American Actors In Italy

 

 

THE VISITOR-1979-At an Atlanta Hawks basketball game a little girl named Katy (Paige Connor) seems to make an opposing player lose the game. She's a snot-nosed brat and after having sex her mother Barbara (Joanne Nail) confesses to her boyfriend Raymond (Lance Henriksen who was in OMEN 2 the year before) that she's afraid of her daughter. It turns out Raymond actually works for a cabal led by Dr. Walker (Mel Ferrer) who says the mother carries the genes of “Sateen”. They want the boyfriend to impregnate mom so Katy will have a brother. For some reason Katy gets a revolver for a birthday present and she accidentally shoots mom who winds up paralyzed. A character who may be Jesus Christ (Franco Nero) sends a visitor (John Huston) to check up on Katy. And a weird housekeeper (Shelly Winters, no stranger to horror and exploitation) also hangs around. Meanwhile a detective (Glen Ford who had played Pa Kent in the SUPERMAN movie the year before) investigates until he is killed. Later after Raymond and Katy kill Barbara the visitor sends a flock of birds to kill Raymond and Katy is whisked away to a heavenly place where (now bald) she joins other hairless children under the protection of the Christ like figure.

This Italian/US co-production THE OMEN inspired tale was filmed in and around Rome by Guilio Paradisi (a former actor) under the more American sounding Michael J. Paradise. It's no paradise when viewing this disjointed, badly dubbed horror tale despite the name cast. It could be the US version was badly cut and dubbed making the story fairly incoherent. For example director Sam Peckinpah appears in one scene as a doctor named Collins (Katy and Barbara's last name). It seems in the uncut version it's explained that the doctor is actually Barbara's ex-husband but here it's reduced to a weird cameo by an American director (Peckinpah would make this last movie THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND a few years later). Actor/director Mel Ferrer was in several European horror films around this time and the same year as THE VISITOR was in added US scenes for an Italian horror film SCREAMERS.

Thanks for reading!