For a late entry into the slasher genre, Night Visitor doesnt do a bad job of twisting a little convention to create an entertaining, if mostly bloodless, little movie.

Derek Rydall plays Billy, a spunky boy-who-cried-wolf type who likes to tell tall tales to just about anybody who will listen.  This has made him the nemesis of one of his teachers, Mr. Zachary Willard (Allen Garfield).  It seems like Mr. Zacharys life long dream is get Billy expelled from high school.  Meanwhile, Billys truth telling skills are put to the test when a beautiful call girl named Lisa Grace (Shannon Tweed in a nice performance) moves in next door.  Slightly flirtatious but fairly harmless, she becomes the object of Billys obsession.  Not that anyone believes a real-life hooker has moved in.

One night Billy invites his two best buds over to spy on her, but hours pass and nothing happens, so they leave.  Billy falls asleep only to be awakened by Lisas cries for help.  He runs to her aid but is stopped short when he sees her being murdered by Mr. Zachary!  He reports it to the police (one of whom is played by Richard Roundtree), but even upon first meeting, they find him to be sort of incredulous.  Now Billy finds himself in a fairly precarious situation, since Mr. Zachary knows Billy can finger him as the killer.  This would certainly be bad for Mr. Zachary and his satanic cult!  Well, its a cult if you count two members as such!  Mr. Zachary is aided by his Idiot Man Child brother, Stanley (Michael J. Pollard), in an attempt to rid the world of evil woman (aka prostitutes) with ritualistic killings.  Desperate, Billy turns towards his deceased fathers partner (they were cops), the burnt out Ronald Devereaux (Elliot Gould in a sleepwalking turn) for help.

Whew!  Now thats a bag of plots just waiting to be wasted.  Luckily, Night Visitor chooses to be a lighthearted romp instead of an all out horror movie.

Except for Gould, the actors are well up to the challenge of balancing ludicrous situations with just the right touch of horror and humor as to not leave the viewer bored.  Pollard and Garfield are especially good as the Of Mice and Men cult members and on their own, make this film worth seeing.  The star, Derek Rydall has become sort of an obsession for me.  He was a familiar face to video store renters around the time of this film and put in excellent performances in this and Popcorn before he seemed to disappear.  Its too bad too because he had that boy-next-door appeal that most actors are either too pretty or too scary to embody these days.  And porn star Teri Weigel is good in her small role as the skuzzy hooker/victim.  But poor Elliot Gould!  Its blatantly obvious he did not want to be in this movie.  Its still kind of cool to see him slumming it, as it were, and there are far worse choices than an asleep-at-the-wheel Gould.  Even when he doesnt want to do, he still manages& something.  Ill just leave it at that&I wont lie; its not the best script in the world and is directed in a sort of lifeless manner, which may partly explain Goulds phoned in performance.  Yet it remains a charming thriller that I seem to enjoy more with each viewing.