Blu-ray Review: The Beast

Starring: Guy Trejan, Lisbeth Hummel, Sirpa Lane
Director: Walerian Borowczyk
Rating: 10/10

Walerian Borowczyk’s most infamous film is a curious combination of country house farce, sex comedy and creature feature, all set to the jaunty tinkling of a Scarlatti sonata. It seems to creak into motion almost arthritically, as the Duke de l’Esperance (Guy Trejan), scion of an ancient line crumbling into ruin, plots to marry off his only son, Mathurin (Pierre Benedetti), to a wealthy American heiress, Lucy Broadhurst (Lisbeth Hummel). Lucy duly arrives, bouncing out of her Rolls, all wide-eyed with excitement. But would she feel the same if she knew that there’s a hairy monster in the de l’Esperance family tree and that Mathurin shows signs of being a chip off the old block?

If the family truly is cursed or whether it simply suffers from some infirmity in the bloodline and the rest is mere fear and superstition – all this is still a matter of debate by the end of the film, but it’s enough to ensure The Beast‘s enduring shock value, because bestiality is a taboo that shows no signs of going away any time soon. For the most part, though, the movie’s attacks on good taste are teasing rather than visceral, playing on the mind rather than the nerve-endings. Just as some of the characters have their way with each other on screen, so Borowczyk gives the viewer’s fondly held notions about heredity, noblesse oblige, innocence and virtue a good seeing to, but in a light-hearted, genteel way which leaves you respecting yourself in the morning. There’s even a certain cultural cache to it; The Beast belongs to a tradition of intellectual provocation, of serious frivolity, that goes back in France to Voltaire (who supplies the film’s epigraph).

Borowczyk is easily the equal of Bunuel in his ability to spring traps on the unwary, but the surfaces of his movies remain far fresher than Bunuel’s, which now (at least the ones in colour) seem a little stale and stagy. The Duke’s chateau is a character in itself, musty, distressed, shabby-chic, and Borowczyk’s set-dressing is brilliant and replete with symbolism – note the vitrine parked in a corner of the drawing room, which contains, like a religious relic, the torn and tattered corset of the Countess Romilda (the one reputed to have had congress with the hairy monster). Against this mouldering backdrop, riddled with secrets and forgotten codes, the three lusty young girls who feature in the story feel like a force for life, and that’s why their nude antics still give such satisfaction, even today when the internet is awash with naked ladies.

Lucy pleasuring herself with a rose and Countess Romilda (Sirpa Lane) shedding her clothes and her inhibitions in the woods are The Beast‘s two most scandalous set-pieces, but one shouldn’t overlook the role of Clarisse (Pascale Rivault), the Duke’s hippy chick daughter. The way in which she and Ifany (Hassane Fall), the well-endowed footman, are constantly interrupted in their sex games is presented as a throwaway running gag, but their eventual happy coupling makes a reassuring statement in a movie where relations between the sexes are on the whole strained. Oddly enough, these scenes also contain what are arguably the film’s most controversial moments, at least for modern tastes, the one example where Borowczyk really does seem to go too far. Without cutting, the camera tracks Clarisse from her bed, which she’s just shared with Ifany, to her wardrobe, which she opens, revealing two young children who have been hiding there the whole time (and later there’s a reversal where Clarisse and Ifany are now in the wardrobe and they creep out, naked, past the sleeping boy and girl). It’s a set-up that, these days, would earn the producers a furious phone call from children’s services.

That aside, this is one of those rare movies where every element is just right, the costumes, the decor, the casting. Guy Trejan, reptilian as the Duke, the force of repression who is trying to keep the chateau’s dirty secret under wraps; the great character actor Marcel Dalio (best known for La Regle du Jeu) as Rammendelo, the Duke’s rebellious yet decrepit uncle; and Lisbeth Hummel, who immerses herself in the more intimate moments of her role but also shows a fine flair for physical comedy as she stumbles and skids around the chateau in nothing but her fur coat in the film’s frantic conclusion.

The Scarlatti harpsichord sonata which tinkles away during the dream sequences is in a way a perfect analogy for the film’s waspish humour – insistent, potentially annoying, like a gnat in the ear. But The Beast also cheers and refreshes, exposing the primitive fears and superstitions about our own nature that lurk in men’s hearts while at the same time detaching you from them with its crispness of touch, its cool, classical rationality. Because the beast stands not so much for our base natures as for our terror of them, and that’s why what the lovely countess does to it out there in the woods is a service to us all.

The 2K transfer from the original 35mm camera negative is very good. There’s just a tiny flicker of grain across some of the faces on occasion, but the Duke’s chateau, the red walls, the dusky ormolu and old leather bindings all come up with a new vividness of hue and fidelity of texture. The exteriors have a lovely sense of depth; the forest scenes have a lively play of light, and the establishing shot of the chateau, when Lucy drives up to it, could have come out of Downton Abbey. The audio, too, has clarity and presence.

One person’s shocking art porn is another person’s object of nostalgia: in a 57-minute “making of”, Noel Very, camera operator, talks fondly about The Beast to the accompaniment of a whole mass of silent 16mm footage of Borowczyk at work on the film on location at the Chateau de Nandy. We get to see the Panaflex camera that Borowczyk favoured, and the way he would direct scenes, with the eye of a designer, looking through the viewfinder and then telling the actors exactly where to stand within the frame. Borowczyk’s mouth never stops moving. It’s a shame we can’t hear what he’s saying, but this footage gives an extraordinarily vivid sense of what it was like to be on set with him. He’s here, there and everywhere, adjusting hair and makeup, coaching his actors through the smallest of gestures (which must have driven some of them mad). There are also shots of the young Very, the camera mounted on his shoulder, in the manner of a Steadicam. Oh, and we also learn that Borowczyk prepared the beast’s sperm himself, at home, and brought it into work in a lunchbox. For anyone who assumes that The Beast is just a piece of soft-core porn cynically knocked off with little thought or care, this documentary tells a different story.
Also included on the disc is the short film Venus on the Half-Shell, a montage of erotic drawings which reveals Borowczyk’s peculiar obsession with snails.

Following on from their limited edition box set, Arrow have released five Walerian Borowczyk titles on Blu-ray: The Beast, Immoral Tales, Blanche, Goto Isle of Love and The Short Films & Theatre of Mr and Mrs Kabal.

Blu-ray Review: Immoral Tales

Starring: Lise Danvers, Paloma Picasso, Florence Bellamy
Director: Walerian Borowczyk
Rating: 10/10

Walerian Borowczyk had one of the more unusual career trajectories in cinema, going from being the creator of charming homespun animations to – at least in the public mind – a notorious pornographer. It’s as if Oliver Postgate went from making The Clangers to directing Deep Throat. Except that Immoral Tales (1974), the film that marked this startling switch-around, is no ordinary piece of soft-core porn, and in fact there’s no other film quite like it.

It divides into four sections, receding back into time as though to remind us, reassuringly or not, that no one era has a monopoly on naughtiness. The modern day tale The Tide concerns a bossy lad, André (Frabrice Luchini) who lures a submissive younger cousin, Julie (Lise Danvers), to an isolated cove and there inducts her into a convoluted sexual fetish. In the Belle Epoch-set Therese Philosopher, an overly pious young girl (Charlotte Alexandra) is locked in a junk room that is like an Antiques Roadshow expert’s wet dream and there delivers her body unto God with the aid of a cucumber. Erzebet Bathory, the longest of the sections, recounts the familiar story of the 17th century Countess who bathed in blood, and Lucrezia Borgia offers a snapshot of wickedness in 15th century Italy.

Immoral Tales is a tricky movie to discuss, you can argue it so many ways. It’s easy enough to mistake the film simply for a parade of cheesecake. And yet recurring themes are there, if you hunt for them: all of the women in the film are imprisoned, in one way or another, and suffer willingly or unwillingly at the hands of the forces of oppression – overbearing boyfriends, cruel elders, the state, the Church, family. One way of looking at it is that the film knocks these tyrants off their pedestals and has the last laugh by turning them into figures of titillation within the context of a marginalized, often outlawed genre. Another way of looking at is that the victims, the girls, ascend out of their circumstances in some sense by being transfigured by the director’s artistry. We’re not seeing the thing itself, but a picture of the thing, and the picture is very beautiful. It’s these contradictions that keep Immoral Tales vibrant and alive.

Therese Philosopher has been transferred from a blown-up 16mm print and seems a bit soft and blotchy, but all of the other segments have enjoyed a 2K transfer from a 35mm interpositive (with sound from the original magnetic reels), and the results are first class, even better than on The Beast. Even if you know the film of old, you’ll feel like you’re seeing it for the first time.

Of all Borowczyk’s films, this is the one that is the most informed by a Fine Arts sensibility. Watching this Blu-ray, you’ll marvel at his painterly eye. The Tide, for instance, is drenched in rugged yet gauzy Post-Impressionism. On a human level, you’ll probably want to punch the garrulous André and rescue the piteous Julie from his clutches, but at the same time you’re enthralled by the way Borowczyk uses the flinty blues and slatey greys of the Normandy coastline, the mist-shrouded cliffs, a sky thronging with seagulls that twinkle like stars, to isolate and draw attention to the rosy pinks of Julie’s flesh, especially her mouth, the one burst of colour in the entire panorama.

Erzebet Bathory begins in a bawdy, Breugel-like manner, all dung heaps and lusty peasants bathed in a golden sunlight. There’s a shot of a cow in a manger where you can see the subtle silvery-blonde hues of the beast’s fur in amazing detail. Then the Countess arrives, black-caped and feather-hatted, and the scene transitions to Bathory’s bathhouse and the Countess’ Alma-Tademaesque harem of nudes. It’s a unashamedly sybaritic vision, as much about lush fabrics, harmonious colours and intriguing perspectives as it is about bare flesh. Paloma Picasso’s self-possessed Countess, wafting around in nothing but a train of lace and pearls but with a dangerous alertness in her eyes, almost seems to sum up the segment’s aesthetic. It’s a piece of filmmaking that has more in common with the paintings of Delacroix and Jacques-Louis David than it does with your average blue movie, and it’s mere cultural convention that stops one from according it a similar respect.

Like Erzebet Bathory, Lucrezia Borgia shows Borowczyk at the height of his powers. It’s also one of the most shocking things Borowczyk ever filmed. Her husband dragged off to be murdered, Lucrezia (Florence Bellamy) indulges in kinky sex games with the Pope and a Cardinal, who also happen to be her father and brother (played, in another twist of perversity, by a real father and son). As the Pope thrusts his tongue into the corner of her mouth, even now you think, “Oh no, he didn’t…” and you can’t help wondered whether the actors were afraid of being struck by lightning at the end of each take.

But it’s hard to hold onto a feeling of censure. The sacrilegious orgy unfolds with the glow, the jewelled colours of a Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece. Florence Bellamy looks stunning in her Renaissance togs and even more so out of them. Borowczyk’s skill at counterpointing naked flesh with ornate costumes and décor is breathtaking. The whole thing is a feast for the senses; and not just for the eye, for the ear as well, as the visuals surge to the rhythms of Guillaume de Machaud’s ravishing Messe de Notre-Dame, sounding rich and full-bodied on this transfer. This trio of great sinners and heretics seem to disappear in a blaze of seraphic bliss.

In both of these segments particularly, the images have such bite and force in HD, they encourage you to float on an aesthetic high and lose yourself in an appreciation of the world as pure surfaces. But at the same time you’re aware, in the back of your mind, that you could be regarding things in an altogether different light, that the Count’s harem is meant for the slaughter and the Borgias are about as cuddly as an armful of snakes, and this knowledge serves the same purpose as the grinning skull or gathering clouds that Old Masters would tuck into the corners of their canvases.

As seen on this transfer, Immoral Tales is simply one of the most beautiful films of the 1970s, brimming over with radiant camerawork, authentic-looking costumes, meticulous set-dressing and disarmingly natural performances from its array of pretty young actresses. (Anyone keen on antiques will wonder where on earth Borowczyk sourced the marvellous bric-a-brac packed into every corner of his movies, and the answer is that he made a lot of it himself.) While it’s never going to be everybody’s cup of tea, it at least deserves to be reassessed by those interested in the figurative arts and not averse to a naked lady or two. Hopefully this Blu-ray release will finely see it being appreciated and understood.

Immoral Tales was originally supposed to include a fifth segment, The Beast of Gevaudan, but it was dropped, the footage being recycled as the dream sequence in The Beast (1975). This disc comes with an alternative version of Immoral Tales that restores that fifth segment. Transferred from a 16mm print, the segment is a bit grainy, but fans will be very glad to have it as it contains several minutes of extra footage: there’s a much lengthier shot of Sirpa Lane running along in just her corset, seen from behind, and a few additional seconds of her fondling the beast’s appendage and covering up his body with leaves. Oh, and there’s quite a bit more sperm.

A Private Collection (1973) is a 12-minute long pseudo-documentary, supposedly about a gent showing off his dazzling collection of vintage erotica – a wax doll that rolls its eyes as it masturbates, a mechanical silhouette that rogers away vigorously, etc. In fact, many of the automata were constructed by Borowczyk himself, which only makes it even more fascinating. It’s a delight and the picture is lovely. There’s also another version, longer by two minutes and more explicit, including some surprisingly dirty Victorian photographic porn. Be warned, both versions contain gratuitous amounts of scratchy wax cylinder music.

Also, there’s a 5-minute intro to Immoral Tales, and a 16-minute “making of”. In this, we get to see the home-made harness that camera operator Noel Very designed so as to mount the Panaflex camera on his shoulder for tighter shots (apparently Borowczyk’s enthusiasm for DIY was catching). We also learn that Isabelle Adjani was approached to play the part of Julie in The Tide and turned it down, and that they used 30 gallons of real blood (from pigs) for the Countess Bathory’s bath. Finally, there’s a 7-minute piece in which some of Borowczyk’s old friends and collaborators get together for a chat over lunch. Here the juiciest snippets of gossip come from the delightful Florence Dauman, daughter of Anatole Dauman, the movie’s producer. She reveals that, having had a small role in the Bathory segment, she was due to play the part of Clarisse, the Duke’s randy daughter, in The Beast, but her father refused to let her do it and was moreover horrified when he caught sight of her naked in Immoral Tales’ rushes.

Following on from their limited edition box set, Arrow have released five Walerian Borowczyk titles on Blu-ray: The Beast, Immoral Tales, Blanche, Goto Isle of Love and The Short Films & Theatre of Mr and Mrs Kabal.

Blu-ray Review: Salvatore Giuliano

Starring: Frank Wolff, Salvo Randone
Director: Francesco Rosi
Rating: 9/10

Salvatore Giuliano – the Sicilian Robin Hood, so-called – might give his name to the title, but in all other respects he’s an elusive figure in this classic docudrama. We see him mainly from the back, in a white dust coat and sporting cap, forever darting out of view. The only time we get a really good look at him is when he’s lying in the morgue. (That’s not a spoiler, the film opens with his death, shot three times in mysterious circumstances.)

But then this is no conventional portrait of a popular hero. It’s a demystification, a cool-headed inquest. And anyway, director Francesco Rosi is less interested in Giuliano as an individual than in what his rise and fall tells us about the nature of power in Italy in the post-war years.

The script is a model of clarity, moving around freely in time, following the evidence rather than the chronology, and explaining the situation so that even a non-Italian viewer can become versed in the subtleties at work. The film breaks broadly into two halves – the discovery of Giuliano’s body and the subsequent official proceedings, intercut with flashbacks to his infamous career, and then a trial concerning the involvement of his men in the notorious Portella della Ginestra massacre of 1947, when eleven peasants celebrating May Day were murdered. We learn how Giuliano, a mountain bandit, was recruited to fight for Sicilian independence, and how, once that was achieved, he was abandoned by his political paymasters and became a thorn in their side, taking to kidnapping and extortion. And we see the more and more extreme attempts made by the police and army to dislodge him, with the people of his hometown Montelepre caught in the middle. What emerges in a picture of a ruling elite where everyone is in bed with everyone else. “Outlaws, police and the Mafia – they are an unholy trinity,” says Giuliano’s second-in-command at one point. And there are questions – how exactly did Giuliano die? And were his men really involved in the Portella della Ginestra massacre, and if so, who put them up to it?



Throughout, the tone is cool, dry, dispassionate, unemotive, Rosi’s own undoubted fury held in check. Filming in the actual locations where much of this took place, using locals as actors, Rosi achieves a level of authenticity which isn’t just impressive for its own sake, it’s also highly revealing – looking at the town of Montelepre, with its gaunt, closed in houses, you instinctively grasp the psychology of a people who respond to representatives of centralized authority with stubbornness and silence.

Dramatically, the story may be all shades of grey, but visually, Rosi plays with great slabs of light and shade. He shoots from low down, creating monolithic, mythical images. Sunlight pours down from overhead on stark landscapes and townships that seem to etch themselves onto the screen – monuments of permanence that people move across like shadows. In a way, the film conveys a contradictory message. Rosi’s documentary impulse suggests that all this can and must change; his bleak, scorching vision of Sicily suggests the opposite, that it will never be other than what it is. But those are the sorts of tensions that make a piece of art vital and fascinating.




This Blu-ray boasts a 4K restoration from the original camera negative, with a restored soundtrack. It’s simply one of the best HD transfers of a black-and-white film you’re likely to see. Detail is fine-grained, the blacks of cars and umbrellas satisfyingly inky. The deep focus camerawork is pitilessly sharp. Throughout, the actors stand out in an almost 3D way against the rugged scenery. You’ll have your own favourite shots, but mine includes the early top-down view of the dead Giuliano, surrounded by police, reporters and gawpers. Another set-up that comes across very well is the one where the army draw up for a dawn raid on Montelepre, with the town on the hill ahead and the rocky skyline (Giuliano’s domain) beyond – three layers of the story caught in one telling image.

Turning to the extras, first up is a 55-minute Italian-made documentary from 2001. Filmed in his book-lined flat, Rosi talks about his early life, the start of his career in theatre and then working for Visconti, and he also airs his views on, in his own words, “the relationship between people and power.” He goes back to some of the locations of Salvatore Giuiiano and describes how he reconstructed the Portella della Ginestra incident with locals from nearby towns. Along the way there are some clips from his films, including a jarring one of James Belushi speaking dubbed Italian.
There’s also a more recent, 12-minute interview with Rosi, in which he explains why Giuliano is largely absent from the film. In addition, there’s a 14-minute featurette which revisits some of the movie’s locations; Giuliano’s nephew takes the opportunity to get a lot off his chest about Sicily’s ongoing grudges with mainland Italy. Finally, there’s a 10-minute piece in which a journalist roundly dismisses Giuliano’s reputation as the Sicilian Robin Hood and sums him up as a “Mafia hit man”, but also argues that his men were unlikely to have been responsible for the deaths at Portella della Ginestra. Given the recent Scottish referendum, there could hardly be a better time to rediscover a film which deals so powerfully with themes of local autonomy and a sense of disenfranchisement, and it’s well served by this excellent release from Arrow Video.

Blu-ray Review: Mark of the Devil

Starring: Herbert Lom, Udo Kier
Director: Michael Armstrong
Rating: 8/10

As has often been pointed out, it’s not at all easy to say where and when Mark of the Devil (1970) is set. All we really know is that it’s some little town where Tyrolean fashions and low-cut bodices are all the rage, where everyone is dubbed and where if you’re a fit bird the chances are you’ll be catching the eye of the local witch hunter, a ferret-faced bloke who goes by the name of Albino (Reggie Nalder). Heaving her bosom more than most is Vanessa (Olivera Vuco), a comely tavern wench. Inevitably she stirs Albino’s lustful interest, but she finds a temporary protector in the handsome form of Count Christian von Meruh (Udo Kier), assistant to Lord Cumberland (Herbert Lom), the great witch hunter who is due to arrive at any moment. Hopefully Lord Cumberland will clear her name. Will he ever!

The script is at pains to draw a distinction between Christian, who hunts witches because he thinks it’s his, er, Christian duty, and Albino, who does it for kicks. As for Cumberland, we quickly discover (and how it is that Christian hasn’t?) that he’s running a racket. Diedre (Gaby Fuchs), who gets the brunt of the torturer’s attentions during the movie – yes, that girl, the one who has her tongue ripped out – is simply a poor, innocent nun who has only been accused because a bishop has gotten her in the family way and it has fallen to the witch hunters to hush up the scandal. Similarly, a young baron who has his bottom shoved on a bed of nails is only suffering this indignity because the church is eager to swell its coffers with his inheritance.

No doubt this sort of thing did so on, but it’s hard to take the film seriously as a hard-hitting exposé because the plot has so obviously been cobbled together on the back of an Austrian beer matt. And yet Mark of the Devil achieves its own kind of crude vitality. The movie teems with the sort of feral, grotesque characters who would be right at home in a spaghetti western, especially the splendid Albino and Herbert Fux’s Jeff Wilkens, executioner, torturer and deliverer of sinister leers. The trial scenes apparently drew on contemporary documents for some convincingly cracked-sounded allegations and testimonies. Visually, the film consistently holds your attention. The cinematographer Ernst W. Kalinke employs extreme angles and looming close-ups, tilting the camera 360 degrees during a stylized rape scene. The use of locations in and around Salzburg and Lower Austria (with priceless antiques in situ) gives the film a rich texture than draws you in almost against your better judgement, and the same goes for the torture scenes, which benefit from all kinds of authentic-looking contraptions that were apparently lying around on set just begging to be put to use. Even the rather choppy editing works to the film’s advantage, giving it a roughness which feels like sincerity.

Fans will be delighted with the HD transfer. The film stock is very much of its time but, bar a scattering of grain here and there, it has buffed up to be impressively bright and gaudy. Reggie Nalder looks amazing, his red tunic clashing violently with his chorizo-brown skin tones. When Christian goes for a walk beside the river, his azure trousers are almost blinding. The scene where Lord Cumberland’s coach arrives at the castle is beautifully clear and fresh, as are many other shots throughout.

Another piece of extremely good news is the presence of the German audio. It’s a definite improvement over the English version. Although everyone still looks as if they’re dubbed, it’s altogether less jarring, with much better voice acting, and the script seems that little bit more subtle and intelligent too.



The Blu-ray comes with a whole mass of extras. There’s a 47-minute documentary looking at the New Wave of British horror films of the ’70s, With contributions from Norman J. Warren, Michael Armstrong and others, and with a good section on Peter Walker, it’s a very welcome introduction to an era that’s still comparatively neglected.

We also get a 12-minute piece on Hallmark Releasing, the movie’s US distributor, early purveyors of bad taste who specialised in confrontational material and flashy publicity gimmicks – audiences for Mark of the Devil were given sick-bags that have now become collector’s items. There’s a 7-minute featurette revisiting the movie’s Austrian locations, and a 24-minute interview with the film’s composer, Michael Holm, a charmingly camp character who gives his honest opinion of his own score and also goes on to tell some anecdotes which will be of great interest to aficionados of the German pop scene in the 1960s.

The shooting of Mark of the Devil was an unhappy experience for director Michael Armstrong, who was removed from the picture and replaced by producer Adrian Hoven (who also appears on screen as the ill-fated puppet guy). The remaining extras are fascinating for the differing accounts they offer as to how, why and when this happened. In a 10-minute interview, Udo Kier intimates that Hoven didn’t care for some of Armstrong’s ideas or for his slowness in making decisions. Gaby Fuchs says that the scene where her tongue was ripped out (using a calf’s tongue, none too fresh) was directed by Hoven, and a behind the scenes photo would seem to support that. During the course of a 23-minute interview, Herbert Fux – who seems very well informed – suggests that it was less a personality clash with Hoven than a loss of faith on the part of the production company, and then when Hoven took over (about a third of the way into the shooting schedule, according to Fux) he did his best to keep to the style that Armstrong had established. (He also claims that the big metal pliers, etc, that they used for the torturing scenes were authentic originals that happened to be in the castle where they filmed, and that the sword he wields to lop off a few heads had actually been employed in real executions.)

Michael Armstrong’s audio commentary paints a picture of an immediate clash with Hoven, who didn’t want to make the film in the first place, and he blames Hoven for the lack of a distinct period setting and the peculiar mix of British and Germanic names in the cast list which has caused much scratching of heads ever since. He also states that he shot the majority of the movie himself, with Hoven’s contribution being limited to post-production and some second unit and assistant director work. Sorry if you were hoping for a clear, definitive account of what went on, but at least there’s plenty more ammo here to keep the argument running and running.

Blu-ray Review: The Visitor

Starring: John Huston, Lance Henriksen, Glenn Ford
Director: Giulio Paradisi (as Michael J. Paradise)
Rating: 6/10

Whatever you think of The Visitor (1979) as a whole, you’ve got to love the first few minutes. We start with a character who might be an Old Testament prophet (hey look, it’s John Huston!) peering into a swirl of peach-coloured clouds, whence emerges another figure, which lowers its hood to reveal a face grotesquely covered in a crust of snow and ice. Cut to a futuristic sci-fi Jesus (hey look, it’s Franco Nero in a wavy blond wig!), having a Jackanory moment with a bunch of baldy children, and laying out an extravagant cosmic-theological backstory to do with the forces of good and an evil mutant called Zatine who in times past went about knocking up Earth women with his cursed seed. By now you’re muttering, “Zardos!” under your breath. Where do you go after an opener like that?

How about Atlanta, Georgia? Er, do we have to? Seems we do, because this is the home town of Barbara Collins (hey look, it’s… no, don’t know her), who carries Zatine’s genes and who has already given birth to one demon child, little Katy (Paige Connor). But as if that weren’t enough, there’s a plot afoot to get her impregnated again, this time with a boy child. However, she’ll be lucky to last that long, because Katy – a spoilt, obnoxious brat who gets away with having the kind of potty mouth that sees Regan in The Exorcist sent to bed and sprinkled with holy water – really seems to have it in for poor old mum. Confined to a wheelchair after she gets accidentally shot in the back when a gun turns up mysteriously at Katy’s eighth birthday party, Barbara is only too happy to welcome the assistance of a housekeeper (hey, look, it’s Shelley Winters!) and a babysitter in a wrinkled safari suit (hey, look it’s John Huston again!).


And hey look, it’s Glenn Ford, playing an inquisitive cop investigating the shooting. All of these big names are used shamelessly for their instant recognizability and given little or no opportunity to act, but Ford is treated with particular shabbiness – sworn at by Katy (she tells Glenn Ford to go eff himself!) and then bundled off to have his eyes pecked out and endure a hideous, lingering death in a burning car. Meanwhile, Huston swans around like the Man from Del Monte, while the evil committee has another go at getting Barbara preggers and more craziness ensues.

The Visitor doesn’t quite live up to the kitsch promise of the early scenes – it seems to run out of ideas, or perhaps the producer and director didn’t have the budget to indulge themselves as they would have liked – but it’s fun, in an incoherent, slapdash The Omen-meets-Superman-meets-Carrie-meets-Demon Seed kind of way (there’s even a cheekily overt nod to Close Encounters of the Third Kind). In the end, you’re not quite sure what the plan was, but hey, you can see a film that makes sense any day of the week; how many movies can you name that include a death by pigeon? A couple of the stunts are decently handled as well, including an eerily real-looking sequence where Katy drags Barbara up the stairs by her ankles and knocks her down again. And talking of Barbara, the unsung Joanne Nail gives a sweet and touching performance as this most distressed of damsels, so much so that it’s a puzzle that her career fizzled out in TV movie limbo.

The HD transfer is on the whole very good. There are a couple of scratches to the print in the opening optical effect, and just a touch of softness in some of the two-shots, but otherwise it’s extremely clean and crisp, with no grain to speak of. The creamy hues of sci-fi Jesus’ space age parlour-cum-conservatory look suitably virginal and airy, and all of the more elaborate set-ups – for instance, a long shot from upstairs in the Collins’ house of Huston’s character talking to Barbara – have plenty of depth and detail.

Among the extras, there’s a lively 9-minute interview with Lance Henriksen (who played Barbara’s disloyal beau). He has a chuckle about the film’s shortcomings and describes what it was like shooting in Rome surrounded by frenzied Italians – “I had no idea what I was doing.” In another 9-minute interview, screenwriter Lou Comici talks about his efforts to incorporate the various whacky ideas dreamt up by director Giulio Paradisi (aka Michael J. Paradise), and how, after all his labours, Paradisi threw his finished script out of a window without even glancing at it. He also gives some insights into the production’s internal politics (apparently Paradisi was fired, then hired again). There’s also a 4-minute chat with cinematographer Ennio Guarnieri. He talks about his and the director’s background in TV commercials (which perhaps explains all the Man from Del Monte stuff), and says that 80-90% of the film was shot in Atlanta, with just a small portion filmed in Italy. More interview excerpts – including the views of Paige Connor, who played Katy – can be found in the accompanying booklet (Connor reveals that Shelly Winters, contrary to her big-hearted public image, was horrible and slapped her painfully hard during their on-screen tussle. Another illusion shattered.)