Visiting Hours (1982)

Shout out to online writer Outlaw Vern and his community. They recommended this to him, and his glowing review made me add it to my watchlist last year.

Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant) is a feminist activist who earns the attention and ire of misogynist psycho Colt Hawker (Michael Goddamn Ironside). This is a pre-internet nutjob, so he has framed copies of all his "Letter to the Editor" type screeds on his apartment wall. Remember when it took some actual effort (and a stamp!) for misogynist creeps to spread their nonsense? He attacks Deborah in her home in an intense sequence that shows this movie is NOT fucking around with its jump scares. She survives and ends up in the hospital, where Colt continues stalking her. Pretty nurse Sheila (Linda Purl) admires and befriends Deborah. Unfortunately for Sheila, Colt overhears her talking about "the bastard" that attacked Deborah, and she gets added to his shitlist. Now in addition to prowling the hospital halls, he is following Sheila and her children. He still finds the time to brutalize another young woman (Lisa), but with all these survivors someone might start putting the pieces together...

This is some suspenseful shit right here. My wife and I have been watching horror movies all month, so I have seen her jump plenty of times (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and surprisingly Hell Night got her the most). I don't want to give it away, but there is a moment in this that made my wife not just jump, but SCREAM, and it got an "Ahhh" out of me. Then it has at least two more solid scares, by the last one my wife just said "OH MY GOD" in exhaustion because Ironside's psycho was so relentless. Ironside is a legendary character actor, but this might be one of his best and most slept on roles.

I was impressed by the restraint this movie shows. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a bit of the old sex and ultraviolence, but I appreciated a movie about a misogynist killer that does not indulge in that same misogyny. The movie doesn't linger on these women's bodies and avoids plenty of opportunities for gratuitous nudity. Even the sequence where Colt assaults Lisa is shot in a way that captures her suffering while avoiding anything titillating. The violence is intense and impactful, but not excessive or gory. I just browsed the wiki and found out that contemporary reviews painted this as another sadistic slashing women picture with excessive violence and no sympathetic characters. I don't know what the fuck they were on about, because looking at this in retrospect compared to many other 80s horror movies this is about the most tasteful (but still effective) depiction of this subject matter that I can imagine. And I thought all the women were likable and was impressed that even Lisa was not a throwaway character/victim! Oh yeah, William Shatner is in this and gets prominent billing, but you could cut his character from the picture entirely and it wouldn't change a thing. I was worried that Deus Ex Shatner would save the day, but thankfully sisters were doing it for themselves.