The boy who cried wolf is one of those tropes used consistently through the history of film. It was given a contemporary spin few times in the 80’s in such horror films such Fright Night, where you had the boy who cried vampire. 1989 film Night Visitor takes this trope even further, with the boy who cried his history teacher is a Satanist he saw ritually sacrificing his next-door neighbor.
Even among 80’s movies, this is one of the eightiest. You have satanic panic elements, a kid using his telescope to spy on his hot neighbor while she’s having sex, and the obligatory terrible soundtrack. It almost hits enough spaces to fill your 80’s horror movie bingo card.
Derek Rydall plays a high-school student, looking even older than his 21 years at the time. Shannon Tweed is the woman who just moved in next door. He watches as she has sex with a different man each night. I’m always amazed by how so many films of this vintage portray as acceptable behavior secretly watching girls and women in varying states of undress through binoculars, holes in locker room walls, etc. At one point, Rydall invites his friends (Scott Fults and Teresa Van der Woude) over to witness this spectacle for themselves and Van der Woude is disappointed when Tweed decides to have a chaste night alone. There are no indications the teenage girl’s character is anything but hetero, so I was confused by why she was so desperate to see another woman naked.
Rydall has a history of exaggerating things, when he’s not telling bald-faced lies. He also has a contentious relationship with teacher Allen Garfield. When we first see Garfield, he is chastising Rydall for being late for class for the eighth time, though he doesn’t say in how many days. I like to think, I don’t know, two. Van der Woude is forever covering for Rydall, as she has a crush on him (when she’s not thinking about Tweed getting naked, and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that!).
Some lines of dialog speculate Tweed may be a prostitute, though I’m not sure if that was ever confirmed or denied. There may be a different guy in her bedroom each night, but I thought she just knows what she wants and is confident in her sexuality.
Then there’s the night where she is stabbed to death by a masked and cloaked figure while handcuffed to her bed. Courtesy of an awkward setup, Rydell is on her roof trying to get pictures of her through her bedroom window. Could we get this guy on the registered sex offenders list already? Anywho, the masked figure apparently forgets how windows work and just shoves their arms through it to try to strangle Rydell. In the ensuing skirmish, the mask falls off, revealing the assailant to be Garfield (the actor playing his teacher, and not the cartoon cat—just want to make sure we’re on the same page here).
Because of his storied past of telling tall tales, Rydell isn’t believed by anybody except his smitten friend. I had the impression a detective played by Richard Roundtree wants to be believe him, but there simply isn’t the evidence. A retired detective played by Elliott Gould is more inclined to be believe him, except he seems to be more of a liability than an asset to the investigation.
What nobody knows yet is Garfield and his brother (Michael J. Pollard) have a dungeon in the basement of their house where they have imprisoned yet another woman to be sacrificed (Teri Weigel). Bonus feature interviews on the blu-ray I watched talk about how this was written as a straight horror film, only for the director to skew the material to be more of a comedy. Then he was surprised it was marketed as a horror film. But it is the element of that imprisoned woman which is the only outwardly, non-camp element of this picture, making that feel even more disturbing in contrast. Pollard’s psychological torment of Weigel is genuinely disturbing. They call her the furniture, reducing her to something less than human. As Pollard tells her when she’s crying: “Furniture shouldn’t whine”.
This movie is competently made for the most part. One thing I found interesting in the bonus interviews is the revelation it was filmed quickly through the use of Steadicam, a technology still in its early years at the time and with few operators who had mastered it. Still, there’s an odd flaw which is still nagging me, and that is a disconnect in the eyelines between Garfield and Pollard in the final moments of a scene where detectives come to their house. Such a simple thing is rarely done wrong in movies of any budget, and it was odd to see a moment of incompetence in such a solidly, if unremarkably, filmed movie.
The Night Visitor has few moments that are distinctive those these bits are where it is at its weirdest. I never before thought I would see Gould wielding a shotgun to defend himself against a chainsaw attack from Pollard. There’s a bewildering violation of the laws of physics, when Rydall apparently channels the power of Gallagher and throws a watermelon at a car, smashing the windshield. This isn’t a bad movie, nor a particularly good one, but one that mixes a bit of the notably bizarre into its boilerplate 80’s horror fare.
Dir: Ruper Hitzig
Starring Derek Rydall, Allen Garfield, Teresa Van der Woude
Watched on Scorpion Releasing blu-ray