The Night Visitor (1971)
The Night Visitor (1971)
DVD5 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC | 16:9 | 720x480 | 5000 kbps | 4.2Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: English
01:41:00 | USA, Sweden | Crime, Thriller, Horror
DVD5 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC | 16:9 | 720x480 | 5000 kbps | 4.2Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: English
01:41:00 | USA, Sweden | Crime, Thriller, Horror
A man named Salem escapes from an insane asylum where he was confined for an axe-murder. Falsely convicted under a plea of "guilty due to insanity", he does not plan to let his sister and her husband forget that they were responsible for the murder of a farmhand and for his cruel imprisonment in the asylum.
Director: Laslo Benedek
Cast: Max von Sydow, Trevor Howard, Liv Ullmann, Per Oscarsson, Rupert Davies, Andrew Keir, Jim Kennedy, Arthur Hewlett, Hanne Bork, Gretchen Franklin, Bjorn Watt-Boolsen, Lotte Freddie, Erik Kuhnau
IMDb
The Night Visitor (1971)
Watching Bill "Chilly Billy" Cardille and his Saturday night double features on WIIC-TV (now WPXI) channel 11 was a great treasure trove of terror titles for the city of Pittsburgh PA. Cardille and his show became such a phenomenon that he was asked to appear in a local 1967 production done by commercial filmmakers that enjoyed the movies. Originally titled "Night of Anubis," it had a title change to "Night of the Flesh Eaters," but was finally issued in 1968 as "Night of the Living Dead" (the rest is history). I was too young to view anything during the 60s, but remained loyal to CT right up to the end in 1984. It was NBC's Saturday NIGHT LIVE that pushed the show back from 11:30PM to 1:00AM, reducing the double feature to a single, but one of the very last twin bills (Oct 7 1978) toplined 1970's "The Night Visitor," followed by 1968's "Brides of Blood" (retitled for television "The Island of Living Horror"). My father was particularly taken with this film, and once I found it on video in 1988, we have enjoyed it ever since. It aired twice more on CT (June 28 1980 and July 4 1981), and was a sterling example of the delightful surprises in store week to week, at that time before cable and video, when just about anything could turn up on local stations, and often did. Local horror hosts are mostly a thing of the past, but the films are still available, even the most obscure titles can be found someplace. "The Night Visitor" is quite obscure, but those of us who saw it in Pittsburgh never forgot the experience. How can a man committed to an asylum escape to wreak revenge on those who did him wrong, then actually return to his cell to provide the perfect alibi? A willing suspension of disbelief is a small price to pay for an ingeniusly crafted gem, produced in Denmark by actor Mel Ferrer, with music by Henry Mancini! The 1971 review of this film in Cinefantastique posed what the movie might have been like with a different cast- Christopher Lee as Salem (he really was considered for the part), Peter Cushing as the Inspector, Barbara Steele as the doctor's wife, and Klaus Kinski as the crazed Doctor, stating "why, it almost sounds like a horror classic." It was indeed that good, and Pittsburghers were often lucky to get a head start on the reputations of cult movies that escaped notice in other parts of the country.
~ kevin olzak
Extras
- Original trailer
The Night Visitor (1971)
The Night Visitor (1971)
