This curio is a low budget drama directed by Elia Kazan from a script by his son. This is probably one of the first times audiences got to see James Woods in a leading role. He plays Bill, a young man, just back from the Vietnam War and living in a rural menage with his girl, her older husband, and his child. The older guy is a Hemingwayesque writer with a penchant for booze, and Patrick McVey plays the role with aplomb. At their door appear a couple of Bill's old army buddies, and one of them has a grudge to work out, since Bill ratted him out something back in the war zone. The young woman gets into it too, and the tension grows to an inevitable confrontation. There are no revelations here, but it is worth a look.

Veteran actors James Woods and Steve Railsback made their film debuts in this not uninteresting, obviously low budget drama, made in a very stark and simple way by director Elia Kazan. Cited as an early effort to tell a serious Vietnam War related story, it's a fictional follow-up to the tale filmed 17 years later as "Casualties of War" (the latter was based on a true story). That said, when you know what the visitors of the title are capable of, you can feel that tension in the air. The deliberate pacing is likely to have less patient viewers fidgeting in their seats. While this viewer wouldn't consider this "deplorable" like Leonard Maltin does, he admits that there's a very grim quality to this material that hangs over everything. Characters' resentments towards each other emerge, but things never get completely ugly until the final act.Basically, a former soldier in Vietnam, Bill Schmidt (Woods) lives in a remote location with Martha (Patricia Joyce), the mother of his child, and Harry (Patrick McVey), Marthas' father who toils away as an author. One wintry Sunday, two old comrades of Bills' show up, Mike Nickerson (Railsback), and Tony Rodrigues (Chico Martinez). Bill is uneasy to see them rather than happy, and we find out that the two of them had raped and murdered a Vietnamese girl - whom they had chosen to believe was a Viet Cong - and Bill had pointed the finger at them, leading to their court-martial. Tony tells Bill that he wants to forgive and forget, but we're not sure of this. Mike and Tony endear themselves to Harry, a gruff & macho WWII veteran who feels nothing but contempt for Bill, whom he sees as a weakling.It may be that "The Visitors" is one of those films that engenders personal reactions: viewers may either appreciate what Kazan tries to do, or be appalled at the darkness on display. Certainly Kazan doesn't promise his audience a conclusive resolution (you wonder what will come next for the characters after the credits end) or a happy one. The mostly rough, grainy look does work for the material, and use of music is sparing. With only five main characters, there is an intimate feel to everything. The performances are solid across the board, with the young Railsback already showing that incredible intensity that became his trademark and served him well a few years later in the 'Helter Skelter' miniseries.Film buffs might want to give this a chance if just for curiosity's sake.Six out of 10.

The Visitors (1972) ** (out of 4)Bill (James Woods) and his wife Martha (Patricia Joyce) are spending time with their son when two of Bill's former Vietnam buddies (Steve Railsback, Chico Martinez) show up. The wife isn't sure what the two are doing there but the secret is that both of them just got done doing time for rape, which Bill turned them in on. THE VISITORS isn't really the type of film you'd expect from someone like Elia Kazan but after viewing the film and seeing that he was going for a psychological type thriller, I can see why he was hired but in the end I don't think the film works. What we basically got is a thriller that doesn't want action but instead it wants to make the viewer think and it wants to turn these thoughts into a nightmare. I don't think there's any doubt that Kazan, working with a screenplay written by his son, wanted the viewer to sit in the dark fearing what these two dangerous men were going to do to the man who turned them in. Kazan directs the film in an extremely slow way as all of the scenes just drag on and it really does seem that the thing runs much longer than its 88-minutes. Kazan's slow style wouldn't have been a problem had the dialogue been better. The majority of the film is just slow, drawn out dialogue sequences but the problem is that they're boring. Not once did I get caught up in anything going on and in fact the highlight of the movie is a sequence where the wife's father (Patrick McVey) has a neighbors dog killed. The film is trying to say something about Vietnam, friendship, loyalty and several other things but everything just gets so muddled that you can't help but start yawning. The performances from the five people are all good and it's this that keeps the film working. THE VISITORS isn't quite as graphic as its reputation would have you believe but it does have the feel of something like THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. In fact, the visual look of this film compares highly to the Wes Craven shocker that was released the previous year.

Slow and creepy, The Visitors is a very low budget story about two Army buddies, newly released from the stockade after serving their terms for rape, who drop in on the comrade responsible for their conviction. Very slow, but rewarding, and definitely worth a look as an unsung classic of 70s cinema.