Three young girls set off for a concert, a heavy thunderstorm begins and driver Nancy crashes the car in a remote woods, Nancy and Terry are OK, Gloria has sustained more serious injuries. The trio take shelter at the house of Marion Penrose, a particularly creepy looking residence she shares with her aged infirm mother. Marion suggests the girls spend the night, and that Gloria in particular should be travelling nowhere. That night Nancy and Terry experience some particularly strange goings on in that house, the girls now fearful of what's in store toss a coin to go for help. Nancy sets off the next morning and is brutally killed. The horrors continue...I have to begin by commenting on the acting, it is rather woeful, the trio of girls in particular are somewhat off with their performances. Janet Penner was surprisingly fun to watch as Marion.The film is definitely a low budget horror, but the success lays in the fact they managed to create a level of atmosphere that's sometimes lacking in many horror films. The climax is particularly shocking, it's brutal and seemed to come out of nowhere, I wonder if it had something to do with the film's banning in the UK?So it's full of clichés, it has a very clunky score, but it is hugely watchable, full of shocks. If you haven't seen it and you like slasher/b-movie horrors I would whole heartedly recommend a viewing. 8/10

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

With a cast of barely serviceable non-actors and a threadbare budget that presents itself frequently, this largely unseen slasher outing should probably be an absolute mess. However, thanks to excellent direction and a plot that gradually unfolds one layer at a time, Unhinged is actually a thoroughly decent film that emphasizes suspense over splatter and ultimately ends up being a modestly original and highly enjoyable romp.All of the components of 80's slasher fare are present here, but despite the killer's point-of-view shots and creative uses of sharp implements, it's clear that director Don Gronquist had something different in mind for Unhinged. The body count is notably small, especially for a film that touts its splatter roots on the DVD cover, but as a result the bloodier bits of the movie are played for maximum impact, and end up being rather impressive and gruesome set-pieces. The bulk of the film is devoted to developing the characters and wringing every bit of tension out of the set-up, and in this respect Unhinged stylistically lands much closer to Halloween than Friday the 13th (although please don't take those references as an assertion that this humble affair is anywhere as great as either of those films).The basic scenario isn't anything earth-shattering: three young girls on a rustic road trip get into a car accident and wake up under the care of seemingly benevolent hosts in a strange house, only to slowly discover that things in the abode aren't as benign as they seem at first. The twist Unhinged throws into the mix is that the kindly samaritans who take the girls in are a homely spinster and her witchy wheelchair-bound mother, both of whom are hiding sinister secrets that come to light as the girls delve deeper into their back-stories.The film takes its time rolling out each bit of the unsavory truth, and hardcore splatter enthusiasts will probably be disappointed that they won't see a murder until 40 minutes in. The payoff may not be as spectacular as that lengthy sustain seems to promise, but it's still a suitably graphic scene with a grisly punch that comes as a pleasant surprise after such a subdued and lengthy build-up.The emphasis on character here shouldn't be as engrossing as it is, especially since we're dealing with strictly amateur actors, but the sordid origin tale for the spinster and her overbearing matriarch is grim and unsettling enough to command our attention. While the acting is certainly stilted at times, the performances by both of these twisted matrons are effectively creepy and somehow more realistic because of the limited experience of the actresses. Ditto with our trio of buxom lasses who find themselves entangled in the twisted happenings, none of whom seem to have any idea what acting is, but still give everything they have to their roles and come across as authentic and realistic characters.The musical score is especially nifty, even if it blatantly apes Goblin at times, and while the soundtrack is clearly the product of a low-budget composer, it ends up being yet another one of the film's examples of how people with good ideas can adeptly deliver above-par work without a huge bankroll.The last 10 minutes of the film pack in all the gore Unhinged has been saving up, and there are some truly gruesome and fun grand guignol touches as the plot reaches its twisted conclusion. The final reveal is a suitably shocking and unexpected turn, and the savage murder that parallels it is by far the most brutal scene in the film. The accompanying monologue by our outed murderer reaches into absurd heights of silliness, but the sequence as a whole puts a satisfying punctuation mark on this effective and surprisingly solid outing.I'm a bit skeptical of the "Banned In The U.K.!" label on the promotional materials, however. Other than two blatantly gratuitous scenes of frontal nudity and three murders, there isn't a whole lot in this film to offend the sensibilities of anyone who is even remotely familiar with the crop of splatter films that arrived during the same era as Unhinged (this isn't Make Them Die Slowly by a long-shot). Even if that claim is more than a gimmick, watching the film with that in mind is bound to lead to a let-down for ravenous gore-fiends. The killings in Unhinged are certainly delightfully graphic, but it is the overall dearth of violence in this film that makes those scenes so powerful. Anyone expecting a wall to wall gorefest may not walk away from Unhinged as pleased as I was.Even if the film doesn't live up to its bold insistence of infamy, there is still plenty about it to recommend. Unhinged may not be the bloodiest movie you've ever seen, but those who don't mind reveling in atmosphere and suspense between bouts of carnage will find a real gem here.

Now here's a film that really threw me as I watched it. At first, although nicely filmed, I was ready to write Unhinged off as a pile of 'piddly go nowhere crap that I paid a pound for', and therefore was prepared to watch it to the end and proclaim it rubbish.However, this film, full of subtle (and not so subtle) hints, began to take on a more sinister edge as it approached it's end time. Here was me sitting wondering whether I should let the anti-depressants take me into slumber when Unhinged started to explain all that went before. Teeth found under bed? Crazy Southern Belle? Everything is explained and it doesn't end like your usual slasher.Rather pleased with the end result - Not too fast paced, but the gore picks up towards the end, and it all kind of pays off - I was happy with it.