Director: Jean-Claude Lord
Cast: Michael Ironside, Lee Grant, William Shatner, Linda Purl

I like to think that I am a pretty good movie critic when it comes to unknown movies. No, I would never say that I am one of the very best critics, but I think that with the kind of movies I choose to review, I do pretty well. Still, there are some past reviews of mine that kind of make me cringe when I reread them with a fresh perspective. But when that happens, I remind myself that there are a lot of movies critics who are much worse. I think that the worst critics I have ever come across have been Rex Reed and Michael Medved. I could go on for some time about how Reed's writing has annoyed me greatly. For example, in his review of The Muppet Movie, he referred to the Muppet that is wild and plays the drums as "Monster", instead of his correct name, "Animal" (twice!) Years later, when he reviewed the first Spider-Man movie, one reason he stated he hated it was that even when he was a "kid", he considered Spider-Man an inferior version of certain older classic comic book superheroes. The problem with that argument was that Spider-Man made his debut in the comic book world in 1962 - when Reed was 24 years old. Worst of all is his total lack of humor, not even finding the comedies made by the ZAZ team (Airplane!, Top Secret, The Naked Gun, etc.) the least bit amusing. (Though I will admire his courage for giving the Village People disco musical Can't Stop The Music a solid recommendation, adding, "It is worth seeing twice, and from me that is rare praise indeed.") As for Michael Medved, while maybe he deserves some credit for helping to popularize the idea of finding some movies so bad they are good, otherwise his writings annoy me greatly as well. He has (among other stupid statements) suggested that Hollywood studios should always aim for gigantic box office success regardless of content instead of maybe once in a while making movies that might have something interesting to say or show its audience some artistic taste. Once, he criticized Hollywood for banking projects by Martin Scorsese, stating Scorsese's movies weren't financial blockbusters like Disney animated movies.

There are other movie critics who I think are incredibly bad and/or misguided (if you have a moment, do an Internet search for the online critic Paul Mavis, and see how he often loves to focus on in his reviews any sexual material in a movie), but I think you already know your share of bad critics as I do. Fortunately, I have found most movie critics to be sober and fairly persuasive with their words and arguments, some of whom I have followed with every movie they've reviewed. But no movie critic is perfect; it seems even the best movie critics have at least one area that they are fairly clueless about. That includes movie critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Their particular weakness was first exposed during the early 1980s, when a wave of slasher movies broke out. Siskel and Ebert absolutely hated these slasher movies. They certainly tore them to pieces whenever they had to review one on their TV show (for example, take their notorious review of Friday The 13th - The Final Chapter, which you can see here.) But they also went to the effort to devote at least one entire episode of their show to their disgust with these slasher movies, and would freely appear on talk shows to vent their bile as well. They would list every possible criticism they could think of about these slasher movies, from being disturbed by the images of stabbings to the movies' alleged hatred towards women. Personally, I couldn't understand why Siskel and Ebert were so hostile towards these slasher movies. For starters, anyone with half a brain could see that they were the equivalent of rollercoasters - you go in, be shaken and thrilled for a few moments, then it's over. Nothing wrong with doing that on occasion, if you ask me.

Now, I feel that I should mention that for the most part, I am not a fan of slasher movies. I find the majority of them to be cheap, clunky, and very interchangeable. But all the same, I don't have Siskel and Ebert's prejudices; I do see why many of these movies have a lot of fans. There is that aforementioned "rollercoaster" aspect. And no movie with a lot of violence and sexual material can be all bad. So even though I am not terribly wild about these kinds of movies, I admit that on occasion I will watch one in part to try and better understand why many people find these movies so appealing. And I will also admit that occasionally I find one to not be so bad at all. Which brings me to the Canadian Visiting Hours, a slasher movie I first saw years ago. Critics at the time (including Gene Siskel, who gave it just half a star out of a possible four stars) tore it to pieces. But I recall finding it done with a lot more skill and effort than other slasher movies of the period. So I decided to get the Blu-Ray edition of the movie to see if I would feel about it the same way many years later. The events of the movie center around an aging but very active and outspoken feminist journalist by the name of Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant, A Billion For Boris). Her activities regarding women's rights one night on a television show push a creepy fellow by the name of Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside, Forced To Kill) over the edge, mainly due to him still having trauma by an incident in his childhood when his battered mother badly injured his abusive father. When Deborah gets home later that night, Colt is waiting inside and attempts to kill her. Deborah manages to get away from Colt, but she is badly injured and taken to the local hospital when the authorities come. As Deborah recovers in the hospital thanks in part to a kind nurse named Sheila (Linda Purl, The Office), Colt is still determined to kill her, and makes several attempts to sneak in the hospital to finish her off. Deborah soon feels that her attacker is still planning to kill her, but the hospital staff just think it's nerves. Can Deborah survive in the one place that is supposed to save lives?

Seeing Visiting Hours again after so many years, I still found it in many aspects to be a cut above many other slasher movies of its period. For one thing, unlike most other slashers, this movie actually had a decent budget. The ample budget allowed director Jean-Claude Lord (The Vindicator) to boost the movie's visual look. The movie is very well photographed, with deep blacks mixed in with eye-catching brighter colors. (See this movie on Blu-ray if you can.) Lord managed to shoot much of the movie at an actual hospital in Montreal, and he also managed to add a number of background touches from multiple extras to various pieces of hospital equipment. When the photography/lighting combines with this hospital environment, Lord manages to build what many other period slashers were unable to do - a real sense of creepiness. The dimly lit rooms and hallways of this believable environment instantly put a sense of unease in the viewer; you won't be sure what may be hiding behind the doors and corners. But Lord isn't just content to rest here - he adds a number of other touches to build tension and deliver shocks. He eschews blood for the most part, but compensates partly with surprising bursts of horror that are really effective, even with the familiar "pet jumping into the frame" horror cliché. I think that moment and the other surprises work in part due to the fact that he builds things up to those moments very well. Lord frequently uses silence (or low and brief bursts of music) so we are not distracted or feel manipulated when the horror is about to come. Even though we still know it's coming, we are surprised all the same when it does come.

The stalk-and-slash moments work in Visiting Hours for other reasons as well. As the character of Colt builds up a body count (and injury count), we really feel that innocent people are getting killed and hurt. It makes for a very uncomfortable feeling that puts us on edge. But the biggest reason why I think the scenes of mayhem work so well is due to actor Michael Ironside's performance. Ironside had the challenge of being incredibly creepy despite saying less than twenty words of dialogue until a lengthy outburst at the movie's climax. Also, director Lord for a long time doesn't show Ironside's face clearly. But before Ironside's face is eventually revealed, he is still one really scary psycho. We can still see enough of his posture and body movements, as well as little details like his penchant for squeezing a small rubber ball, that really shows he's one disturbed and dangerous individual. Later on, his eerie stone face and icy cold attitude to the various people he encounters just adds to the creep factor. Although we don't get to learn too much about his character (though we do learn of the aforementioned traumatic incident in his past), Ironside's intensely frightening performance makes up for it... as well as for the others in the cast. Canadian actor William Shatner (Impulse) shows up for a few minutes almost certainly just so the production could qualify for a Canadian tax shelter available at the time (the highest paid or second-highest paid actor had to be Canadian), and he comes off as quite the annoying buffoon (though his gee-whiz dialogue certainly didn't help him.) Somewhat better is Linda Purl as the believably warm and sympathetic nurse on duty. She definitely adds some spark in her scenes, but when I thought back on her character as the end credits were rolling, I realized that with just a little rewriting, her character could have been completely eliminated without hurting the rest of the story.

As for Lee Grant, she does her best with her character, being believably hard-nosed before her initial attack, and showing trauma, fear, and tears once she is in the hospital and fearing for her life. But apart from one scene where she confesses that she has always been more prepared for a battle rather than a compliment, we don't really see what is driving her, or what her thought process has been. In the end, her character is not much more developed than The Final Girl in other slasher movies. That's not the only flaw to be found in Visiting Hours' script. My main beef with the script was that it was written to be too long for its own good; believe it or not, the movie goes on for 105 minutes, which is pretty long for a slasher exercise. Part of the reason why the movie goes on for so long is that the character of Colt is not very adept at his ambition to kill Grant's character. Believe it or not, he makes a total of five attempts to try and kill her. It eventually becomes obvious padding, along with a lot of footage elsewhere of nurses and other characters talking about stuff that simply doesn't advance the plot. Viewers who are bored by all this talk might entertain themselves by thinking about some plot stupidities such as why it takes the hospital so long to beef up its security once the mayhem starts, or why towards the end of the movie why characters don't call the police immediately once they know who is behind the reign of terror. There are also some murky moments here and there, ranging from it being somewhat awkward explaining the fate of Grant's housekeeper (possibly there was a cut or more made in this area to save the movie from getting an X rating) to how the psycho Colt is able to find uniforms and other props to disguise himself during his trips to the hospital. So as you can see from what I've written, Visiting Hours does have some definite problems with it. But I though that the merits of the movie did outweigh the shortcomings, making it in the end definitely worth a watch. I am certainly not saying that the movie is a masterpiece, but compared to most other slasher movies of the period, it is... well... a masterpiece.

(Posted January 4, 2024)