Horror Express: Night Visitor (Rupert Hitzog, 1989)

It is the 1980s, in anonymous American suburbia. Generic off-brand hair metal blasts from the radios of shiny new convertibles, as obnoxious, sub-Michael J. Fox high school wise-acres cruise around the sun-dappled streets wearing unbelievably garish shirts. But wait, what’s this? Some kind of evil, Satanic serial killer is crawlin’ kerbs in a less salubrious part of town, murdering prostitutes and leaving pentagrams daubed in blood upon walls! What gives?

From this can't-fail premise, Rupert Hirzog’s ‘Night Visitor’ (also known by the even worse title ‘Never Cry Devil’) unfortunately proceeds to fail spectacularly.

To be honest, I’m not even sure where to begin, but... let’s start with swaggering teen hero Billy Colton (Derek Rydall, of ‘Deathwish 4: The Crackdown’ and ‘Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge’), who, as was so often the case in this post-McFly/Bueller era, is a complete dickhead.

Though the script is predicated on our ability to sympathise with his plight, everything Billy does is immature, cowardly and irritating. Much of the dialogue he shares with his sole friend Sam (Scott Fults, from a lot of TV), his obvious love interest Theresa (Teresa Van der Woude, from ‘Killer Workout’) and his hard-working single mom (Brooke Bundy, from ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors’) sounds as if it’s been beamed in, garbled, from another planet. I don't care about any of them. I want them off the screen.

The plot, which draws heavily on Tom Holland’s ‘Fright Night’ (1985), involves the voyeuristic Billy witnessing his sexy new neighbour (Shannon Tweed - nuff said) being murdered by his high school history teacher (Allen Garfield, from ‘The Conversation’ and ‘Nashville’!), bedecked for the occasion in his finest Satanic regalia.

Of course, no adults or authority figures believe Billy when he tries to tell them about this, for the eminently believable reason that he’s a complete tit who has presumably never said anything truthful or helpful in his entire life to date. And so, as per Holland’s film but with none of its charm or invention, our feckless hero’s lonely war against his evil teacher begins in earnest.

Unfortunately, the crazy Satanist brothers who comprise the film's villains (Garfield, plus Michael J. Pollard from ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and ‘Split Second’) are played entirely for laughs, meaning that they never constitute any kind of real threat.

In fact, there's something very incongruous and distasteful about the way they do genuinely nasty things (like keeping kidnapped hookers hog-tied in their basement), but whenever they’re on-screen together, it’s proto-‘Dumb and Dumber’ type goofball humour all the way. It’s all pretty skin-crawling to sit through, to be honest. Very uncomfortable.

But wait - wasn’t Elliot Gould supposed to be in this movie..? He’s top-billed on the opening crawl, and indeed he eventually turns up about halfway through, playing a retired detective who I suppose is meant to be this film’s equivalent of the Roddy McDowell character in ‘Fright Night’ (or Tom Atkins in ‘Night of the Creeps’). His character is very poorly written though, adding nothing to the narrative, and poor old Mr Gould seems confused, embarrassed and disengaged throughout - as well he might.

Richard Roundtree (from…. look, I’m not going to insult your intelligence by going there, ok?) is good as the inevitable cop, but then he always is, isn’t he? It seems as if he’s wandered in from a better movie, just doing his thing.

Actually, the work-a-day cop stuff is probably the least excruciating element of this picture all around. Roundtree’s partner gets the movie’s best line when she says “..we should arrest them just for weirdness” following their initial visit to Garfield & Pollard’s hellhole suburban pad, and there’s also a nice cameo from Henry Gibson (‘Nashville’, ‘The Long Goodbye’) as an expert on occult crimes. (As the surfeit of brackets in this review should indicate, the MVP on this production was definitely the casting director!)

One explanation for ‘Night Visitor’s chronic tonal disjunctures can by found via an entry on the film’s IMDB trivia page, which states:

Writer Randal Viscovich claims the majority of his screenplay was watered down by order of the executive producers. He wrote a trashy and exploitative horror film that included cannibalism and graphic nudity. He was shocked to see it lightened and even the language toned down.

Yep, that sounds about right. Anyway, low-level goofiness and generalised ‘80s nostalgia (plus a few drinks) got me through this one without actively recoiling from it, but honestly.... it was pretty bad. Real wasted potential all round. Rarely has my long-standing “I’ll watch anything with satanic cultists in it” policy come up against such a challenge.

So, what purpose does this review serve then, other than potentially upsetting some of the surviving people who put their hard work into helping this thing reach the screen, on the off-chance they happen to google it up?

Well, first off, it hass always been my belief that negative/scabrous criticism is an important part of the cultural conversation (ie, I always read the bad reviews first). And secondly, on a more practical level, it appears that some maniacs have released ‘Night Visitor’ on blu-ray. As noted above, the plot synopsis sounds pretty cool and the cast is great, so…. I just felt the need to put this out there as a warning. I’m not saying don’t watch it, but - forewarned is forearmed, right? Be careful out there.

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