Have you ever watched an Ingmar Bergman movie and wished Max von Sydow would drive an axe into Liv Ullmann’s head?  If so, what’s wrong with you?  Regardless, there turns out to a movie for you and your odd fantasies, and that is 1970’s The Night Visitor.

Filmed in Denmark and Sweden in winter, the film makes great use of a rural house, an ancient fortress of a prison surrounded by vast expanses of countryside covered in snow.  So, it is basically a Bergman film, but with 100% more axe murders, bludgeonings and strangulations in it.

Max von Sydow is an inmate in that large, ancient prison, serving a life sentence for a killing a farmhand working on their property.  He has found a way out of his confinement, making nightly trips beyond its walls and returning before anybody notices he’s gone.

A police inspector played by Trevor Howard is stupefied by how it appears von Sydow is exacting revenge upon the people who put him in prison, when the fortress appears to be impossible to breach. 

At first, I thought there might be a supernatural element to the film, and the killer was somehow mentally projecting himself out in the external world.  Guess I forgot to heed Occam’s Razor. Instead, von Sydow is physically escaping each night, and the extent of that effort is pretty stunning.

Part of that escape plan involves the regular chess games he plays with a kindly, old jailer.  That has to be better than playing against Death, or the stakes are a bit lower, at least.  Another part of his convoluted nightly routine involves what appears to be every piece of fabric he can get his hands on tied into a rope, which he then ties to a long piece of wood.  That beam is then what secures the rope to the inside of a high opening in a wall.  Conveniently, we’re not shown how he gets that back out of that aperture on the final leg of the return trip.

Curiously, much of the movie is von Sydow running around in the cold while clad only in shoes and his underwear.  I know revenge is a dish best served cold, but this is ridiculous.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of the film is there is nobody to root for.  Our lead is definitely not presented as somebody we want to see succeed.  And yet, the people he is killing are all quite nasty, as well. 

The closest to a likeable character among the leads is Howard’s detective, but the actor appears to be completely disinterested.  One bizarre moment has him surveying some carnage when he says, “I’ve seen bodies hacked to pieces before, but not like this.”  You’re the police captain in a small Scandinavian town!  How many dismembered corpses have you seen?

For a film with this much murder in it, you’d think The Night Visitor would be more interesting than it is.  Given the film is rated PG, the scenes of mayhem end before we see any viscera.  And I can’t really say it is a psychological drama, as we never really get to know any of the characters.  It’s a thriller that honestly doesn’t have any thrills.

Dir: Laslo Benedek

Starring Max von Sydow, Per Oscarrson, Trevor Howard, Liv Ullmann

Watched on VCI BD-R–yep, a burned disc in packaging bearing the blu-ray logo and shrink-wrapped and everything. A BD-R in full BD clothing. Shame on you, VCI