I didn't expect much from this thing, but you get the whole enchilada with this one and then some. I was actually surprised to find myself riveted. Five psychotic children being transported through what appears to be the Canadian wilderness escape their seriously inept asylum orderlies. The children, including a kid Lief Garrett in bell bottoms, a teenage hottie in a nun outfit, a black "soldier" kid and a couple of other sad sacks go begging on Gene Evans' ski lodge home. Evans has a pile of people visiting, his daughter and her middle-aged stud boyfriend, his handler and his bimbo, and a mental midget in a powerful bod ala Frankenstein. The kids basically go to war on these folks, and what ensues is a plethora of 1970s mayhem.
This is an impressive little flick you'd miss while blinking, but it has guts to it. Actually pissed me off at the end, which means it got to me.
Richard Burton aka "Swinging D*ck" was reaching his apex as a grimacing, thrashing actor with obvious drinking problems weighing heavy under each piercing blue eye. Here he's a priest running a boy's school in England, and one kid, Burton's favorite student and homoerotic fascination, meets a hippie biker in the woods (played by Billy Connelly and his Scottish accent) and accidentally kills him. The kid then reveals the murder in the Confessional, meaning Burton's priest cannot tell anyone what he knows. From that point on, there's a psychological battle between the kid and the priest, in which everything is not as it appears, and some of it is worse than either imagined.
A strange experience, well done no doubt. Burton's histrionics adds a kind of wretched excess to a story about repressed young people yearning for release.
A pack of jaded, wealthy doctor types led by a surly and great Hal Holbrook go on a wilderness hike in a butt-remote area and end up facing off against a shadowy mountain man intent on killing them. Not only that, but the killer is giving the doctors symbolic clues as a way to terrorize them.
This is a great flick, with the proper 1970s' Existentialism and a heady dose of anger behind it, making it just as relevant today as it was then. Or relevant to the four or five people who ever saw this movie. Trust me, it's a strong movie with excellent performances that will leave you feeling exhausted and filthy by the end.
I haven't seen nearly enough Dario Argento movies, that's for sure. Every one of them I have seen is emblazoned in my mind like the Dragon scars on Kwai Chang Caine's arms in every episode of "Kung Fu." UNSANE joins that list, with the great Anthony Franciosa as an American writer of sexy murder thrillers who ends up in Rome for a promotional tour. The second he steps foot off the plane, people begin dying in the same methods as those in his novels. Mostly by straight razor, with the killer gleefully informing Fransciosa's character that more will die and he will know it's his fault. And that's only the beginning of the implements of death on display. About fifty people die onscreen, some twice.
Fantastic movie, with John Saxon prominently involved and a host of bloody murders and Italian boys in uncomfortably-tight jeans and Italian women with wicked evil eyes constantly pulling at your zipper, you cannot escape the allure of this thing. I defy you to even try. Magnetic, unique, and sick as only Italians can get away with.
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