Wonderful character development!

Better Late Then Never

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

So we find ourselves here again, confronted with yet another sub- standard effort in the early '80's flood of slasher films. Unhinged sees three young women leaving the city in a car on a trip to a music festival. Their car is in an accident and they find themselves trapped in the home of an eccentric mother-daughter household, with inevitable dark secrets. Perhaps writer/director Don Gronquist was attempting to reverse much of the arguments in the media against these genre films with a gender twist. Famously, Siskel and Ebert held a vociferous discussion of slasher films and their attempt to subvert the feminist movement by stabbing and eviscerating women on film, and the films were targeted as misogynist. In the mansion house/prison of Unhinged female characters the head of the house, a wheelchair bound matriarch, Marion Penrose (J. E. Penner), has an inate hatred of men, and accuses her daughter of having men in the house, and prostituting herself.Although if this were the case, the victims (no matter whom their attacker is) are female. The film uses many of the tropes from slasher films from Psycho (1960) to Friday the 13th (1980), and the girls trapped in the house are spied on through peep holes, whilst the deep, sexualised breathing of an unknown male are heard through the walls. It's a strange and almost farcical use of heavy breathing when considered against the backdrop of previous slasher films; particularly when this kind of audio effect was parodied in the dreadful slasher spoof from 1981, Student Bodies. Of course the girls are killed off in a bloody fashion, and the deep-seated psychological damage of the feminine family unit of the household is exposed, bringing with it the fastidious climax which reverses gender specifics - but not, however, creating any kind of revelatory, or even interesting, conclusion.As would be expected from a low-rent, straight-to-video horror film, the acting is awful, although the campy histrionics of the old woman, are quite irresistible, and often humorous, but her space in the films narrative is underused. Whilst her performance is funny at times, the overall film is simply tiresome. The film doesn't entirely feel like a slasher film either, and at times feels and looks like an early 1970's sorority horror drama - but does not penetrate any kind of character study. No doubt that if this film did not find infamy with its early inclusion onto the UK's video nasty list, then this film would have been lost in time, forgotten, and rightfully hidden in the film history bargain basement - where s**t films go to die. Even compared to other little remembered films of the same genre (Deadly Games (1982) or Blood Song (1982) for example), the pacing of Unhinged leaves you with a drab feeling. The dialogue is both written and delivered like the cast were under duress, and the languid, stilted camera glibly moves through the mansion set. I did find myself drifting away from the screen whilst viewing this, and found that whatever else was happening around me (admittedly there was nothing) was more interesting than Unhinged.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

This is one poorly done film. It's an incredibly cheap looking one, that doesn't feature an original story and also got poorly put together by its film-makers.Really everything about this movie screams low budget! And I'm not just talking about its visuals but also about its acting and quality of the script. The movie features some awful dialog that gets poorly delivered by its cast, that mostly consist out of persons who had never acted in a movie before and also never did so again, after this movie. But same goes for its crew. No one involved with this movie ever had a career in the industry, prior or after this movie.But really the biggest problem with this movie is that there simply is not enough happening in it. It's such a slow movie, in which some sequence seem to go on for ever. Now, there is nothing wrong with some slow storytelling and set up, since if done right it can truly build up some good tension and atmosphere that way but that just isn't the case with this movie though, unfortunately. The movie is actually a very short one (just below 80 minutes short) and they seemed really desperate to fill it, without having a decent script and story backing them up. Also can't really see why this movie had been banned for so long. It's not as if it's handling any shocking themes or is that gory to watch. Gore lovers while actually be most likely disappointed by this movie and basically all you see is some blood flying around every now and then. It probably more has something to do with the nudity in this movie, though that also isn't anything too graphic or unseen before really.I can enjoy and appreciate a good horror B-movie but this one just wasn't worth seeing.4/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

I bought Unhinged because I got suckered by the gory picture on the cover. If you want to see all the good parts of the movie just look on the back of the box. All the kills are shown and I can honestly tell you that they look much better in the still frames than they do in the movie.Having said that, let's look at the plot. A group of college girls driving to a rock concert (by way of the deep, dark woods in one of the longest driving sequences ever captured on celluloid) slide off the road. No visible damage is done to the car but apparently it was enough to put one of the characters in a comatose state for the rest of the film (or perhaps she read the script and was already in a coma before filming began).The two remaining girls wake up in a big, isolated house. The house, by the way, is fabulous and manages more drama just by its presence than any of the actors in the film. For some reason, though, this house has no roads going to it. The only way you can get to the main road is by hiking five miles through the woods. The girls spend the rest of Unhinged sitting around listening to weird conversations between an old rich bitch (who looks like George Washington in drag) and her equally homely, sexually repressed daughter. The girls apparently were in no hurry to get back from that concert anyway being that they packed more clothes than the cast of Gilligan's Island for that three hour tour.By the time we, the viewers, get to the kill scenes, we no longer care. We wish that someone would kill us just to end our suffering . Unhinged finally wraps up with a quite shocking ending that deserved to be in a much better film. It's almost as though the ending, the one good idea in the film, was written first and then the writers tried to make a movie leading up to it.Unhinged is ultimately a boring film with bad acting, inept directing, and a plot with more holes than a leper in a porno film (sorry. I'm not sure where that came from). You will get an idea of how bad this movie is during the opening credits when, for some reason that is never explained, the screen goes black for about two minutes while the characters talk about nothing worth remembering. Don't waste your time. You'll just feel Unhinged and want your time and money back.

Unhinged follows the typical plot of the early 80's slasher trend. Pretty Young Girls In Peril. I have to give it up for the filmmaker who used a helicopter for some of the early road-trip shots, you actually think for a second there's going to be quality in the production. Watching "Unhinged" was like seeing an amateur acting class go through it's warm-up. Some of the most awkward, badly lit, overlong scenes are played out with the gusto of a Valium overdose. I wondered why they didn't just put the cue-cards on camera so the actresses wouldn't have to constantly shift their gaze. The two main girls were obviously chosen for their T&A factor rather than talent. Laurel Munson as the main chick Terry is as exciting as watching paint dry. Two nude scenes make for an adolescent thrill. Janet Penner and Virginia Settle as the crazy/creepy daughter and mother the chicks find themselves stranded with compete for Worst Acting Ever. Long pauses, weird expressions, emphasis on the wrong word, it's all there and is a delight for those of us out there who love bad films. The scenes shift suddenly with long black-outs you could drive a Mack truck through. Cartoon lightning crashes across shots without even bothering to show the sky. Eighties eyeshadow assaults the viewer. But ya know, it grew on me. I felt sorry for it. I wanted to hug it, kiss it's boo-boos and make it better. The ending doesn't make up for the damage it's caused but I grinned anyway. I have my own theories regarding the whole "banned" hype and hope that anyone who chooses to view this film does so with substantial substance abuse and a sense of humor. Otherwise pass.