The Visitor

Watched August 11, 2013

1979
Starring: Joanne Nail, John Huston, Lance Hendrikson, Paige Conner

A man is walking in a strange, other worldly place, it appears to be a barren desert but the sky is a psychedelic mix of colors like a lava lamp. He sees a figure in the distance, as he gets closer the figure reveals the face of a young girl. 

Next we see a strange yellow haired man talking to a group of bald kids. He is telling them a story about an alien battle. Jerzy (John Huston) approaches the group and tells the yellow haired man that there is another special child that had been born. He will do is best to find the child and get her to their side.

At a basketball game we meet Barbara Collins (Joanne Nail) and her boyfriend Raymond (Lance Hendrikson) who happens to own the team. At the last second of the game when a player is about to dunk the ball, the ball explodes. Barbara's daughter Katy (Paige Conner) had been wandering around the stadium and seems to be the cause of the basketball explosion.

Raymond is a successful businessman and he goes to a meeting with a group of powerful men. They want to know how Raymond is doing in securing Barbara. The group wants Katy's powers and since she is a child they first have to gain the trust of the mother.

It is Katy's birthday and a group of parents are there to celebrate. She gets a strange gift that she opens where no one can see. Inside is a gun, Katy throws the box down but the gun is thrown out and it fires, hitting Barbara in the spine. Barbara is now paralyzed from the waist down and needs to use a wheelchair. No one saw what happened with the gun, but it seems that Katy may have made the gun go off so that her mother would have to spend more time at home with her.

Now that Barbara is in a wheelchair she hires Jane (Shelley Winters) to be the housekeeper. Jane also knows about Katy's powers and the fight that is going on over who can control her. Raymond takes Barbara to a fancy dinner and says something inappropriate so that Barbara breaks off their relationship. Jerzy shows up and says that he is coming from the babysitting service, he spends some time with Katy to assess her powers and if she has chosen the side of good or evil.

The group of men who were controlling Raymond wanted him to impregnate Barbara so that they could have another child with powers. But when he blew it they took it under their own hands, one night while driving with Katy, Barbara's car stalled out. Then a strange truck showed up and some men grabbed her and impregnated her. Katy seemed to want a little brother so she didn't do anything about it. Barbara knows she is pregnant so she goes to her ex husband who happens to be a doctor. 

Barbara comes back to her house and is attacked by Katy's bird. Katy then shows up and pushes Barbara through a fish tank. Raymond arrives and puts a noose around Barbara's neck and puts her on the staircase elevator and is about to slowly choke her to death. Then a ton of birds arrive and attack Raymond. They kill him and destroy the house. It's not seen who survives.

Back at the yellow haired man's cult we see Jerzy bring a new child in and it's Katy with a shaved head. I think we are meant to assume that she is now on the side of good but it's unknown. It guess Barbara died in the bird attack.

I was definitely confused for a lot of the movie, especially relating to who was on what side and what it had to do with aliens. I'm not sure if Katy was an alien or not. I really like Joanne Nail since she was in Switchblade Sisters so it was great to see her but terrible to see her constantly beat up. Katy was not too annoying even though her allegiance seemed like it could have gone either way. Lance Hendrikson's character Raymond is stabbed by the most fake looking bird I've seen in awhile, which is strange because they used real birds for the rest of the movie. Katy wears some of the strangest hairstyles I've seen on a kids, lots of weird braids and pigtails. Overall I would say it was confusing but enjoyable.