeed owe a great debt to The Omen and The Exorcist, with countless other films as well. And producer Ovidio G. Assonitis makes sure every frame of The Visitor features some barely dusted off Hollywood holdover the creator of the classic Beyond the Door located.

The all-star cast is fitting as everything about The Visitorsuggests it’ll be a disaster. You’ve got a barely experienced director working from a bonkers script by a TV writer who mainly landed the job because he could speak both English and Italian. The Visitor has no right to be as good as it is, but, for some, this is one of the great genre films of the seventies. Hell, I think for some of my film community comrades, The Visitor is one of the best films of the seventies full-stop.

I’ve seen The Visitor several times over the years, and I’m consistently impressed by how wildly different the film makes me feel with each viewing. I’m never going to be as in love with the film as some, mostly due to its cast, but I continue to find it a very gratifying and unpredictable cinematic experience.

Even though The Visitor feels built entirely on the backs of other much better films, the way it melds together all of its influences is sort of brilliant and downright intoxicating. The fact that the film is the way it is is due to Assonitis’ desire to avoid getting sued again after Beyond the Door is kind of charming in hindsight and a bit funny. Who else creates an accidental near masterpiece, just to stay out of a courtroom, other than an Italian genre producer from the seventies?

Shot mostly in Atlanta, The Visitor benefits greatly from having its cinematographer be none other than legendary Ennio Guarnieri. The man who shot one of the goddamn greatest films ever made The Garden of Finzi-Continis just half a dozen years previously was on this set in the Georgia sun, capturing all the madness this film has to offer. It’s wild. On a technical level, despite its director’s relative lack of stature, The Visitor rocks. The special effects are still startling, and the Franco Micalizzi score absolutely smokes. Cast wise, young teenage star Paige Conner delivers a much more compelling performance than many of her more seasoned peers. This includes Shelley Winters, who was reportedly abusive to the young child actress behind the scenes.

Arrow’s new 4K is the next best thing to seeing a fresh, uncut print on the big screen. Turn the lights out, indulge in your vice of choice, crank the volume, and this 4K will get you to that place you need to be.

The booklet that accompanies Arrow’s beautiful boxed deluxe edition of The Visitor makes special note of the film’s American version, which cut a whopping 20 minutes of run-time and reshuffled bits. That elusive cut isn’t found here. The booklet and the numerous supplements Arrow have gathered still make this the definitive package for the uncut European original.

On top of looking grand, Arrow’s 4K edition (complete with all the bells and whistles and a beautiful booklet) of The Visitor sums up its complicated legacy. On the one hand, you have intellectual modern video essays from critics both adoring and reverential, treating the film as a complicated work of art. On the other hand, there are a slew of archival cast and crew interviews where they all seem more than slightly embarrassed to have worked on the film at all. It’s an odd dichotomy on view, fitting for a film like The Visitor, a warped record played backwards at the wrong speed that somehow or another sounds near miraculously perfect.

-Jeremy Richey, May 2026-

Order The Visitor directly from Arrow or here in the States from MVD.