45 Years Ago, A B-Movie Master Created A Trippy Ripoff Of Sci-Fi Classics

"As the man behind knockoff Tentacles and Beyond the Door, a demon possession movie so suspiciously similar to The Exorcist that it sparked a lawsuit, B-movie maestro Ovidio G. Assonitis was certainly no stranger to the art of imitation. Even so, his script for 1979's The Visitortook his plundering to new heights, its obvious nods to everything from the telekinetic evil of and the extraterrestrial blinding lights of Close Encounters"

"Yet thanks to the phantasmagoric direction of Giulio Paradisi, who adopted the slightly more Tinseltown-friendly name of Michael J. Paradise, those so blatantly borrowed from were likely to have been left too bamboozled to start lawyering up. The Visitor, released in America 45 years ago, is often more akin to the avant-garde hallucinations of Chilean auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky than the cheaply made exploitation films of the Assonitis stable."

"Helpfully providing the context for all the madness ahead, the guru's crash course in interplanetary, supernatural warfare explains that a devilish figure named Zatteen emigrated to Earth and was slain by his godlike nemesis, Yahweh, many centuries ago. However, this didn't stop his unholy spirit from wreaking havoc through a bloodline that's now reached a blonde, pigtailed eight-year-old girl. Yes, Katy Collins (Paige Conner) may look like she couldn't melt butter, but"

Ovidio G. Assonitis wrote The Visitor (1979) as a pastiche of major horror and sci‑fi motifs, borrowing elements from The Exorcist, Close Encounters, Rosemary's Baby and The Birds. Giulio Paradisi (credited as Michael J. Paradise) directed with phantasmagoric, avant‑garde flourishes that give the film a Jodorowsky‑like quality rather than mere exploitation. The film opens with a Christ‑like figure delivering an expository speech on an acid‑tripped landscape of bald children. The plot centers on a demonic spirit named Zatteen whose curse moves through a bloodline to an eight‑year‑old girl, Katy Collins, whose powers manifest at an NBA game, stopping Kareem Abdul‑Jabbar.

Read at Inverse