VISITING HOURS: A Slasher Movie For Grown Ups?

The core ele­ments of the slasher movie were quickly estab­lished between the suc­cesses of Halloween and Friday The 13th: youth­ful cast, plenty of kills, a face­less psy­cho, a lit­tle skin.  It’s as stripped down as the mechan­ics of a nar­ra­tive film can get, which is the slasher genre had such an intense appeal for younger view­ers.  As a result, the slasher movie quickly became known in the eyes of crit­ics and genre aes­thetes as sleazy kid stuff, sim­ple stuff for sim­ple young minds.  Once this image was stuck in place, it was rare for film­mak­ers to try and bend the rules.  After all, these films weren’t made for crit­ics — and why take the risk of toy­ing with a proven, suc­cess­ful film formula?

However, there were a few rule-breakers.  The most mem­o­rable is prob­a­bly Visiting Hours, a fas­ci­nat­ing anom­aly that fol­lows the genre’s sus­pense mechan­ics while com­pletely dis­re­gard­ing most of its core ele­ments.  In this film, the hero­ine is a middle-aged woman: Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant) is a t.v. com­men­ta­tor who is using her show to cam­paign on behalf of a woman who has been impris­oned for killing her abu­sive hus­band in self-defense.  Her pub­lic cri­tique angers Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside), a quiet but men­ac­ing “Travis Bickle” type who har­bors intense ani­mos­ity towards women.

Colt attacks Deborah in her home after the show but she alerts the neigh­bors before he can fin­ish the job. Deborah is quickly whisked away to the local hos­pi­tal, where she is watched over by duti­ful head nurse Sheila (Linda Purl) and her t.v. sta­tion boss Gary (William Shatner).  Unfortunately for every­one, Colt is far from fin­ished with his task.  He begins plot­ting ways to get at Deborah — and he won’t stop at any­thing to silence her for­ever, includ­ing men­ac­ing any other women who gets between him and his target.

Visiting Hours has never been a pop­u­lar entry in the slasher genre.  There could be a few rea­sons for this.  The most obvi­ous is that it arrived on U.S. movie screens at a time when fatigue with the genre had kicked in (1982).  It also suf­fered from mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion by main­stream crit­ics, who erro­neously labeled it as a misog­y­nist film because of its uncom­pro­mis­ing por­trayal of the villain’s bru­tal­ity.  The lat­ter charge is a real head-scratcher because the film is actu­ally quite sym­pa­thetic towards its female char­ac­ters, all of whom are por­trayed as more thoughtful/resourceful than the men in the film, and espouses a fem­i­nist mind­set through the main char­ac­ter of Deborah.

This bad rep­u­ta­tion is a shame because Visiting Hours actu­ally rep­re­sents a more mature, evolved ver­sion of the genre.  Brian Taggert’s script breaks the expected rules by set­ting it in a world of adults who deal with real-life con­cerns between the sus­pense set­pieces.  It also takes a sur­pris­ing amount of time to dimen­sion­al­ize its char­ac­ters: in addi­tion to the film’s explo­ration of Deborah’s social views, it also allows Sheila to func­tions as a sec­ond lead by giv­ing the audi­ence insight into how her per­sonal life informs her choices at work.  Even more inter­est­ing is the por­trayal of Colt, who is given a back­story that explains his misog­y­nis­tic impulses in a dis­tinctly Freudian way.

That said, hor­ror fans need not worry that Visiting Hours is all char­ac­ter por­traits and edi­to­ri­al­iz­ing.  It is well-paced despite its gen­er­ous 105-minute run­ning time, with direc­tor Jean-Claude Lord main­tain­ing ten­sion via a series of skill­fully staged cat-and-mouse set­pieces (he also co-edited the film).  The film fur­ther ben­e­fits from effec­tive cin­e­matog­ra­phy by Rene Verzier, an ace Canadian cam­era­man who also pho­tographed cult faves like Rabid and The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane.  He cre­ates an effec­tive blend of glid­ing dolly shots and creepy hand-held cam­era work to build ten­sion and uses the ster­ile con­fines of the hos­pi­tal to atmos­pheric effect.

Most impor­tantly, Visiting Hours ben­e­fits from strong per­for­mances to back up its unusu­ally nuanced char­ac­ter­i­za­tions.  Grant is one of the most unique Final Girls in slasher his­tory, cre­at­ing a smart, worldly hero­ine who has the big per­son­al­ity to back up her opin­ions.  She gets a lit­tle hammy in places, the fun­ni­est bit being her reac­tion to an unwanted seda­tive, but it suits the char­ac­ter well.  Purl cre­ates an inter­est­ing con­trast as her nurse friend, under­play­ing in a quiet man­ner to cre­ate a sec­ond hero­ine goes about her tasks with a quiet intelligence.

However, it is Ironside who really impresses as the film’s psy­cho: he speaks few lines but uses his phys­i­cal­ity and expres­sive face to cre­ate an emo­tion­ally com­plex por­trait of a sociopath with a min­i­mum of dia­logue.  It’s some of his best work, right up there with his turn as Darryl Revok in Scanners.  Elsewhere, William Shatner fans will be amused by his work in this film: his char­ac­ter is a back­ground type designed to nudge the expo­si­tion along but he has a nice chem­istry with Grant and is shock­ingly sub­tle here.

In short, Visiting Hours is one of the most under­rated entries in the early 1980’s slasher cycle, a film that will sur­prise hor­ror fans with its sense of craft and unusu­ally thought­ful approach to what is often deemed a dis­pos­able sub­genre of the hor­ror film.  It’s also the best of the hospital-themed slash­ers, a highly spe­cial­ized cor­ner of the slasher film that also includes Halloween II and Hospital Massacre.  It def­i­nitely deserves a bet­ter rep­u­ta­tion.  Even grown-ups might get into a slasher flick like this.

Bad Dreams / Visiting Hours [Double Feature] In the mid-1970s the mem­bers of the love cult Unity Fields sought “the ulti­mate join­ing” by dous­ing them­selves with gaso­line and com­mit­ting mass sui­cide. A young girl blown clear of the fiery explo­sion was the only sur­vivor. Thirteen years later, Cynthia (Jennifer Rubin, Screamers) awak­ens from a coma inside a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal with only buried mem­o­ries of that hor­rific day — but now her fel­low patients are each being dri­ven to their own vio­lent sui­cides. Has the sect’s leader (Richard Lynch, Deathsport) returned to claim his final child? Bruce Abbott (Re-Animator) co-stars in the intense shocker Bad Dreams from direc­tor Andrew Fleming (The Craft) and pro­ducer Gale Anne Hurd (Punisher: War Zone, The Incredible Hulk).Academy Award®–winner Lee Grant (Best Supporting Actress in 1975 for Shampoo) stars as out­spo­ken TV jour­nal­ist Deborah Ballin, whose cru­sade against domes­tic vio­lence enrages a creepy loner (a truly dis­turb­ing per­for­mance by Michael Ironside, Scanners) in Visiting Hours. He bru­tally attacks the anchor­woman in her home, but Ballin sur­vives and is hos­pi­tal­ized. Her assailant is enraged; he is haunted by a hor­rific child­hood trauma … and now he has hid­den him­self inside the hos­pi­tal to fin­ish what he started. Can any­body — includ­ing her con­cerned boss (William Shatner), a fran­tic nurse (Linda Purl, Happy Days) or Deborah her­self — stop the psycho’s killing spree before it reaches sick new extremes?