Do you want to win tickets to see “The Visitor” in Los Angeles this weekend at CineFamily?
Before you answer that question, let me tell you a little bit about “The Visitor,” which you may not be familiar with yet. I wouldn’t blame you. It’s a 1979 film that is fairly hard to describe. Well, actually, I would say it looks like an Italian guy fell in love with both “Close Encounters” and “The Omen” and couldn’t decide which one he wanted to rip off, so he ripped off both of them and then sprinkled in some genuine all-his-own low-budget insanity that is only enhanced by the idea that he got recognizable American movie stars for many of the key adult roles. What makes it hard to fully describe is the weird way all of those obvious influences come together. It’s a deeply strange film, and that makes it a perfect fit for Drafthouse Films.
Don’t just take my word for it, though. Check out the trailer.
One of the things I really like about Drafthouse Films and their mission statement as a distributor is that they are not focused on just one very narrow niche, and they’re not even restricted to only picking up new films. If they find something older that they like, they can treat it the same way they treat something they discover at a film festival, and in the case of “The Visitor,” they’re gearing up for a limited run theatrical release before they add it to their Blu-ray collection in the near future.
The producer of the film, Ovidio Assonitis, which sounds like a made-up name for a preposterously dodgy film producer in a movie making fun of film production, loved to churn out rip-offs of big hit Hollywood movies. He worked fast and cheap. He was The Asylum back when it wasn’t considered ironic and funny to make this sort of nakedly craven hijacking of someone else’s success. I’m still not sure how he got Walter Huston, Shelly Winters, Franco Nero, Sam Peckinpah and Glenn freakin’ Ford to be in the film.
This is one of those things you should see with as many people as possible. It’s fun not because it’s inept… it’s not, actually. It’s just crazy to see how many Hollywood films were thrown into the blender for this one (someone has a bigtime fetish for “The Birds,” evidently), and there’s such a strange approach to the science-fiction mythology of the film and the mysticism. It feels like the opening scenes of the movie were shot on the sets for Jodorowsky’s “The Holy Mountain” for some reason. What a trip.
If you want tickets to see the film here in LA, we’ve got two tickets for each of the three nights it’s playing at the CineFamily. You can pick the tickets up at the will call at the theater, and we’ll pick a winner each day starting tomorrow. The film plays 11/1, 11/2, and 11/3, and you can see the full details of the screenings here.
Win 2 Tix to see @drafthousefilms‘ #TheVisitor in Los Angeles. RT this Tweet and Follow @HitFix to enter. Details: https://t.co/ClfbS0JO2J
– HitFix (@HitFix) October 31, 2013
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It’s truly one of a kind. Here’s the full release schedule for the film, or you can see it on VOD starting in February.