Visiting Hours (1982)

... aka: Fright, The
... aka: Get Well Soon
... aka: Horror Hospital
... aka: Terror at Central Hospital, The
... aka: Terror at the Hospital

Directed by:
Jean-Claude Lord

After a heated TV press conference, feminist journalist and non-violence advocate Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant) returns home to find her house guest dead and sweaty, woman-hating, stress-ball-squeezing psycho Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside) ready to slash her to ribbons. After being stabbed twice, Deborah manages to get the attention of her neighbors and Colt flees. She's taken to County General Hospital, where she awaits surgery on her injured arm, while Colt decides to finish the job he wasn't able to complete earlier by continually sneaking his way back into the hospital and attacking her. Several other women inadvertently become involved, including sweet nurse Sheila (Linda Purl), a divorced single mother of two, and Lisa (Lenore Zann), a loose-living party girl who Colt takes home and beats severely, but lets live. Colt's homicidal misogyny is explained by a series of brief flashbacks that involve his mother flinging a pot of hot oil into his father's face, which of course has made him a maladjusted and impotent man who detests strong, independent women... just like Deborah.

Visiting Hours has a lot going for it, especially in comparison to other films of this type from the early 80s. For starters, the budget was relatively high for a change, affording this very glossy production values and cinematography. The cast is more than competent, with Oscar-winner Grant as an atypically headstrong and authoritative middle-aged lead in a subgenre usually dominated by teen virgins in the central role. Though Deborah's not particularly likable or sympathetic, Purl's strong working class supporting character is and helps to balance that all out. Genre regular Ironside (who landed this part because of his memorable performance in Cronenberg's Scanners [1981]) also does an effective job playing the intense, creepy psycho, while William Shatner is given nothing to really do as Grant's agent. The script is quite ambitious as well in its attempt to bridge the gap between exploitative, disreputable slasher flicks and more socially-conscious thrillers. And yet all the above combined cannot save this film because it becomes an implausible mess after the first 20 or so minutes. That's a true shame considering the opening scenes offer up a few good scares and some genuine suspense.

What partially killed this film for me is its incompetent portrayal of the hospital staff and the police. The psycho manages to get into the hospital and has full access to Grant no less than four different times. Once? Sure. Twice? Highly unlikely, but possible. After that it's just plain absurd. The first time he poses as a florist and kills a patient and a nurse who are in the room Deborah was originally supposed to be in. Instead of informing her her life is in danger, the staff instead keep it a secret and she has to find out secondhand from another patient about what's going on. The killer then sneaks in a second and a third time, killing people each time he's there, but nothing much is done. My question is: Where the hell are the security guards in this film? That's right, they're all hanging out in the downstairs lobby and none happen to be on the same floor people keep getting attacked on. At one point, Shatner's character assuredly tells Grant not to worry after several murders because "They've got a great security system here," which literally made me laugh out loud. He deserves some kind of award for being able to say that line with a straight face.

Any patient in the same predicament - let alone a celebrity patient like Grant's character - would not only have several armed guards posted right outside her door at all times, but also guards in each hallway of the floor she's on monitoring who comes and goes. Not only that, but the hospital would have guards patrolling the outside perimeter of the hospital and ones in front of each and every door of that place considering the murders that keep occurring there. I also couldn't figure out why there was no attempt to relocate Deborah; if not to a new hospital entirely (she just has an injured arm for Christ's sake!) but to another floor or even another room. Of course if this film used even the most basic of logic, there may not be a film at all. Then again, is that really such a bad thing considering how stupid this thing turned out?

Unfortunately, the idiocy isn't just confined to inept security, but is liberally spread through the rest of the film as well. Shatner's character manages to convince Grant to stay in the hospital just one more night by saying he won't leave her side and then in his very next scene is off at another location doing something else entirely. Toward the end, Purl's character gets a phone call from the psycho, who's at her home. With her children's lives in danger and knowledge of the psycho's whereabouts, she gets flustered and babbles some frantic, incomprehensible gibberish to one officer before rushing home all by herself! She could have simply said "Hey, the killer is at my house RIGHT NOW, how about you gather up a few dozen men and follow me over?" Nope, instead she rushes home in a panic and needlessly gets herself stabbed. This is followed by Colt getting into Grant's room yet again and chasing her around through empty corridors because we've already established the staff and police don't seem to care that people are being murdered right and left in this place. I can handle a few dumb moments in my horror films, but this simply has far too many of them.

I've noticed a few defenders of this film pointing out that one shouldn't get too caught up in details because it's "just a horror movie." And to that I say "Precisely!" This is indeed just a horror movie. It's not a good horror movie or a memorable horror movie or a thought- provoking horror movie. It's just another horror movie lost in a faceless sea of other poorly-conceived and forgettable ones from the slash-happy early 80s. And there's a good reason Visiting Hours isn't highly-regarded among most horror and slasher fans: It's slow-moving and takes itself completely seriously yet is too implausible to even be believable.

★★

Babysitter, The (1980) (TV)

Directed by:
Peter Medak

Needing a fresh start, the Benedict family have recently moved from Chicago to a large country home on an island off the coast of Seattle. Dad Jeff (William Shatner), a dentist, has immersed himself in work, tries to stay away as much as possible because he doesn't want to deal with his wife and may have a mistress on the side. Mom Liz (Patty Duke) is unhappy, unfulfilled, feels neglected and is still fighting an alcohol addiction; which had gotten so bad before it was the catalyst for their move in the first place. Desperate for a purpose in life, she's channeled all her ill-feelings and misery over into her role as "good mother" and is smothering and overly-protective when it comes to 12-year-old daughter Tara (Quinn Cummings), who she seldom even lets out of her sight. Being prevented from playing with children in the area, Tara is lonely and bored herself and has developed a crush on an older neighborhood teen named Scotty (David Wallace). The family is vulnerable and at their breaking point, and that's the perfect time for 18-year-old orphan Joanna Redwine (Stephanie Zimbalist) to come into their lives. After all, she's a lovely, polite, well-mannered, intelligent, confident and compassionate young lady... at least at first.

After "accidentally" causing a car accident, Joanna shows up to check in on Liz and plies her with a sob story about how she'll soon be kicked out of her home by her foster parents. Liz sympathizes with her plight and offers her a summer job there doing house work and serving as a babysitter and companion to Tara. Joanna moves in and quickly proves to be an excellent cook and housekeeper, not to mention wise and mature beyond her years. She becomes a friend to Tara, encouraging her to spend more time outdoors and helping her get over her fear of water and snakes. She also becomes a confidant and shoulder to cry on mom, who is frequently upset at her husband's absence and casual neglect. As for Jeff, well he can't help but notice how attractive she is. But as things in these sort of films always do, everything eventually starts unraveling. Joanna proves herself to be a murderous psychopath with a history of tearing apart families and then murdering them before moving on to the next one and trying again.

A masterful manipulator, Joanna manages to convince Liz she can do no wrong and encourages her to start drinking again until she's a pathetic hysterical drunk. She quickly moves in on Scotty; heartlessly stealing the impressionable young Tara's crush (who will later die in a mysterious boating "accident") and dresses in mom's sexy black negligee in an attempt to seduce dad. She stops cooking and doing her housework, trashes the house during a party, turns the bitter spouses against one another and alienates the daughter from both parents. Overhearing her lying, neighboring psychiatrist Dr. Lindquist (John Houseman) immediately suspects something is off with Joanna and begins investigating matters. Though juvenile records are sealed, he is able to find the young girl's former foster mother (Virginia Kiser), who blames her for the death of her infant child. He also eventually learns Joanna has some (plastic-wrapped) skeletons in her closet... but can he reach the family before it's too late?

Director Medak had just made the excellent ghost story The Changeling (1980) with George C. Scott prior to this one and, while it's clearly not in the same league, it still isn't a bad little thriller. The entire cast does competent work and Jennifer Miller's plausible script features good characterizations and is quite sly and perceptive at times. It's also very similar to the later Poison Ivy (1992), with a charming and seductive young sociopath moving in on a vulnerable family and leaving them more screwed up than they were before she came into the picture, and also shares definite similarities to such later films as The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992). The intrigue unfortunately isn't sustained through to the end though and it eventually opts for a routine and predictable finale.

The Babysitter debuted on ABC in November of 1980. There was an American VHS release through HBO and it was also issued on tape in Brazil by Orion (as A Enviada do Mal), in Finland by Hollywood Home Video (as Lapsenvahti), in the UK and a few other countries. There's no DVD as of this writing, but the film has played on the MGMHD Channel.

★★1/2