If Jean-Claude Lord's Visiting Hours failed to leave much of an impression on me, then it wasn't because of one thoroughly disturbing scene with Colt Hawker, the film's misogynistic serial killer played by the terrific Michael Ironside. After repeated failures to kill a feminist activist named Deborah Ballin, he realizes that the only way that he can get to her is by getting admitted to the hospital where she is recovering from his first attack. So he takes some pills, puts his arm in a make-shift belt tourniquet, and smashes it against a beer bottle, sending shards of broken glass deep into his flesh. The scene is very shocking and viscerally effective. Although it is clearly gratuitous (he could have just faked an injury), it remains the most memorable part of the film. Honestly, the rest of the film is rather blasé: we have a stock killer plagued by a childhood trauma, a conveyor belt of hapless victims, and a bevy of cliched jump scares. Visiting Hours was apparently labeled as a Video Nasty. Yet the film is easily the least graphic film that I have yet seen on that list. The bottle scene is easily the most graphic (although an early scene where he cuts an elderly woman's hospital cords and watches her slowly suffocate is also chilling). This film is worth it for two words: Michael Ironside.
5/10
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