| Product: |
Unhinged (DVD) |
| Date: |
22.02.08 (79 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: It's surprisingly enjoyable
Disadvantages: It will sorely test the patience of most viewers
A review of just the film.
Unhinged is a strange little horror film from 1982. Very low budget, it's pretty obscure - but for its presence on the video nasties list I doubt anyone would remember it now.
Three college girls crash their car on the way to a music festival. They end up in an old dark house while they recuperate, looked after by repressed spinster Marion and her domineering, crippled mother. Cue spooky noises, menacing figures in the garden, and murders. Oh, and gratuitous shower scenes.
This must have been a pretty cheap film. There are only six real characters, and only four of them have substantial screen time. Very few of the cast made other films, and it shows. The students are wooden, giving flat, disinterested line readings (although I loved that their idea of dressing for dinner means looking like the Human League). Marion's dialogue is spoken in a slightly off-kilter way, not quite conforming to the rhythms of natural speech (as if she's, say, more worried about remembering her lines properly than what they'll sound like). And the mother goes way over the top - in fact she's probably the most entertaining thing in the film.
The film suffers terribly from padding. Most of the scenes feel like they go on a bit too long. In fact, most individual shots feel like they're being held a few seconds longer than they should be. There are endless shots of the girls driving, long sequences where people eat in silence, slow dialogue scenes. At the end of almost every scene, the screen fades to black for several seconds, which is just crazy. It almost feels like the normal grammar of film doesn't quite apply here, as if we're in uncharted territory slightly outside of mainstream aesthetics.
This probably sounds unlikely, and it certainly isn't intentional on the film's part. But the things that are wrong with Unhinged are wrong in ways that I find fascinating. A climactic chase scene should consist of more than one long-shot of two people running across a lawn and going through a door. Most of the attempts to build tension are pretty good, but are spoiled by there either being no payoff, or by the payoff being so fumbled that it just makes you shake your head in vague despair. (Although that said, it does have one terrific make-you-jump bit.)
The music is absolutely crazy. Many cheap horror films use a synthesiser for their incidental music - probably because it meant that the composer could knock out the music in his bedroom, saving on costs. This synth soundtrack is... well, excitable might be the best way of putting it. It whoops. It screams. It roars. Often when nothing of any interest is happening onscreen. You occasionally hear bits that sound like Queen's Flash Gordon soundtrack, or the incidental music from Airwolf, or even Walter Carlos-style classical adaptations. It's somehow every cheap horror soundtrack rolled into one, and is either the best thing about the film or the worst. I'd definitely buy a soundtrack album, but I doubt such a thing will be forthcoming.
And the ending! Holy cow! The ending is so deranged it actually works. It certainly took me by surprise, and then some. The final plot twists are genuinely startling and it's the only time when you can understand why the film has an 18 rating. Most of the violent scenes just involve a lot of fake blood being splashed around, but at the end there's some rather more grisly stuff.
I doubt I'm really going to sell this to anyone. I love finding these relics of another age, when exploitation cinema meant not quite showing pubic hair, and finding new agricultural implements to kill girls with (here it's a scythe). This borrows bits from Psycho, Last House on the Left and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (mostly Psycho). It would have made no impact on me at all if the government hadn't banned it. The fools!
Amazon sells the DVD of Unhinged for a preposterous £16, although it's easy to get hold of for about £4. I doubt any of you will bother, and I can't say I blame you. But it was considerably more enjoyable than I was expecting.
Summary: Yet another cheap, cheap horror movie banned in the 80s
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