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Rating:  -
What a load of malarkey. Pure, unspoiled, unadulterated, malarkey.
When a popular news reporter makes comments in regards to wives acting out against abusive spouses, it triggers a connection with a killer who attempts to murder her. After he fails to complete the job, she is rushed to the hospital where he continues to stalk her (and slay a few other random patients while he's at it).
While Visiting hours may be crafted in the mold of a slasher movie, it's really more of a thriller, and a pretty dull one at that. The storyline is very unfocused as it shifts between the killer stalking the reporter, and also as he stalks the nurse taking care of her for some unexplained reason. In addition to that, there are simply too many breaches of logic here to take this movie seriously. A murderer casually roaming the hospital picking off patients is just a bit too much to believe, not to mention he enters the hospital to do this on three or four separate occassions. Visiting Hours also plays on people's fear of hospitals by painting a cold, ominous, and sterile picture of a health care setting. In essence, not only have the film makers created a crummy, third rate horror movie, they've also managed to incorporate their jaded views on hospitals into it. No small feat.
Visiting Hours may be well acted and well made, but it's dull, predictable to the core, and is far too drawn out to maintain any suspense or excitement. If hospital horror just happens to be your thing, I highly recommend Halloween II (1981). An American horror classic, and one of the very best of its class. Leave Visiting Hours in the bargain bin where it belongs.
Rating:  -
I see allot of negative reviews about "Visiting Hours" saying it's a rip off of Halloween 2 .Not the case,it's quite different and it's a good movie,the only similarities is most of it takes place in a hospital.
The cast is great,Michael Ironside is very believable and frightening as the stalker and Linda Purl is at her best as the nurse who is also a single mother trying to get by,if I see any similarities it would be with the film "When a stranger calls".Visiting Hours isn't a hard core slasher flick but it is a thriller filled with white knuckle moments and violence.This movie works because you care about the people that are being terrorized so when they are threatened and hurt you feel it too.Lee Grant does a good job as the outspoken TV Journalist "Deborah Balin"who is very vocal about anti violence but when confronted with the choice of kill or be killed will she be so docile and anti violent? watch and see.
All in all it's an entertaining thriller "not horror" that is not forgettable but one you will want to see again one cold night tightly tucked under your blankets..
Rating:  -
I have just received a new copy of this movie and it was not the same movie I saw in 1975/81. The original movie was very suspenseful and was much more gory and bloody than this apparent remake was.
Most of the movie was involved in the hospital, but in evening hours with Lee Grant listening and hearing the bell around his neck and he continued to butcher most of the hospital personnel.
Like I said it was very gory and a good slasher flick. I do not know how this revised copy ever made it to the DVD market. I am deeply disappointed and I believe that all sellers of this movie should make a separate statement to indicate that this is a REVISION of the original movie.
If you are interested in this movie, please try to find the orignal uncut version. I have a copy in VHS and it is extremely good.
Rating: -
What a dud this was, in fact the title of my review is the most tastless thing you'll find involved with this "slasher" film from 1981. For anybody even mildly interested in the usual trappings of the genre (i.e. nudity and gore), I'd recommend clicking the back button now and typing "The Burning" in the search bar at the top of the screen (thank me later). The reason I put slasher in quotes above is because that's what it refers to itself on the back of the DVD, but actually it's more of a mediocre thriller that I could see my parents giving a watch (and they don't like horror so... that's not a good thing!). The story follows a pychopath on the hunt for an outspoken female journalist whose stance on self-defense against abusive husbands links to his past and enrages him. She is also strongly against violence which, of course, will be put to the test when faced with the killer in the film's finale. The movie gets 2 stars on the merits of being well made and acted, and featuring a few nice moments of tension (particularly the first assault from the killer), but it's still a bland piece of cinema that takes itself far too serious and feels like a solid made for TV movie. Even Michael Ironside as the protagonist of the film is wasted here... menacing at times, of course that's only when he's not falling down, having his apartment vandalized by former rape victims, or losing his knife?!?! Beyond the cool cover on the DVD, I was checking this out due to it being on the infamous "Video Nasties" list of banned films in the UK at one time... why it made the list I'll never understand? Literally 3 deaths occur on screen, none of them bloody or graphic in any way, shape, or form. Visiting Hours is highly passable viewing, delivering nothing noteworthy for genre fans... William Shatner does appear though!
Rating:  -
The Film: Visiting Hours
Year Made: 1981
Overview: A man who is still traumatized by events that transpired from his childhood of his abusive dad against his mother, goes on a killing spree. His target is a news anchore woman who speaks out against violence and triggers the killers' inner rage. The hospital should be a place of safety and healing, but visiting hours is about to begin!
The Package: 3 Stars. The outside of the DVD holder has a eerie picture of the hospital with a skull in the windows. The inside of the case does not have any kind of inlay which is disappointing though. The disc itself has graphics of doctors faces on it wearing masks, which although cool, it would have been more creepy to have the killer himself wearing a doctor mask. The disc stays in place in the holder very nice and is easy to pop out of the tray also. There are TV trailers and radio spots on the extras as well as some movie previews for other films which I always like to watch. Overall a good package but could have been better and should have come with closed captioning which is missed greatly.
Spook Meter: 4 Stars. Visiting hours is a creepy film. The killer hardly talks at all, yet is shown clearly throughout the film. Brilliant camera work as the killer is walking as well as all the pictures on the walls of his apartment where he keeps photographs of his victims he has killed, really bring the overall creepiness' to life as you watch this. I loved the fact that most of the action takes place in a hospital setting which works very well here. The flashbacks of the killers dad being abusive to his mother and seeing the conflicting hatred he has for his dad and also for his mother for what she did to his dad is brilliant. That is made clearer as he kills women and men as things progress. Michael Ironside played the part of the killer to perfection and he truly fit the roll well in his look as well as acting. William Shater I thought was one character that did not fit well in this film. William Shatner is a superb actor, but he just didn't seem right for this.
Gore/Violence Meter: 5 Stars. In the gore department, I would rate this about average for a slasher film, it's got some blood but it's not excessive at all. Violence is why I drove the meter way high. The visual effect and the slow prolonged death scenes when someone is killed as well as the killer taking pictures while the victim is dying is very intense. The visual/brutal way it's all acted out and captured will make you cringe and feel each and every death scene. Very violent!
Profanity Meter: 5 Strikes. Sadly, this was a huge letdown. Why all the profanity, I really feel it spoils any film and this one had a lot of language throughout. I hope a closed captioned version comes out so at least my editer will work!
Sexual Meter: 2 Strikes. There is not much as far as offensive scenes. There is one scene while the killer has a woman over at his place and begins to get a bit rough with her and pulls her hair. Nothing much is shown overall though and there is no nudity at all, although the woman does take off her jeans and is standing in her panties at one point. One other scene, the killer is shown reaching down with his hand under a woman's shirt, although suggestive, nothing is shown and no nudity here either. I'll bump up the sexual meter to two stars for these scenes but overall this was non offensive in this area for most viewers.
Final Thoughts: Visiting hours is very well done and what I consider to be a highly underrated lost gem in the slasher film genre. When most people think of horror/slasher films, they think of the main ones like Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street. Visiting hours IS that good and even though it stands as a somewhat unrecognized film in the classic time of the early 80s, any true horror slasher fan will love this brutal uniqueness of Visiting Hours. The one single let down of it was all language, if not for the language, I'll stand on my 5 star rating as a horror slasher film and rank it right up their in my list of all time favorite horror films.
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