Unhinged (1982) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Three youthful chickadees make their way to a music festival and crash their car on some rural backroads in the middle of nowhere. They wake up in the home of Marion Penrose under the care of the stern-looking woman and a local Jack-of-all-trades who looks like someone who should be in a Nick Millard film. Marion assures the young girls that they shall be meeting “mother” later as the downpour is making it impossible for them to walk the handful of miles necessary to get to the closest town. The lack of phones in the house also makes it impossible for the girls to call their parents and the heavy rain has made the one road out impossible to use. Added to that, one of their number is bedridden thanks to the accident. So, it’s creepy meals with Marion and her bitchy wheelchair-bound mother. Mother has hang-ups when it comes to her daughter’s supposed promiscuous lifestyle (I’m not seeing it) and it may have something to do with how much attention Marion’s father paid to female children. Yes. The personal rot goes deep in this house. There’s a bulky homeless dude and his creep-stache stalking around outside in the rain, ogling the young ladies like a pervert in a Nick Millard flick. The young girls talk some mad shit about their hosts and express how creepy everything is. They’re not wrong but maybe cut back on the shit talk or at least whisper it like a normal person. That first night has one of the girls is woken up by what sounds like someone masturbating and that seems like the favorite pastime of that mustachioed creep that’s been hanging around. One of the gals decides to try her luck walking through the woods to town so they can get in contact with one of their parents (of course they shower first as someone watches from a peephole and moans). They let Marion know and then the brunette sets off through the woods and is slaughtered by someone wielding a scythe. It’s quick and nasty and works way better than it should. This leaves the blonde to talk with Marion about her family history, the bruised friend in bed to not do much, handyman Norm to tinker around the property looking like Dave Thomas cosplaying as Eugene Levy and mother to act awful and carry on with her man-hating ways. Marion plays piano, an establishing shot of the rain-swept house gets abused, there’s a shed that’s off limits and heavy breathing in the dead of night. It’s all accompanied by a low-effort but fucking awesome electronic score and the slightly dull and hazy performances only enhance the oddness of the whole damn thing. The violence is rare and brief but it hits pretty hard when it goes down and a natural atmosphere is prevalent thanks to the amateur blood pumping through its kinda-slasher veins. A suitable ending serves this one up as a downbeat oddity (from Ohio!) well-worth tracking down.