Crusading TV reporter Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant), a vocal advocate of women’s rights, sparks the ire of greasy sexual sadist Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside), who shoulders a fifty-ton anti-female chip on his shoulder due to unresolved mommy issues. After one particularly incendiary broadcast, Hawker goes on the warpath and sends Deborah to the hospital with multiple knife wounds. But though she’s battered and bruised, and her cage thoroughly rattled, Deborah is anything but dead -- so Hawker infiltrates the hospital to unleash an all-out terror campaign against her, as well as anyone else foolish enough to get between them, like Deborah’s cute and kindly nurse (Linda Purl).

If you’re looking for slasher sleaze, Visiting Hours is about a quart low in that department – though Ironside gives a no-holds-barred performance as the short-fused, sick-to-the-bone Hawker (the first time he’s glimpsed on screen, Ironside explodes from a closest, completely naked and festooned in Grant’s jewelry like a glam rock headhunter), the gore is relatively minor – lots of knife cuts – and the grime is relegated to a single set piece in which Hawker picks up a halter-topped skankette (Lenore Zann, now a popular voice artist) and brings her back to his dingy apartment for a round of unsolicited knife play and love bites. But it’s also a very well-made movie – Lord was and remains a veteran director for film and television in his native Canada – and its final half hour, in which Ironside first stalks Purl’s family and then pursues Grant through the now-evacuated hospital, is extremely tense and remains largely free of the clichés that dog most slasher pics (jump outs, false scares, stupid behavior on the part of the stalkee). Speaking of stupid characters, Visiting Hours is refreshingly free of them as well; Grant, Purl, and even Zann play fairly well-drawn and capable characters who don’t really need the men of the picture (best summed up by Shatner, who plays Grant’s slick producer and ex-boyfriend) to save them. I imagine that all of these particular characteristics did not endear Visiting Hours to the stalk-and-slash crowd way back in ’82, and if you’re looking for just heavy breathing and masked dudes with knives, your thumb will probably be itching for the fast forward button all the way through this movie. But if you’re okay with some genuine suspense and even a little plot, Visiting Hours is a pleasant surprise.

Anchor Bay’s widescreen DVD looks good, and sports a radio spot and four very similar TV commercials in its supplemental features. Yes, commentary by Ironside would’ve been cool, but baby, this movie isn’t Halloween, so appreciate what you get.

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- Paul Gaita