Night Visitor

Night Visitor is a 1989 American thriller film directed by Rupert Hitzig, produced by Alain Silver, and starring Richard Roundtree, Elliott Gould, Allen Garfield, and Derek Rydall.

Plot

High school student Billy Colton is spying on his attractive new neighbor when he witnesses her being murdered by a man in a robe, and he recognizes the man as his unpopular history teacher Zachary Willard. Because he has a history of pranks and conflict with Willard, the police do not believe him. Threatened by Willard and his deranged brother Stanley, who are cultists and serial murderers, Billy convinces retired investigator Ronald 'Ron' Devereaux to help him find hard evidence.

Cast

Richard Roundtree as Captain Crane
Elliott Gould as Ronald "Ron" Devereaux
Michael J. Pollard as Stanley Willard
Allen Garfield as Zachary Willard
Derek Rydall as Billy Colton
Henry Gibson as Jake
Shannon Tweed as Lisa Grace
Bruce Kimmel as Townsend
Brooke Bundy as Mrs. Colton
Kathleen Bailey as Dolan
Scott Fults as Sam Loomis
Teresa Vander Woude as Kelly Fremont
Michael Jason Rosen as Bernstein
Jovanni Brascia as Tony
Alain Silver as Thornhill
Amy Waddell as Annie Hayworth
Ann Dane as Theresa
Nancy McLendon as Reporter
Teri Weigel as Victim In Cellar
Kathryn Kimler as Second Victim

Reception

The movie was briefly released by MGM/UA on 200 screens and garnered mixed reviews, many of which expressed humorous appreciation for a basement confrontation between Gould's Devereaux and Pollard's Stanley, while others disparaged the sequence as "a badly choreographed fight between a chainsaw wielding Pollard and a shotgun toting Gould that probably read really well in the script, but looks terrible on film." A later reviewer was more favorably disposed: "Combine Rear Window with late 80s Satanic conspiracy theories and this is the result. Not as bad as it sounds, Night Visitor is an unfairly obscure movie about Satanism in suburbia."