Virtually every hit sci-fi and horror film of the mid-1970s collides with astonishing results in The Visitor, a 1979 Italian production from producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (who had earlier struck gold with cash-ins like Beyond the Door and Tentacles). Shot in Atlanta, Georgia (with a glimpse at the long-gone Omni), the production assembles a bizarre menagerie of performers including John Huston, director Sam Peckinpah (with baffling dubbing), Shelley Winters, Glenn Ford, Franco Nero (whose role as a bleach-blond messiah was essentially cut from American prints), and even a young Lance Henriksen.

The plot itself virtually defies description as it compiles elements of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Fury, Carrie, Star Wars, and The Omen series (among others) to chart the galactic struggle for the soul of young Katy Collins, an eight-year-old girl inhabited by a dark "moo-tahnt" space villain named Sateen.

The film was essentially ignored upon its initial release when it reached a confounded public, but the longer European cut has since found an audience through revival screenings and no less than two special editions on home video in recent years. With its propulsive funk music, bird attacks, random profanity, surreal color palette, and irrational plotting, it's now easy to appreciate as a giddy, absurd fever dream of a film unlike any other.

By Nathaniel Thompson