I don’t really get sick. Oh, I get a nice head cold once or twice a
year, and I have hay fever that would debilitate a lesser man, but it’s rare
for me to contract something akin to the flu (and bear in mind, I’m in and out
of multiple people’s houses everyday in the course of my job). I don’t chalk this up to having an iron
constitution or anything of the sort. As
a matter of fact, I’d probably just call it dumb luck. However, when I do get the flu, I get it
bad. I don’t just get a fever, headache,
and nausea. I get a high fever,
migraines, and a stomach so twisted it’s nothing short of crippling. Often, this also leads to fever dreams which,
for as bizarre and interesting as they are, I could frankly do without on the
whole. What I’m getting at is even at my
worst, even when I’m vomiting so much and so hard that it feels like the only
thing I have left to bring up is my own anus (if it were someone else’s, I’d
really be worried), I have never coughed during the act. This is one of those cinema tropes which has always
bugged me, that people will spit up a bit and then erupt in a coughing jag that
would make a “lunger” green with envy. I
get that it’s called “acting,” but to my mind, this is the kind of thing that’s
simply not true to life. Even in Horror
movies.
Television reporter Jennifer Fast (Barbara Bach) walks out
(ironically enough) on beau Tony (Doug
Barr, who you may recall as Howie Munson on TV’s The Fall Guy), who has recently undergone knee surgery. Traveling with sister Karen (Karen Lamm) and assistant Vicki
(Lois Young) to the hamlet of
Solvang (an anagram for Vanglos, in case you were wondering), the three find
the local hotel completely booked up.
Coming upon the Union Hotel and its not-at-all-creepy proprietor Ernest
(Sydney Lassick) they ask for
a room, but are informed that it’s just a museum. However, he can let them stay at his house,
where fragile wife Virginia (Lelia
Goldoni) takes care of things. But
the horrors to come are still (wait for it) unseen.
If my synopsis for Danny Steinmann’s (director of
the Linda Blair vehicle Savage
Streets, here credited as Peter Foleg) The Unseen seems
a bit slight and not all that scary, that’s because the film is a bit slight
and not all that scary. It has all the
elements for a Horror film, and it puts them mostly in the right order. Nonetheless, the filmmakers don’t seem to
want to focus on the people ostensibly set up as the heroines of the
piece. If anything, this is more the
story of the twisted Keller family, and had they played up the skeezy, gothic
elements associated with them, this could very well have been a decent little
Psychodrama. Instead, they tried to
force a standard Slasher structure onto the film, and I feel that it suffers
greatly as a result. It also doesn’t
help that the acting seesaws between wooden and manic (with Lassick earning the
coveted BEM Award for overdoing it this time out). Sure, the viewers’ fingernails will dig
rivulets into their arm rests, but it’s strictly a reaction to the thespian skills
on display and the film’s lumbering plot, not due to any tension constructed by
Steinmann and company.
It’s impossible to discuss this film in any
detail without some form of SPOILERS, although it could also be argued that
this is an unspoilable film, since one of the big twists (out of two) is only a
twist in its appearance and has probably been discussed more than Rosebud
(okay, not really). Ready? Here we go.
So, former Flounder Stephen
Furst plays Junior Keller (aka the titular Unseen), the large mongoloid
offspring of Ernest and Virginia who have kept him locked in the basement,
assumedly since he could walk (and not in the attic where this sort of familial
black eye is normally secreted away). He
is the murderer of two of the female characters, but it is Ernest who is the
true villain of this flick, and we get that simply upon first sight. Why else would you cast Lassick, unless you
were looking for an unctuous yet somewhat effete character that is instantly
untrustworthy and unlikable? Regardless,
it is Ernest’s relationship with not only Junior but also Virginia which
underpins the major themes in the movie.
That the filmmakers tried to have these same themes mirrored by Jennifer
and her relationship with Tony is admirable but also ineffective (I can only
assume they couldn’t afford Bach’s salary to keep her onscreen longer).
The first of the major themes is one of children
and parents, specifically mothers.
Virginia is a mother in a very traditional sense. She stays at home and takes care of the house
and cooks and cleans. She is also abused
mentally and physically. Jennifer, by
contrast, is an independent woman and doesn’t want a child at this point in her
career. She has repressed her mothering
instinct (though it can just as easily be argued that she has none as portrayed
in Bach’s icy performance), and this is conveyed in the first scenes of the
film. Jennifer walks out on Tony as he
struggles to lift weights with his repaired knees (and Steinmann’s insistence
on showing a closeup of his scar drives home the point that Tony is an
incomplete man and in need of someone who can care for him, though not to the
point an infant would). Naturally then,
when Jennifer is confronted with Junior, she must essentially face “the return
of the repressed.” What she has
attempted to kill in her own life now threatens that life in a much larger (and
terminal) fashion. What’s interesting (or
at least befuddling) is that we are given no indication as to how any of this
will affect her life in the future. We
see the actions that she takes, but it is difficult to believe that her ordeals
will strengthen her maternal impulses and change her mind about having a child
of her own. In fact, I wouldn’t be
surprised if she had her tubes tied after the film fades out. Again, the film’s focus is rooted in the
Kellers (not the outsiders), and it is how Virginia and Ernest act which depicts
any character growth.
The second theme I’d like to touch on deals
with forgetting and burying the past (which can also be read as guilt). Here, we should be paying attention to
Jennifer and Tony in this regard, but pretty much everything which the
filmmakers have to say about the two is put out in the first scene and then all
but hung out to dry. No, it is the
Kellers who encompass this theme almost in its entirety. Virginia has been scarred by the past actions
which have formed her present situation.
Junior is a living embodiment of the malignant past which birthed him
(though he acts merely within his severe limitations and without malice). Ernest, who is the catalyst for everything
bad in the Kellers’ lives, is himself a victim of the past. Yet in the past, when Ernest acted out to
escape from the cycle of abuse which defined his young life, he only made
things worse and progressed (some would argue regressed) from there, thus
further perpetuating the cycle. He owns
a hotel which was turned into a museum, a place and livelihood literally trapped
in the past. To be fair, there is a certain
richness in this material. The
filmmakers just didn’t dig into it past a surface level, and consequently The Unseen is a film which should
resonate but ultimately doesn’t.
MVT: Furst’s Junior is the standout of the
film. For the first few minutes he’s
onscreen, he is moderately impressive and not a little creepy. Unfortunately, when he starts doing things
which are a bit on the ridiculous side (in Furst’s defense, a preoperational
child would very likely behave in the same fashion), any sense of unease
quickly turns to comedy. It’s a shame,
really.
Make
Or Break: The Break is the scene where Ernest gets
drunk and has a conversation with a family member. Not only is it leaden with hamfisted
exposition, but it also gives us some truly overwrought acting which just
crushes any expectations you might have for the film’s remainder.
Score: 5/10
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