Reviewed By-Sean Patrick Dolan
Director-Don Gronquist
Cast-Sara Ansley, Laurel Munson, Janet Penner, Virginia Settle
UNHINGED is a B- flick from the early eighties directed by Don Gronquist (THE
DEVIL'S KEEP, STARK RAVING MAD). The IndieDVD release features a television
interview with the director and one of the film's stars, Janet Penner, which
reveals that this low budget film was shot in Portland, Oregon with a pool of
local talent with the goal of cashing in on the American "body count" film craze
spawned by successful entries like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and HALLOWEEN.
Gronquist states that he wanted to bring the element of suspense back into the
genre, in part because of the necessity imposed by a low budget. This
overlooked slasher with Hitchcock-ian elements is by no means a tour-de-force
like PSYCHO, but it doesn't fall flat on its face either. An excellent transfer
by IndieDVD who aggressively marketed this film by playing up it's "Video Nasty"
status (Note: In the early '80's an extremely virulent wave of conservative
hysteria and censorship occurred in the UK at the height of the growing
popularity of the VHS format, which caused countless films to be banned as Video
Nasties and their possession made a criminal offense) as well as the back cover
boast, "Outsold POLTERGEIST before banned". Extras include trailers for two
other IndieDVD releases (HELLCHILD and THE DEVIL'S KEEP), a gallery of
production stills, the above mentioned interview with the director and Penner,
and a "comedic narration" alternate soundtrack provided by Seattle area writers
(which I found to be more annoying than insightful).
The film starts out in the traditional manner- Nancy, Terry, and Gloria are
three teenage girls heading out into the country to a rock festival. And as you
may well expect, they never make it to their destination. They drive into a
storm and their car slides off the road into a ditch. The girls awake to find
themselves in an old mansion in the middle of nowhere, inhabited by the elderly
Edith Penrose and her spinster daughter Marion (Janet Penner). The handyman
had found their car and brought them there. Nancy and Terry suffered only
minor bumps and bruises, by Gloria is in bad shape and will need to stay in bed
for a couple days. The girls will have to stay as guests until the storm clears
and their friend is well enough to leave. Of course, the Penrose house has no
phone, so they cannot call anyone to tell them where they are.
By dinnertime, Nancy and Terry realize that there is something off with the
Penroses. Mother Edith reminisces about the good old days when they were
socialites in Newport, Rhode Island, before her husband brought a scandal upon
the family and they lost everything. Her bitterness has left her with an
extreme hatred for all men and she takes most of her anger out on daughter
Marion, whom she accuses of being a dirty slut who is constantly sneaking lovers
into the house; "Defiling the sanctity of our home!" After dinner everyone
retires to the parlor where Marion
is forced to play the piano for Mother and the girls sit on the floor playing
dominos- all that is missing from the scene is Lawrence Welk on the TV. That
night the girls discuss the situation. They feel sorry for Marion and have
already had enough of Mother. Terry is sick of her "rich bitch" talk and Nancy
finds her issues with men to be less than healthy- "I've seen people with
aversions before, but Jesus," she quips. In the middle of the night, Terry
wakes up to hear the sounds of a man breathing heavily outside her door- "Like
he's doing himself," she tells Nancy. That's the last straw and they decide
that one of them should hike through the woods to town the next morning to call
for help. Nancy loses the coin flip and seals her fate (we all know she'll
never make it because some psycho is going to pop out from behind a tree and off
her). This time, the killer uses an old-fashioned scythe, of all things, and
the gory scene is quite satisfying.
Meanwhile, Marion has sent Nancy out to get some firewood from the yard. When
Nancy takes a detour to explore a suspicious looking shed on the property,
Marion freaks out, telling her that she mustn't go in there and offering only
the lame explanation that junk is piled so high in the building that it isn't
safe. She excepts this story, but later that night she sees the heavy-breathing
man outside her bedroom window. At this point she demands an explanation.
Marion explains that after her father ruined the family (it turns out that the
scandal regarded him molesting a very young girl) and they moved out into the
country, her mother could no longer tolerate the presence of a man in her
house. Consequently, Nancy has been forced for years to keep her younger
brother Karl outside in the shed away from Mother. Although Karl is not quite
right mentally, she assures Nancy that he is harmless. But Terry has not
returned from town and Nancy is beginning to sense that there is something
terribly wrong at the Penrose estate, despite Marion's reassurances. She
decides to leave on foot the very next day, provided that Gloria has recovered
enough to go with her . . . .
!!!WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH!!!
Nancy climbs the stairs to Gloria's bedroom to check on her, and is shocked to
find that her friend is gone (we viewers aren't, as we witnessed her skull
cleaved with a hatchet in a scene moments earlier). It is at this point that
Nancy discovers a photograph taken a long time ago showing two brothers. Nancy
goes back downstairs and outside to look for Gloria and is drawn again to the
forbidden shed. There we finally meet Karl, whose "bachelor pad" is strewn with
mutilated and dismembered bodies, including Terry and Gloria. It turns out that
Karl is anything but harmless and he pursues Nancy through the yard and into the
house, up to the second floor. The two struggle until Nancy finds a
conveniently placed and loaded gun and shoots Karl dead. Then Marion rushes
into the room, quite distraught. "Why did you have to hurt him- he was just
playing with you?" Nancy responds, "Playing? Look out in the shed!". Enraged,
Marion attacks Nancy with a long knife, hacking her to pieces as her voice drops
several registers and we realize that Marion is a man. She is the second
brother from the picture who has been forced to live as a woman to remain in the
house with Mother and to care for her brother Karl. And by now you don't have
to be Freud to realize how royally that has screwed this guy up. The film ends
with a great punchline. We hear Mother's voice calling up the stairs- "Marion?
Marion? Answer Me! Do you have another one of your men up their?" "No,
Mother," is Marion's dutiful response.
As mentioned above, this film was an attempt to mix typical TCM and HALLOWEEN
slasher fare with a little more high brow suspense in the Hitchcock tradition.
And it does a fairly decent job on both counts. Granted the girls are
one-dimensional stock characters and their plight is familiar territory. But
the dialogue is better written than most and they get off some amusing
one-liners. The budget only allowed for a modest body count of three, but these
death scenes are gory and artfully executed with blood gushing from mouths or
splattering onto clean, white bed linens. Two nude shower scenes are also
thrown in for good measure. Gronquist's direction is more than competent, using
the familiar motifs of the back woods and the old house in the middle of nowhere
to their fullest effect.
His editing style is revealed in the films opening scene which is a full minute
of dead air, a pitch black screen, which is finally interrupted by Nancy's radio
alarm clock going off. Throughout the film he ends each scene with a sustained
fade to black that lasts just a second too long each time- a crude but effective
tactic to unnerve the viewer. The film's score is a brooding synth score, again
reminiscent of HALLOWEEN- though not nearly as good as John Carpenter's
self-composed iconic theme in the former. As far as the suspense angle goes,
this film does not quite measure up as well. We definitely know from the start
that no one is getting out of
the Penrose house alive, as well as having a strong indication that Mother is
the ultimate cause of anything sinister transpiring in the house. When the
masturbating male stalker is introduced, the only likely suspect is the handyman
Norman. That is, until the end of the picture when we finally meet Karl and,
subsequently, discover Marion's transvetitism. This could have been a fairly
good pull-the-rug-right-out-from-under-you ending, had Gronquist not unwisely
shown chosen to show us the only clue we needed- the picture of the two young
brothers- which made the ending quite predictable. All that said, and keeping
in mind that this movie is no TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, no HALLOWEEN, no PSYCHO
(hell, not even M BUTTERFLY), it is an evenly paced, often amusing,
well-intentioned, and well-executed slasher. It never comes close to
approaching brilliance but, as a B-Flick, it does get the job done and should
not disappoint anyone who has reasonable expectations for such a film.
