EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Develiker terrible... so disappointed.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Scott LeBrun The 1980 horror film "The Unseen" is diverting stuff: it's equal parts amusing, disturbing, and ultimately touching. With story credit going to makeup effects masters Stan Winston and Tom Burman, it's got some fine suspense moments, good makeup effects by Craig Reardon (but not very much gore), a fantastic music score by Michael J. Lewis, and capable acting from a well chosen cast. It moves along well to a terrific final third, when all is revealed. Some potential viewers may be turned off by the low body count, while others may admire the twisted nature of the story points. (For those who care, there *is* full frontal nudity from cast member Lois Young.)Gorgeous, glamorous Barbara Bach, the Bond girl of "The Spy Who Loved Me", stars as Jennifer Fast, a reporter who travels with her crew, consisting of Vicki (Ms. Young) and Jennifers' sister Karen (Karen Lamm, "Trackdown"), to the tiny California town of Solvang to cover its Danish festival. Due to a mix-up with their reservations, they're without lodging, but fortunately they run into museum proprietor Ernest Keller (Sydney Lassick, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"), who offers to let them stay at his farmhouse. Unfortunately, what they don't know is that Ernest and his mousy "wife" Virginia (Lelia Goldoni, "Shadows") are hiding a big secret in their cellar, which surfaces to terrorize the three lovely ladies.Bach does well in the lead, even though in the last act she doesn't do much besides scream and cower in fright. Lamm and Young are likable, as is Douglas Barr ('The Fall Guy', "Deadly Blessing") as Jennifers' athlete boyfriend. Goldoni is so good that your heart just goes out to her character. But the movie really belongs to the late, very distinctive character actor Lassick, who here has one of the biggest roles of his career and makes the most of it. His truly creepy Ernest is the true monster of the piece, not the mentally impaired "Junior" (incredibly well played by Stephen "Flounder" Furst of "Animal House") who only wants to play and doesn't know his own strength.This is a solid credit for the late cult director Danny Steinmann ("Savage Streets", "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning"), although he was dissatisfied enough with the final cut that he took his name off the picture, to be replaced with the pseudonym "Peter Foleg".Some of the same crew from "Halloween" (1978) are utilized here, including Don Behrns, Barry Bernardi, and camera operator Raymond Stella.Seven out of 10.

Coventry It's true that Danny Steinmann's "The Unseen" is a simplistic horror thriller with a very predictable plot, no particular attempts for twists or surprises whatsoever and featuring literally every single cliché the genre has brought forward over the decades, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad film. On the contrary, my friends and I were pleasantly surprised by this obscure but nevertheless intense little 80's shock- feature that mainly benefices from a handful of brutal images and a downright brilliant casting. The beautiful and ambitious reporter Jennifer Fast and two of her equally attractive friends travel to a little Californian town to shoot a documentary on the anniversary festival, but their hotel forgot to register their booking. In their search for a place to stay, the trio runs into the exaggeratedly friendly but suspicious museum curator Ernest Keller who invites the girls to stay at his remote countryside mansion. One by one the girls experience that Keller and his extremely introvert and submissive sister Victoria hide a dark and murderous secret inside their house. "The Unseen" can easily be described as a cheap and ultimately perverse amalgamation of the horror classics "Psycho" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". The plot is a series of familiar themes that became notorious and endlessly imitated due to these two films, like twisted family secrets in the cellar, voyeurism, crazed inbred killers and a very unappetizing treatment of chickens. Still, I don't consider these to be negative remarks, as "The Unseen" is a completely unpretentious and modestly unsettling thriller that clearly never intended to be the greatest horror classic of the decade. Although the denouement of the plot is pretty clear quite fast, director Steinmann attempts to maintain the mystery by keeping the evil present in the house "unseen" like the title promised. The casting choices and acting performances are truly what lift this sleeper above the level of mediocre. Sydney Lassick, immortalized since his role as the overly anxious psychiatric patient Charley Cheswick in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" is truly the ideal choice for the role of Ernest Keller. His persistent friendliness and almost naturally perverted appearance are exactly what the character needed. Also Stephen Furst, who eventually turns from the unseen into the seen, gives away a tremendous performance as "Junior". He looks and acts like an authentic handicapped man and his attempts to get close to Jennifer in the basement are genuinely unnerving. "The Unseen" is a slow and predictable but nevertheless potent early 80's film that will certainly appeal to fans of 70's exploitation and generally weird stuff.

harry-austin I purchased this movie at a car boot sale, so I was not expecting it to be a horror movie on the same level as A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) or The Hills Have Eyes (1977) but I thought that it would still be fairly enjoyable to watch. However, it proved to be not at all enjoyable, but instead the acting and the general movie was mock-able, such as the ways the the 'unsees killer' murders his victims and how all of the people killed just happen to be young blonde women. It was a stereotypical horror film. I say this because of the following reasons:1) Three blonde women in danger, the majority get killed. 2) One survives by crawling around in the dark while being chased by the killer. 3) Surprise surprise, help arrives in the form of a shotgun!By using three simple points, I have saved you two odd hours by summarising this poor excuse of a horror movie, so you are now lucky enough to not have to watch it.

Lee Eisenberg Since "The Unseen" is your basic B movie, the only reason to see it is that it stars Barbara Bach (Ringo Starr's wife), Stephen Furst (Flounder in "Animal House") and Sydney Lassick (Cheswith in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and also the principal in "Carrie"). No, seriously. That's the only reason to check it out: The Beatles, John Belushi and Stephen King are linked by a story of three women staying in a house inhabited by a carnivorous inbred! If only the founders of Solvang had predicted this! Sorry if I haven't done the greatest job describing the movie. It's just that a cast like this easily eclipses the movie, in my view. Granted, there are a few of the requirements for horror flicks, namely the bathtub scene. Otherwise, nothing significant here.PS: Barbara Bach had previously starred in a similar movie with a similarly jaw-dropping cast. That movie was the Italian horror flick "L'isola delli uomini pesce" (called "Screamers" in the US), in which she co-starred with Mel Ferrer, aka Audrey Hepburn's ex. Yes, it's true. Ringo Starr's soon-to-be wife and Audrey Hepburn's ex co-starred in a movie about half-human, half-fish creatures.