Demented

Demented is a prime slice of the kind of low budget horror/exploitation stuff that doesn't get made anymore. Depending who you are, they might be a good thing or a bad thing.

Sallee Eyse plays Linda, a rape victim who starts to lose her mind and see every man as a potential threat. It doesn't help that her husband (porn star Harry Reems) leaves home every chance he can to sleep around. Left alone, Linda's mental health deteriorates until she becomes a cold-blooded murderess.

It's all very tacky and shot and acted without any real style, but there are a few moments where it comes to life.

After surviving a rape, a woman becomes unglued and starts losing her mind in what's essentially a low budget reimagining of Repulsion without all the class and sophistication. The lead actress does nothing but whine for the entire film and it makes it really hard to root for her, especially when she goes psycho. With a better leading lady, but most of the movie is spent with this character, so if she's not cast right, the whole film is doomed.

Demented opens with a bang—or to be more accurate, a gang bang—with a harsh pre-credits sequence that sees doctor's wife Linda Rodgers (Sallee Elyse) being attacked by four men wearing stocking masks, vicious sex beasts who rip open her blouse, pull off her panties, and proceed to pass her around like candy. It's a powerful, no-nonsense opener, one that successfully drives home the true horror of rape. After that, one is really rooting for the gal to get revenge, which she does. Sort of...

After a brief spell in a sanatorium, Linda returns home but clearly isn't over her ordeal, suffering from nightmarish visions and panic attacks. Frequently left on her own at night by her unfaithful husband Dr. Matt (Harry Reems, best known for his XXX porn/roughie movies), who has been saving his best bedside manner for aspiring actress Carol (Kathryn Clayton), Linda's grip on reality begins to slip, and when a gang of teens play a cruel prank on her in her home, she confuses them for her rapists and makes for the nearest meat cleaver.

A rather obscure rape/revenge tale, Demented starts strongly and has all the ingredients for a sleazy exploitation classic but fails for two reasons: a) big breasted star Sallee Elyse obviously wasn't hired for her acting ability, and her awful acting and shrill delivery seriously grate on the nerves, and b) the ending is undeniably nasty in tone (Linda whips one poor boy's wedding tackle off with a wire), but isn't anywhere near as graphic as it could have been (the aforementioned meat-and-two-veg/wire incident is completely bloodless) and ultimately proves disappointing.

This is one of those movies that's so bad it's just bad--too plodding, amateurish, gore-free etc. etc. to really be any fun--but it still has some qualities so atrocious they're worth a look, preferably if you're watching with a heavy finger on the fast-forward.

The main thing is the main "actress," who is so awful you can't imagine what they were thinking in casting her. She has a vocal range that goes from screetch to mousy squeak to whine--she'd be ideally cast as a disembodied voice used to drive someone crazy simply because it's SOOOOO annoying. Her (presumably in-character) personality is allowed to be almost equally off-putting; it's amazing how little sympathy we feel for a woman on thin mental ice after being gang-raped, because as played "Linda" is alternately clingy and tantrum-throwing when she's not just running around screaming.

Frankly, I kind of assumed all the actors here were moonlighting porn performers, because male lead Harry Reems (working under a pseudonym) is one; but it turns out the other actors I looked up on IMDb don't even have that excuse for giving less-than-pro-level performances. (In fact Reems embarrasses himself marginally less than anyone else here.) Some of the dialogue just seems arbitrary, as if they were trying to pad the runtime with more yakking to cover up the fact that the violence is so poorly and non-graphically handled.

There's very little logic at work: we never find out how the original rapists got caught, or who they were--let alone SPOILER!--why the nice neighborhood kids who later menace Linda would think scaring a recently gang-raped woman would be a harmless "joke." (Or how at the end Linda figures out something her husband has kept secret.) It's all monumentally dumb, though a slicker and more energetic film would have been required to actually make this an ENJOYABLE ridiculous/bad movie.

Nevertheless, I'll probably never forget lead Sallee Young's performance. Though believe me, I will try. You might want to check five minutes or so of her on YouTube (any scene where she's screaming/menaced is best) just to hear that fingernails-on-chalkboard voice. Funnily enough, it seems her only other substantial role was also as "Linda" in another almost unwatchably bad early 80s horror film, "Home Sweet Home" with "Body by Jake" Steinfeld giving an almost equally ludicrous performance as a crazed killer.

DEMENTED is a preposterous, rather dull "thriller".

Linda Rodgers (Sallee Young) returns home after years in a mental institution, trying to recover from a gang rape. Readjusting to her marriage is difficult, due to her damaged emotions and flashbacks. Her husband (Harry Reems) is no help, since he's busy sneaking off to be with his mistress.

Poor Linda soon finds herself dealing with a whole new group of vicious perverts! She begins to mentally unravel. We know this because her whiny, warbling voice rises to ear-melting levels. Every time Linda gets worked up she sounds like a cross between a bratty 5 year old and a tornado siren! It goes right through your head like a drill!

Linda's attackers are -almost- as annoying as she is. Their deaths, though arriving too late to salvage this movie, do provide some relief.

Linda's final descent into madness is fairly believable, and is the best part of the movie. If only she'd been this good during the first two-thirds!

Special mention goes to Bryan Charles as Linda's gun-toting doctor. He's the only person who seems to care about her, and is also immune to her incessant shrieking that would turn lesser brains into guacamole!...