Unhinged (1982)

Director - Don Gronquist



What a pile.

Portland, Oregon makes a slasher movie. Three chicks on their way to a rock concert get in a car accident in the middle of nowhere, they wake up to some total weirdo spinster taking care of them. They hang out at this weird ass mansion where an old lady reigns over in a strange anti-male kind of regal authority. Virtually no plot follows as the three girls are killed off, kinda sorta, way too far into the movie. Why were so many stalk and slash 80's flicks fixated on gender issues and retarded people? Insensitivity in the 80's I suppose, but seriously some weird stuff going on. A bevy of homosexual/transgender/whatever hang ups ensue this mediocre slash flick. Some good scenes here and there, minimal gore, and a rad synth soundtrack make this just tolerable enough. I'm not even going to get into the specifics as this movie sucks so bad, but I will post some highlights ala Joe Bob Briggs.

Drive-In Totals:

1 nude scene within the first 5 minutes
2 shower scenes
1 scythe swipe death
Tard Fu followed by headshot
1 claw hammer-face-combo
1 tranny
30+ machete stabs to a girls face


(Booya, told you about the hammer smashed face.)

All in all a pretty low body count (4), and you keep waiting for the gore since this is a "video nasty", and you keep waiting for the gratuitous nudity. While they never really come, when bits of it do show up (shower scenes/scythe throat slash) you get pretty excited. I was talking to my friend John while watching this, discussing how the "classics" are classics for a reason because they're good. When it comes to slasher flicks there is nothing new under the sun, the reason why you've never seen this movie is because it's not very good. Watch Black Christmas (1974) instead if you must, you'll get more out of it with the creepy pervert angle and the stalking/slashing.


(The 80's trend of girls wearing sports jerseys to bed needs to continue. This is post showering together by the way.)

My VHS copy was purchased at the Westside Mini Mart on Tieton Drive in Yakima, WA. It's the Lighthouse Home Video (?) release, the box art is fucking rad and the box is cut up and put into a clam shell case. The blurbs on the back are pretty cool; "Hideous! Just what the market needs." and "Gore lovers will wallow in it!" and there are pictures of all of the death scenes in the synapse. I don't know much about Lighthouse Home Video, but this was put out in 1983 in it's "Unrated" cut, so I have some faith that this isn't the censored version and I don't want to buy this on DVD to see if there is anything different. A cheap ploy back then was to rate something as "Unrated" when in fact it was the R cut, the same can be said for today's crap with "Unrated" slapped on the box.

3 dead teenagers, 1 dead special needs dude. 1 bad movie.

4/10