Unhinged

REVIEW
There’s something about low-budget, independent regional genre/exploitation filmmaking of a certain era (principally mid-1960s through the early-1980s) that is intrinsically fascinating to die-hard horror film enthusiasts. Whether it’s the grimy Texas shockers of director S.F. Brownrigg (Don’t Look in the Basement), the surreal North Carolina thrillers of underrated exploitation auteur Frederick Friedel (Kidnapped Coed), or even the Staten Island cine-antics of filmmakers as diverse as Andy Milligan (Bloodthirsty Butchers) and Buddy Giovinazzo (Combat Shock), independent genre projects made by filmmakers working on their own, defiantly non-Hollywood, turf often benefit from imaginative location shooting, interesting performances from non-professionals, and a general tone that is unlike the fare produced within the mainstream film industry.

One might think that Unhinged, Oregonian auteur Don Gronquist’s 1982 low-budget horror film, might possess some of these notable regional genre filmmaking qualities. One would be wrong. A mind-numbingly tedious “old dark house”-styled thriller involving three young women who wind up in a mysterious old mansion for the night when their car runs off the road during a thunderstorm, Unhinged suffers from a plot that would have seemed creaky even during 1930s “Poverty Row” B-horror days, and a directorial approach that adds nothing of note to the lethargic proceedings. Once settled into the mansion for the night, the trio of women encounter the estate’s two inhabitants, a timid daughter and her bullying, man-hating elderly mother; a couple of unlucky souls wind up murdered (the FX consisting largely of stage blood thrown randomly into frame), and oh, yeah, there’s nudity too (which, strangely, some viewers seem to find substantial enough to warrant a recommendation for this thoroughly forgettable endeavor). The “twist” ending – a sort of M. Night Shyamalan variant on The Crying Game (or, for that matter, Sleepaway Camp) – doesn’t help much, alas.

Largely devoid of the sort of visceral frisson one might expect from exploitation cinema of the era, and missing the unique mood one often savors in regional genre filmmaking, Unhinged is ultimately just sort of unwatchable. To be avoided.