Unhinged (1982)

Three women on a road trip crash their car and are taken in by a mother and daughter who live in the middle of nowhere. Things seem a little odd, and soon the girls discover a shocking family secret! Duh-duh-DUM!!

As I briefly stated below, Unhinged is a rip off of both The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Psycho, but doesn't even come close to achieving the level of horror of either masterpiece.

When I bought the DVD for a measly $4.99, I was enthralled with the claim that it had beat Poltergeist at the box office before being banned in the UK. It promised lots of violence, nudity, and gore (ok so I wasn't into the whole nudity aspect of these claims, but nonetheless, I was hopeful for the other bits!). Alas, it was more of an impulse buy, so I wasn't able to verify the claims before purchase.

After viewing this boring and derivative movie, I find its claims hard to believe. The only reason it may have been banned in the UK is for the senseless nudity throughout the film. It seems the filmmaker wanted the girls to do full frontal so the killer would have something to breathe heavy about. And gore?! Forget about it...this film has only three or so kills, and none of them are spectacularly bloody. One girl gets offed by a scythe, one by a hatchet and the last by a machete. The killings aren't too impressive and don't feature that much gore or blood, probably because of budgetary constraints. As for the claim that it beat Poltergeist at the box office...well, that just seems really hard to believe unless you're smoking crack!

Unhinged had terrible acting, especially by the lead who played Terry. The movie plodded on and on, with the only "scares" coming from the heavy-breathing psycho who liked to spy on the oft-naked girls. The story (and especially the big revelation at the end) would have been interesting if the filmmaker had delivered the goods earlier on and not dragged it out. The scenes were repetitive, with the actors stating facts the audience already knew.

The ending, though pretty good, was derivative of Psycho. I did experience some shock as to who the killer was and liked that there were no survivors. Yet, the ending couldn't make up for the absolute suckage of the rest of the movie. Skip it.

Check it out on Amazon!