This Oregon shot low-budget slasher once resided on Britain's infamous "Video Nasties" list, though watching it today it's really hard to see why. While I'm sure it was a coup for Unhinged to be on said list, I seriously doubt many people out there have heard of (or seen) this apart from the hardcore horror fans. Perhaps the most surprising thing about director/co-writer Don Gronquist's flick isn't its censorship but the fact that somehow it turns out to be not a bad effort overall, it's just not what you might be expecting.

Kicking off with very mild shades of Last House On The Left, Terry (Laurel Munson) and two of her friends are heading off for the weekend at a music festival but along the way they end-up crashing their car into a ditch in the middle of nowhere. They decide they need to find someone to help and eventually end-up at a nearby mansion in which resides Marion Penrose (J.E. Penner) and her crippled mother.

Their hosts seem to be pretty nice, apart from the fact that Marion is constantly insulted by her mother who seems to think she's a whore, but they don't have a phone and the girls are unable to get to a nearby town thanks to a bad rainstorm. Although, if any of them had any sort of brains, they'd get the Hell out of there since all sorts of weird things start happening. Terry is constantly woken in the night by odd sounds, we get the typical slasher moments with shots of an unseen assailant's legs shuffling along and peeking into windows, and they even find a tooth on the floor and don't bat an eyelash about it. Sure, they think their hosts are creepy, and tell each other so, but do you think that stops them from staying?

In between Gromquist's mild attempts at psychological thrills and long stretches of nothing there are a few scattered deaths such as when one of the girl's decides to attempt heading to town and gets a scythe in the stomach for her troubles. There's also a lot of shots of rain, people eating (though it is amusing seeing the mother character staring intently at salt and pepper shakers while suspenseful music swells on the soundtrack), and endless chatter between the characters.

And if we've decided anything by the time the extremely messed-up finale shows-up it's that it's really no surprise this is Munson's only screen credit. Put up against stage actress Penner, Munson just craps the bed on the acting front and when she's not delivering her lines poorly, she's just generally annoying.

Speaking of that finale, it's by far the best thing in the movie and is guaranteed to throw you for a loop. It's really too bad Gromquist and his co-scripter Reagan Ramsey didn't keep up this tone for the entire movie. It almost makes slogging through numerous dull and talky moments worthwhile but at least we have Jonathan Newton's synthesizer happy musical score and a pretty cool axe death to keep us awake until it arrives. This isn't the outright stalk 'n' slash movie you might be going into it wanting and it's certainly more serious in tone than most of its ilk of the time. Perhaps it could've used an injection of adrenalin to speed up things but Unhinged performs competently enough.

Twelve years after helming this Gronquist would make his only other film, The Devil's Keep, before disappearing into obscurity. But that's not a surprise considering that almost everybody involved in the production of Unhinged can still count this as their sole film credit. (Chris Hartley, 2/2/08)

Directed By: Don Gronquist.
Written By: Don Gronquist, Reagan Ramsey.

Starring: Laurel Munson, J.E. Penner, Sara Ansley, Virgina Settle.