By Richard Winters
My Rating: 5 out of 10
4-Word Review: Deformed son kills guests.
Jennifer (Barbara Bach) is a local news reporter who decides to take her sister Karen (Karen Lamm) and friend Vicki (Lois Young) out to Solvang, California where she plans to cover the Danish Cultural Festival that is being held there. When they arrive, they learn that there’s been an error and the hotel room they had booked is now taken and there’s no other vacancies in the town. They then meet Ernest (Sydney Lassick) a museum owner who tells them he can take them to his rural home where they can spend the night. With no other options they take up his invitation. When they arrive, they are met with Virginia (Lelia Goldoni) whom he describes as being his wife, but who is actually his sister that he’s been carrying on a relationship with for the past 20 years. They’ve also giving birth to a deformed child (Stephan Furst) who resides in the basement and comes out to kill the women through the heating vents.
Sometimes the most interesting aspect of a horror movie is simply the casting. Lassick, a balding, overweight, middle-aged man, spent the better part of his career playing lovable losers and goofballs. He’s probably best known for his performance as one of the patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and likely the last person you’d ever consider as being a menacing killer but here, he’s given that role and does amazingly well. In some ways because he goes so much against the grain from what we genuinely accept from psycho characters, both in his looks, age, and behavior, that it actually makes him even scarier and more unpredictable and thus each scene he’s in becomes riveting. It also helps with the plot logic. Most women would not feel comfortable accepting the invitation of going to a man’s house that they’ve just met but since this guy looks and behaves like such a chump, I could see the girls feeling confident around him, almost like he was inferior to them, and that they’d be able to hold their own and remain in control.
Goldoni is another intriguing casting choice. She had broken into the movie scene in the 50’s by starring in John Cassavetes landmark hit Shadows but had been relegated to supporting roles since. Here it’s more her youthfulness that’s the most impressive. She was already in her mid-40’s at the time, but still looking as young as the three women in their 20’s and it’s a shame, she wasn’t given more lines and sequestered to only conveying one type of facial expression, which is of the distraught variety.
On the flip side I wasn’t nearly as impressed with the main characters. Bach, better known as being the wife of Ringo Starr, may be pretty, but her presence is flat and lifeless. Her two friends aren’t much better particularly Karen who in private makes fun of Goldoni for greeting them while showing clear signs of being upset about something. However, why would this be a source of ridicule? She may have very good reason to being upset that the girls know nothing about, and a normal individual would show concern and curiosity while considering it a possible red flag versus making light of it.
I did like the Victorian style home and the fact that we first see it during the daylight instead of the proverbial nighttime, still made it creepy. My only complaint here was that the interiors were too neat and tidy. A home should reflect the personality of its owners, and these people were anything but neat and tidy in their inner lives, so the maintaining of the place should’ve given some clue to that like having it messy or filled with junk.
Ultimately though it’s the lack of scares and violence that really does it in. The killings are too easy and it’s debatable whether any of it would be enough to kill them. For instance, one of the ladies has the metal vent lid fall on her head, which causes her to instantly die, but in reality, that might’ve only created a cranial fracture, or concussion. Being able to strangle the other one, by grabbing onto the ends of a scarf she’s wearing and then pulling on it through the vent holes is also questionable. It might’ve causes her to pass out, but complete suffocation isn’t as believable. When she does get discovered, it would’ve been cool had she been turned around and, since her face had been pressed against it, the vent grid had been etched onto the side of her face and the fact that they didn’t think to show this was a missed opportunity.
The exposing of the dark secret could’ve been handled much better. It’s not exactly clear where the father’s voice is coming from. We can only surmise that it comes during a drunken dream that Lassick has while sitting in his living room, but the whole thing is very on-the-nose as he just sits there looking sheepish while the voice over explains the whole backstory instead of seeing it play out via a flashback, which would’ve added much more to the shock value.
The reveal of the deformed adult child is yet another letdown. Furst plays it well, but he’s just not scary. In fact, he comes off more like someone to feel sorry for. The word unseen is in the title, so the perpetrator should be out of sight the whole time, or maybe some quick flash of his face at the very end, but having him come into play the way he does makes the whole thing rather contrived and doesn’t help to make this one stand out from any of the other stalker horror movies already out there.
My Rating: 5 out of 10
Released: June 5, 1981
Runtime: 1 Hour 34 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Danny Steinmann
Studio: World Norhtal
Available: DVD, Blu-ray
