Horror-A-Day: Unhinged

All right, I am here still waiting for the Fall weather to show up, not these brief teases we've had so far. As it stands, temperatures hit the mid-70's today, past the halfway point of October. No, not entirely unheard of, but definitely puts a damper on the season. On another subject, did finally take a break from the Netflix horror offerings for the first time this month. I took to my DVD shelves and found o e that I ha never watched before. I am pretty sure I forgot I even had it.



The movie is called Unhinged and it was released way back 1982. It was directed by Don Gronquist, who split writing duties with Reagan Ramsey. Never heard of him? I don't blame you, neither one of them ever went on to anything bigger. Ramsey never wrote another film and Gronquist only directed one other movie, The Devil's Keep in 1995. The cast is not much different with the majority of the primary players not having any other credits.

Unhinged garnered a little notoriety by landing itself on the UK's Video Nasty list. This really is the movie's biggest claim to fame and likely the only reason that anyone has any interest in it these days. If not for this fortuitous piece of infamy there would be no one talking about Unhinged.

Now, to be honest, I have seen worse movies. With that said, you can probably guess that this is not good. You'd be right, it isn't. You could even call it a cure for insomnia, kind of like Jess Franco's Oasis of the Zombies (which, coincidentally, came out the same year).

As our tale of terror opens, we are introduced to Terry (Laurel Munson). She is heading off to a music festival with a couple of her friends. We watch her get out of bed, gratuitously shower, chat with mom on the phone, and then hop in the car with the friends and drive. We watch them drive and talk, and drive and talk, until they finally run off the road into a little ditch.

The tiny ditch must have been worse than it looked as it knocked them all out. They wake up in a big nearby house. They are being cared for by Marion (J.E. Penner), who lives there with her mother. Now we head into another slow slog of a sequence. The girls go to dinner and listen to the wheelchair bound matriarch rail against men and belittle her daughter. This goes on for awhile, them they go to the parlor and play dominoes. Yes, you read that right.

It feels like they are there for a week. I kept wondering why they stayed, surely they had a moment when they could have left. But no, they stayed in the big creepy house with its creepy man hating inhabitants. I guess with so few cast members they wanted to stack the deck for the end. I'll give it that, it does get a little bonkers in the closing minutes, not enough to really make the preceding 75 worth it. Well. The matriarch (Virginia Settle) is rather intriguing in her intensity and odd infatuation with the salt and pepper shakers.

To spoil the ending... They play Sleepaway Camp before they even opened.

I would not say this is a must see, if you miss it there is no great loss. I actually think it is worth seeing for the curiosity of the terrible performances and how the bloody cover does not represent the content. Yes, there are a couple of kills, one of them is decent. Yes, there is some gratuitous nudity you may like. The electronic score isn't half bad either. Still, it is pretty tame overall. The only real reason outside of morbid curiosity to watch is to be a completist with regards to the Video Nasty list. I'm still working on that.

Not Recommended.