A Canadian entry in the slasher genre, Visiting Hours is generally a vulgar and excessively violent film
. but it escapes sinking to the absolute bottom of the barrel thanks to a few interesting angles. For one, slasher movies usually introduce obnoxious, over-sexed teenagers as the victims but this one freshens things up by presenting a wholly different type of victim. Also, every slasher movie needs a memorable psycho to distinguish it from all the others, and Michael Ironside provides just that as a genuinely nasty, deeply disturbed individual.
Mentally scarred by witnessing domestic violence when he was a kid, Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside) despises women, especially women who fight back against exploitation and abuse. Seems his father was a wife-beater, until the day his mom fought back with a pan of boiling oil . a gruesome event that young Colt witnessed first-hand. While working at a TV station, Colt is disgusted when a lady TV journalist, Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant), goes on air revealing how she has just broken free of an abusive marriage by attacking her husband in self defence. After the show, Colt tails Deborah to her house and tries to kill her. Deborah barely escapes from the ordeal with her life, and is sent to a hospital to recuperate under the care and supervision of a team of nurses, among them Sheila Munroe (Linda Purl). The nightmare isn't over, though. When Colt learns that Deborah has survived and is recovering in hospital he plans to finish her off for good. Nurse Munroe, a resourceful and spirited type, also makes it onto his must-die list! The crazed psycho stalks his two victims around the deserted hospital wards, determined to subject them to his intense brand of terror before putting them out of his misery with a razor sharp scalpel .
You would be forgiven for expecting Visiting Hours to be a misogynistic film from a summary of the plot. It certainly sounds like women are in the film to be brutalised and murdered as gorily as possible. Thankfully, the main female roles played by Lee Grant and Linda Purl are quite strong they don't run around helplessly screaming for help, begging for mercy, and all that. These ladies fight back, and fight back hard! Having said that, director Jean-Claude Lord still dwells a little too gloatingly over some rather sick murder scenes. His love affair with close-up stabbing and masochism starts to feel somewhat voyeuristic as the film progresses. Take the scene where Ironside mutilates himself with a smashed bottle, for instance you'd be forgiven for wondering if that scene needed to be shot in such graphic detail (one almost senses Lord just off camera, rubbing his hands with glee at his own excess). The film asks us to forgive some pretty gaping plot holes too, the main one being the utter ineptitude of the police and hospital security staff in failing to apprehend Ironside. Visiting Hours is ultimately an unsuccessful film, but there are occasional flashes that it could have been more than a slice-and-dice show. These flashes don't save the film overall, but they redeem parts of it.
Mentally scarred by witnessing domestic violence when he was a kid, Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside) despises women, especially women who fight back against exploitation and abuse. Seems his father was a wife-beater, until the day his mom fought back with a pan of boiling oil . a gruesome event that young Colt witnessed first-hand. While working at a TV station, Colt is disgusted when a lady TV journalist, Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant), goes on air revealing how she has just broken free of an abusive marriage by attacking her husband in self defence. After the show, Colt tails Deborah to her house and tries to kill her. Deborah barely escapes from the ordeal with her life, and is sent to a hospital to recuperate under the care and supervision of a team of nurses, among them Sheila Munroe (Linda Purl). The nightmare isn't over, though. When Colt learns that Deborah has survived and is recovering in hospital he plans to finish her off for good. Nurse Munroe, a resourceful and spirited type, also makes it onto his must-die list! The crazed psycho stalks his two victims around the deserted hospital wards, determined to subject them to his intense brand of terror before putting them out of his misery with a razor sharp scalpel .
You would be forgiven for expecting Visiting Hours to be a misogynistic film from a summary of the plot. It certainly sounds like women are in the film to be brutalised and murdered as gorily as possible. Thankfully, the main female roles played by Lee Grant and Linda Purl are quite strong they don't run around helplessly screaming for help, begging for mercy, and all that. These ladies fight back, and fight back hard! Having said that, director Jean-Claude Lord still dwells a little too gloatingly over some rather sick murder scenes. His love affair with close-up stabbing and masochism starts to feel somewhat voyeuristic as the film progresses. Take the scene where Ironside mutilates himself with a smashed bottle, for instance you'd be forgiven for wondering if that scene needed to be shot in such graphic detail (one almost senses Lord just off camera, rubbing his hands with glee at his own excess). The film asks us to forgive some pretty gaping plot holes too, the main one being the utter ineptitude of the police and hospital security staff in failing to apprehend Ironside. Visiting Hours is ultimately an unsuccessful film, but there are occasional flashes that it could have been more than a slice-and-dice show. These flashes don't save the film overall, but they redeem parts of it.