Friday, May 1, 2020

NIGHT VISITOR (1989)



PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


Just as high-schooler Billy is thinking about dating a cute girl he’s known since childhood, he gets some possible Graduate-allure from sexy twenty-something Lisa (Shannon Tweed, a little prior to her string of nineties softcore nuggets). Unfortuuately, not only is Lisa a call girl, she’s summarily murdered by “the Call Girl Killer,” a serial murderer who just happens to be (a) a Satanist, complete with devil mask, and (b) one of Billy’s high-school teachers.


This smorgasbord of jarring conceits should by itself show that NIGHT VISITOR (a singularly meaningless title) doesn’t exactly have all its ducks in a row, which keeps it from being even a decent formula-thriller. Though I’ve seen many worse films, VISITOR is still among the duller offerings of its kind. In terms of categorization, both the teacher and his equally Satanist brother (Michael J. Pollard) conform to the “bizarre crimes” trope, but since they’re sacrificing hookers for Satan, they don’t seem to line up with the “perilous psychos” as much as with “weird families and societies.” Indeed, the two brothers are both a weird family AND a weird society!


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