Bosque maldito

After crashing their car on the way to a rock concert, three young woman wake up in a spooky mansion where a repressed spinster and her unstable mother live. There's also a bloodthirsty killer who doesn't want the girls there.

Unhinged is a mostly unremarkable series of slasher and old dark house movie cliches, but I'd be lying if I were to say some moments don't possess some sort of lo-fi eeriness. It's not a poorly shot film, there's some rain drenched atmosphere, a few nasty murders, and one truly insane final twist. That's more than you can say for a lot of movies. If it weren't for the mostly pedestrian script and wooden acting, Unhinged might really be something special.

I happened to pick up the "uncut, uncensored" DVD version of "Unhinged", a film I had never heard of before, but since it was only $6.99, I decided to give it a try. And I actually think it was a little better than I had expected it to be. The story is about three college-aged girls who crash their car in the woods on their way to a jazz festival. They awake in a large, dark mansion that belongs to a woman and her mother. One of the girls is badly injured, but the other two are alright, so they join the woman and her crazy, man-hating mother for dinner. The mother rambles on about how she believes her daughter is sneaking men into the house under her nose, and while we are thought to believe she's crazy, there does seem to be a man lurking around the mansion late at night. The girls then begin to die one by one, before the film reaches it's twist-ending climax.

To start off, the acting in this film was horrible. I mean, really, really bad. The dialog was cheap, and the actors didn't make it any more convincing. There was a load of nudity, which serves the purpose to please it's male audience, and the gore (when it happens) was fairly nasty (although not violent enough to get this film 'banned', as it was), besides the cheap effects that were used. So, does it sound like I hated this movie? Well, I didn't. I liked the atmosphere the movie gave off, it reminded me a little of "Suspiria", although this film is nothing close to "Suspiria" in terms of quality. As for the writing though, I thought the premise was solid. The idea has been done many times, but there were enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. Plus, the twist ending is one heck of a twist, that came completely out of nowhere. I have to applaud this film for that.

I found it interesting when I learned the movie was filmed at the Pittock Mansion in Portland, Oregon, the city I was born in as well. Strangely enough, I've been to the Pittock Mansion before (it is now open to the public as a historical site), and I recognized some of the areas used in the film. Apparently all of the actors and filmmakers were Oregonians, and I don't think any of them went on to do any major projects after this. And it makes sense, because this really isn't a top-notch movie - it's a very low budget, B-movie.

To sum it up, "Unhinged" is a low-budget video nasty, and while it's not completely horrible, it's far from great. I think if some of the characters were a tad more developed, and there was some better acting, this could have been much more improved. Although, I do tend to have a soft-spot for cheesy 80's slashers of this type. But if you can look past the bad acting and all of the shortcomings (mainly due to the film's low budget and whatnot), there was a solid attempt at something good here. It may be amateurish, but it was a step in the right direction. 6/10.

Unhinged is a movie that'll likely endear itself to me the more times I see it. I will say that without the ghastly end scene this one would've been cast into the inky black void of the forgotten. There are films, especially in the horror genre, that are buzzed to have twist endings, powerful surprise endings that shock and have never been encountered, well, in regards to Unhinged that's almost the truth. While the idea/situation/plot may not be entirely underived (having an essence of Hitchcock's Psycho, for example), the film's progression shrewdly shrouds the climax. Being the seasoned, desensitized horror fan that I am, even I sat up captivated, feeling a bit unnerved as I watched the last scenes unfold. I can't say many splatter flicks have that effect on me. The killing was extended, which made it all the more uncomfortable and startling to watch, yet is exactly what many horror films lack. To compare Unhinged to Sleepaway Camp (1983) would not be entirely wrong (with slight similarities in the plot), but instead unfair, as this film was the first made of the two (1982). I find it laughable sometimes when I run across reviewers who state that the film they've watched was same old same old, nothing new when they're reviewing a horror movie from the '70s or early '80s.

Despite all the stalely delivered dialogue, Unhinged is a good horror film. On the DVD release I have, in "special features", there's a TV interview with the director, Don Gronquist, and one of the actresses who I felt gave the best performance. Mr. Gronquist is one of the worst speakers I've ever listened to. I wonder what he's like on the set. `Sp-p-p-p-p-p-it it out, junior!' Anyway, if you're a fan of '70s and '80s slasher films you must see Unhinged.

This movie should be along with the cult classics, it's a pchycological thriller involving a demented mother and her daughter and somewhere during the movie a mentally disabled son. A group of girls are caught during a storm when their car wrecks and are soon brought to a house of the old lady and her daughter and soon discover their strange relationship. This movie is so full of curved balls you can't figure out just who the killer is in this movie that leads to the end of the travelers lives. One thing that was not explained was the weird way the old lady acted during the dinner table staring at silver salt and pepper shakers or whatever they were, which was one of the many strange things she did. There were a few strange scenes in the movie; why would somebody just sit in front of a piano and listen to this loony toon play the piano playing checkers? But it's all worth the watch as the end climaxes and the whole movie just throws me for a loop. Well worth a watch if you like strange, spooky thunderstorm type movies.

What starts out as your average old dark house movie picks up its dragging feet towards the end and delivers a whopper of a finale. It's not a very good movie - some of the actors appear to be in danger of falling asleep mid-line reading, the pacing is uneven, and some of the scenes are lit so dark that you have to imagine what's actually going on, but when Unhinged rises to the occasion, it can be very effective.