The Visitor

1979  **

I gave it the same rating as Catfreeek and Abby!  I should have listened!

Okay, watch this crazy trailer.

John Huston has a vision of the world inside a lava lamp turning into the world inside a snow globe.  Most of the cooler footage you just watched in that trailer comes from that scene.  Nearby, Space Jesus tells a room full of bald kids about how long ago the crew of a spaceship traveling near Earth allowed a horrible evil person? force? named Sateen to escape.  The spaceship's Captain Yahweh used his flock of trained space birds to take Sateen down, but only after he mated with a bunch of Earth women to infect the human race with evil.  Sounds a lot like Scientology, I know.  Then John Huston enters the room and tells us all about Katy.

From there on it's pretty much an Omen clone with a dash of Close Encounters to keep the space thing going.  That usually means John Huston hanging out on a roof downtown with a bunch of bald guys in track suits.  Sometimes he stands beneath some glowing lights and makes facial expressions.

If the good guys sound inept, their nemesis group doesn't come off any better.  Lance Henriksen keeps getting summoned to a table full of guys who get on his case about how he hasn't knocked up Katy's mom, as she's currently the only woman on Earth with a womb that brings forth superpowered kids.  Eventually they give up on Lance and capture her, drug her, and artificially inseminate her, but they don't keep an eye on her or anything and she goes out and gets an abortion.

Yes, spoilers!  But honestly you don't care and I'll tell you why.  Padding!  PAH.  DING.  So much padding.  The first scene we see on Earth is a pro basketball game that Katy influences with her Omen powers.  Sorry, her telekinesis.  When we come in the game is 86-90, then the local boys surge ahead and bring it up to 100-99, and I swear to Space God we see every single basket along the way.  During the scene in which Katy goes ninja on some ice skaters, the movie keeps cutting to John Huston descending a flight of stairs again and again, and what the hell he's meant to be doing or where the hell he's meant to be going right then is never resolved.

You might have a good time with this movie in the right company, but to some extent it will be an endurance event, I promise.