The Visitors (1972)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

There are some mild spoilers here. I really liked this film. It has a lot in common with Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, which came out a year before. I have no idea if it is accidental or not. No one seams to talk about the similarities. Both films are about the moral bankruptcy of masculinity. Both film feature a sexually confused woman and a battle between a soft man and super masculine men.The idea for the film supposedly came from the same story that Brian De Palma's Casualties of War was based on. This is a fictional version of what could have happened after everything in the story Casualties of War is based on. Two of the men who raped the girl in Vietnam come home to the person (Bill Schmidt) who reported them to have their revenge.I loved the character battle in this film. Bill's father in law is a writer of western books. This is important because he stands for the old west, the old time, the culture of violence, where you took what you wanted, no matter if it was yours or not. He hates Bill because he thinks he is too soft, not enough of a man and definitely not worthy of his daughter. He even wonders if his grandchild is his grandchild since it has a blood of a sissy in its veins. He however falls in love with the guys who come for a visit to take revenge, the Vietnam war criminals! And when he hears about what Bill Schmidt had done to them (reporting how they raped and killed an innocent girl) he replies: Why did you not kill him? So no sympathy there.Bill Schmidt's wife Martha Wayne is rather confused. She is daddy's little girl but still not blindly so. She is kind of torn between two world-views and can't make up her mind.And now let the battle begin... :)And jumping forward in time. I wonder if this film influenced Funny Games (1997). Two visitors with bad intentions come for a visit and a power play between them all. Sounds like Funny Games to me :)I have no idea why this film is so underrated. I was on the edge of my seat while watching it. Maybe my expectations were just so low that it caught me off guard?

***SPOILERS*** Very personal movie directed by the late great Elia Kazan with the screenplay written by his #1 Son Chris involving naming names or testifying against fellow GI's and the consequences that result from it to the person who felt obligated to do so.The movie "The Visitors" takes place in early January 1969, judging the New York Jet Baltimore Colt Superbowl Game shown on TV, in snowy Newton Connecticut. It's there where young Vietnam vet Bill Schmidt is living a quite and peaceful existence with his live in girlfriend Martha Wayne and the couples out of wedlock two year old boy Hal. Bill trying the make ends meet with his job at a local helicopter plant is in luck in both him & Martha being allowed to live in Martha's dad's, Harry Wayne, home rent free.Wayne is anything but impressed with Bill's very in your face pacifism even though he served as a combat infantryman in Vietnam with honors. Harry himself being a combat vet from the Pacific Theater in WWII and damn proud of it can't understand Bill's misguided attitude towards those Vietcong Commies who, in Harry's mind, are a threat to everything America stands for. Wayne also feels that there's something loose upstairs in Bill's head, besides his pacifism, in his refusing to as much as go out raccoon or rabbit hunting with him!Writing 19th Century American Western novels and getting heavily drunk while doing it Wayne makes more then enough money to support himself as well as his daughter Martha together with Bill and little Hal. Still Wayne has no use for Bill at all and lets him known it, especially when he's smashed out of his head, at every opportunity. It's on one cold & snowy morning that Bill's fellow Vietnam vets Mike Nickerson & Tony Rodrigues show up unexpectedly at the Wayne home that the past suddenly catches up with him. It was some three years ago that Bill testified against both Mike and Tony in a brutal rape and murder that they committed in Vietnam which he was an eye witness to.Like a spider spinning a web for its intended victim both Mike & Tony begin to set Bill up for the kill with his girlfriend-Martha-having at first no idea of what their planning to do! Bill ashamed and feeling like a turncoat in, by testifying against them, having sent Mike & Tony away for two years at the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary kept what he did from Martha, as well as Harry, all this time! But now all that was about to come out in the wash with Martha, besides Bill, being the one to end up paying for it.James Woods in his movie debut is both touching and tragic as the troubled Vietnam vet Bill Schmidt a man with a conscience that never goes away. Troubled in what he was involved with, in doing nothing to stop it, in the Vietnam War Bill turned evidence against Mike and Tony at their court-martial trial that has now come back-like a boomerang- to haunt him. Now out of prison on a technicality the two after a evening of heavy drinking decided to pay Bill, who's home address they found out from their court appointed lawyer, a visit. It turned out to be a visit straight out of hell!

Untypical material for Kazan: this curiously amateurish amalgam of ACT OF VIOLENCE (1948) and THE DESPERATE HOURS (1955), updated for the Vietnam era, is unworthy of the director's unquestionable talent (despite being written by his own son!) and emerges as a pointless talking marathon - in which the dialogue is muffled most of the time anyway, because of poor sound recording! Patricia Joyce comes off best from the hand-picked cast, which includes James Woods' debut role as the wimpish hero(!) and Steve Railsback as one of his two revenge-seeking war buddies; these actors must have thought that they had it made when they were chosen by Award-winning director Kazan (who had, after all, virtually discovered Marlon Brando, James Dean and Warren Beatty) to feature in his next movie but, unfortunately for them, THE VISITORS sank without trace despite being an official entry in that year's Cannes Film Festival! While the film could easily have turned into a nasty shocker in the vein of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) - which might even have been preferable in the long run - the story just meanders on towards a lame and inconclusive ending. At least, the film's snowy setting provides a nice pictorial backdrop...

If you look at this in terms of Kazan's career and the way he puts his own experience in every film (even though I'm sure he'd rather not, but he just can't help himself), this is a masterpiece. If you look at it in terms of commercial cinema, you might describe it as an interesting failure. (Leonard Maltin's book describes it as a BOMB.) All I know is that I was on the edge of my seat screaming at the television, it must have had something going for it. The filming has a "Night of the Living Dead" kind of quality, and is just as harrowing. I wish I didn't relate to Kazan's misanthropic view of humanity, but I do. If you think you're an expert on what makes a good movie, skip this, it's not for you. If you're interested in looking at the dark and fascinating side of people who do evil things, don't miss it. A depressing but great movie. At least someone knows enough about this stuff to put it in a film; the bad part is when we have to live through it.