Visiting Hours (1982)

Director: Jean Claude Lord

Cast: Michael Ironside, Lee Grant, Linda Purl

Synopsis: A crazed, women-hating killer attacks journalist Deborah Ballin. When he discovers that his attack didn’t kill Deborah, he comes to the hospital to finish what he started.

Visiting Hours is an uninspired addition to a genre which, in the spring of 1982, was already over-populated with similarly lacklustre efforts. Drawing on every genre cliche imaginable (thereby negating any hint of suspense) this slasher flick is padded out to 105 minutes with interminable scenes of the ham-fisted efforts of a crazed killer (Michael Ironside – Scanners, Total Recall) to kill forthright feminist TV presenter Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant – Damien: Omen II) after botching his first attempt.

The tired storyline is riddled with inconsistencies and lapses in logic that really detract from any limited enjoyment the movie has to offer (the woman occupying the hospital room previously occupied by stalker-victim Grant is murdered and nobody makes the connection? Give me a break…) Cheap sets and effects are forgivable (and not something that this movie suffers from) but lazy writing isn’t.

Usually, even terrible films have some redeeming features, and Visiting Hour’s is Michael Ironside who is far more believable as the psychotic murderer than the villain of most movies of this type. However, his reasons for being so disturbed (his mother scalded his father’s face with boiling cooking oil when he attempted to rape her, coupled with hints of a homo-erotic desire for his father) are poorly depicted, and fail to convince.

(Reviewed 16th February 2002)