The Visitors

Elia Kazan has a knack not only for adapting plays but for relentless, truthful depictions of despicable people. A Streetcar Named Desire is a phenomenal work, with Marlon Brando bringing a monster like Stanley Kowalski to life. Stanley is manipulative, violent and sociopathic. Most disturbingly, he’s thoroughly human. Kazan, through Tennessee Williams’ play, was able to analyze the most ordinary, everyday monster.

Even though The Visitors isn’t adapted from a play, it could have been. There are only a handful of locations, all within walking distance of each other. Bill Schmidt (James Woods) and Martha Wayne (Patricia Joyce) live in a small house on a large piece of property owned by her father Harry (Patrick McVey). When the film opens, we witness them at their most idyllic. Their life is a simple one, taking care of a newborn child. And even at their most idyllic, their lives are far from perfect. They argue about money and Bill’s relationship with Harry is contentious. Bill and Harry are both veterans but cut from a very different cloth.

Two men from Bill’s past show up on his doorstep: Tony (Chico Martinez) and Mike (Steve Railsback). He served with them in Vietnam, and it doesn’t take long to find out that these men have showed up with bad intentions. Back in the war, Bill snitched on Tony and Mike for raping and executing a young Vietnamese girl. After a thorough investigation, the Army has cleared itself from any wrongdoing and the two men are free to rejoin society, both flush with cash after receiving two years’ worth of backpay from the time they served in the stockade.

Throughout their stay, they all drink too much alcohol, say things they should only think, and power shifts between groups, depending on who’s the drunkest or angriest at any given time. It all feels a lot like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? meets Wake in Fright. Harry takes an instant liking to the two visitors and Bill tries to wrest control by turning the conversation racist, bringing out Harry’s prejudice against Puerto Ricans. Most of all, Bill is trying to keep his family same from them, knowing what kind of violence they’re capable of.

When The Visitors is good, it’s a damn good film. The acting, across the board, is excellent. Steve Railsback, in particular, puts in a career-high performance. Railsback has played psychopaths from Charles Manson to Ed Gein, but for my money, this is his most chilling performance. Because, like Stanley Kowalski, he’s human beneath it all. He can say so much about what he’s thinking, all through a wry smile or a quick glare over his shoulder.

The issue with The Visitors is that it’s frustratingly uneven. The script was written by Chris Kazan, director Elia Kazan’s son, and it explores a lot of interesting ideas, including a real-life incident written about in The New Yorker. The incident was also the basis of Brian De Palma’s film The Casualties of War. At the end, when everything is done, I’m just not totally sure what’s being said. The Visitors is disturbing and tense, taut and unsettling, all in service of a story that has a lot it wants to say, but winds up saying very little about anything at all.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
The Visitors makes an unexpected visit on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber with a single-disc release in a standard case. The case comes with a removable slipcover, and both adorn the same cover artwork.

It’s hard to grade the video quality of a film like The Visitors, given that it has a very intentional documentary-like style that makes it hard to accurately judge. Compared to many other films, it may look ugly, blown out, etc., but this release is free of technical issues like artifacts, aliasing or color banding. The film itself, which was shot on 16mm, is awash in a fine layer of grain and there is a decent amount of dirt spots from dust and debris throughout.

While the film was originally shot on 16mm, in certain sequences it almost looks like it was shot on 8mm, as details are blown from harsh lighting, particularly characters’ faces. Other times, details are razor sharp. The Visitors was shot by cinematographer Nicholas T. Proferes who had filmed a number of documentaries, including Monterey Pop. The Cinéma verité stylings are intended to enhance realism, to make us, the viewer, feel like a fly on the wall as we watch this story unfold. In that respect, it is remarkable and successful in its mission. I’m awarding the video grade at 3.5 stars to split the difference, in understanding it’s an intentional aesthetic and Kino Lorber has done a great job at honoring that choice.

The Visitors is given a 2.0 monaural sound mix in DTS-HD MA. Given that the film is basically a one-location play, the vast majority of audio we hear is dialogue. There is some soft music playing in the background on occasion, like an acoustic guitar rendition of a piece written by Mozart. There are some more intense sound effects later on in the film, and throughout, as it progresses into violence. Throughout it all, dialogue is always crisp and clearly audible, with other effects packing the appropriate amount of punch without dominating the soundstage.

In terms of supplements, we really only get two features: An audio commentary and a trailer. The audio commentary is a wealth of knowledge on one of Elia Kazan’s lesser-known films, so it’s a very worthy feature, but there isn’t much in the way of retrospective documentaries, interviews with cast/crew, etc.

• Audio Commentary - By Film historians Kat Ellinger and Martyn Conterio
• Theatrical Trailer

The Visitors is an interesting curiosity of a film, made by a master director who showcases his storytelling strengths and weaknesses, all at once. Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray release provides viewers with decent A/V stats and an excellent audio commentary track for those who want to learn more about an obscure outlier in Kazan’s filmography. The Visitors is Worth A Look.