Day 8, Monday: Visiting Hours

If you love Michael Ironside, Visiting Hours is the film for you! The film doesn't quite feel at home in the Video Nasties series even though it IS a Video Nasty. Hell, I don't even know if it would get an R rating by today's standards. Not that you should judge the film on that. It's a decent film with a great cast -- The aforementioned Michael Ironside as the villain, Lee Grant as the heroine, and William Shatner as her boss in a supporting role. Yup, William Shatner!

Ironside sports the latest in latex fashion

William Shatner VS Pudding Cup!

The film plays like a take on (ripoff) of Halloween 2. Replace Michael Myers with woman-hater Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside) and replace Laurie Strode with outspoken feminist Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant) and you have Visiting Hours. It mostly takes place in a hospital like Halloween 2. Killer, Colt Hawker is relentless, much like Michael Myers.  Plus, the film fits into the slasher genre like Halloween 2. So I guess if you like Halloween 2 and you like Michael Ironside, then  your chances of liking this are pretty high.

Visiting Hours is part of the Canadian film explosion of the 80's. OK, maybe explosion is the wrong word choice. Basically, as Brett, one of our gracious host explained, Canada started giving 100% tax breaks to anyone would invest money in films. Yup, 100%. So if you invested $100,000, then at the end of the year,  you could get that back on your taxes. So this lead to a lot of arty and exploitation films of which David Cronenberg's films are probably the most known: Scanners, Shivers, The Brood.  Visiting hours fits into this category. Brett has a real passion for this genre, or fare of films. So expect a series down the road of Canadian films. Sign me up!

Michael Ironside with his intended victim  Lee Grant

Michael Ironside plays Colt Hawker, woman hater, latex wearing, psychopathic killer. Lee Grant plays an outspoken feminist reporter who Michael Ironside becomes obsessed with dispatching. He  first attempts to kill her in her home, but he only manages to maim her and put her into the hospital. The rest of his pursuits are focused on him trying to kill her in the hospital. Thus the title - Visiting Hours.  The film, unlike Halloween, divulges the past of our killer in an attempt to humanize him.

Not a great film, but not that bad. I think the cast keeps the film from falling off the edge into a run-of-the-mill slasher film. Plus it's interesting to see a slasher film with such a bizarre killer that is not the usual mysterious faceless killer.   It does have, as Brett affectionately says, the William Shatner VS a pudding cup scene too going for it (See Photo Above) . So you can look forward to that scene. 

The print had a yellowish hue, but was otherwise in pretty decent shape. The sound was a little piercing. One particular scene where a toy baby doll's automated cry activates it's pretty piercing. Much better print than Dead and Buried from the night before.