Frances Raines | Through the Shattered Lens

Disconnected, an independent and low-budget horror film from 1984, is an odd one.

Actually, odd might be too mild of a description of this film. It’s about Alicia (Frances Raines, niece of Claude) who works in a video store and who keeps getting strange phone calls. Alicia has a boyfriend named Mike (Carl Koch) and a twin sister named Barbra Ann (Raines, again) and, one night, she answers her landline phone and suddenly hears Mike and Barbara Ann talking about the affair that they’re having! She then starts having nightmares in which Mike and Barbara Ann team up to kill her.

At the same time that Alicia is dreaming about being murdered, Franklin (Mark Walter) actually is murdering women all over town. Franklin also keeps asking Alicia for a date and, after she discovers that Mike has been cheating on her, Alicia finally says yes. One morning, Franklin wakes up in bed, grabs a knife, and attempts to stab Alicia, just to discover that she’s already left for the day. Franklin just ends up stabbing a pillow, which is unfortunate because it was a nice pillow.

Meanwhile, Detective Tremaglio (Carmine Capobianco) is trying to figure out the identity of the serial killer. For some reason, Detective Tremaglio spends a good deal of the film talking directly to the camera, as if he’s being interviewed. Tremaglio is quick to point out how cheap the police station looks and he also says, at one point, that he feels like he’s in a low-budget horror film.

It creates a rather odd atmosphere. On the one hand, you’ve got Franklin wandering around town, hitting the bars and searching for new victims. On the other hand, you’ve got Alicia isolated in her apartment, dealing with the phone constantly ringing and basically having a Repulsion moment. Who is calling Alicia? It’s hard to say. It’s definitely not Franklin. Is Alicia imagining the phone calls? Or is it some sort of a supernatural force? And how is it connected to the mysterious old man who keeps wandering through the film at certain points, popping up like a red herring from the 2nd season of Twin Peaks?

Disconnected raises a lot of questions but it doesn’t answer many of them. And while it’s tempting to suggest that this is just a case of sloppy storytelling, there’s enough intentionally arty moments in the film that I actually think that Disconnected was intentionally designed to be a riddle wrapped in an enigma. For instance, there’s a scene where Alicia answers the phone. For some reason, the camera is placed directly in front of a window. The sun is streaming in through the window, which leads to an almost blinding lens flare. The viewer is vaguely aware of Alicia moving around the room and answering the phone but, due to that lens flare, it’s impossible to actually make out any real details. It sounds like an error in camera placement and yet the scene goes on for so long that there’s no way it wasn’t intentional. (It should also be noted that the scene itself wasn’t particularly important so, if that lens flare was an honest mistake, there’s no reason why the scene couldn’t have been left on the cutting room floor.) Obviously, the director liked the effect and just decided to go with it. And yes, it’s kind of annoying but it’s kind of fascinating too.

The entire plot of Disconnected has a kind of “let’s make this up as we go along” feel to it and it’s hard not to appreciate the film’s enthusiastic incoherence. At its best the film achieves a sort of dream-like intensity. In the end, it all means nothing and yet, thanks to Frances Raines’s better-than-average performance, you are invested in what happens to Alicia. You want to know what it all means, even if it only adds up to the ringing of that cursed phone.

So, does that means I’m recommending Disconnected? Kinda. As I’ve said many times in the past, I have a weakness for low-budget, amateur films. This one was filmed out in the middle of Connecticut and most of the actors were obviously not professionals. There’s something oddly likable about a film like this, one that makes no sense but, at the very least, was still made and — 36 years later — is still being watched and reviewed. So …. yeah, I am kind of recommending this film. It’s weird enough to be worth at least one viewing.

Last night, the Alamo Drafthouse hosted a special one-night showing of an infamous horror film. It was a film that was first released in 1985, the same year that I was born. It was a film that was obviously made for a very low-budget, featuring a cast of unknown actors, many of whom appear to have been amateurs. Much like Savage Weekend, it was a remarkably inept film that somehow managed to work almost despite itself. It was also a film that featured a scene with a giant fishing hook that made me and my BFFs Evelyn and Amy all go, “AGCK!” at the same time. The name of the film? The Mutilator.

That’s right, The Mutilator. Say what you will about this film, you can’t criticize that title. When you see a movie called The Mutilator, you know exactly what you’re getting into. And, though the film does get off to a bit of a slow start, it does ultimately live up to that incendiary title. There is a lot of mutilation to be found.

(And some it involves getting stabbed in the vagina with a giant fishing hook … AGCK!)

The film also features perhaps the most brilliantly generic theme song in the history of the movies. It’s called Fall Break and it’s all about teenagers having a good time. There’s no mention of fish hooks or anything else like that! Instead, it sounds exactly like something you’d expect to hear in a Crown International high school film, like The Pom Pom Girls or The Beach Girls. Just listen to the song below and tell me that it isn’t the most insidiously generic thing that you’ve ever heard.

Anyway, as for the film itself, it opens with a kid named Little Ed finding a shotgun and accidentally shooting his mother in the back. This leads to his father, Big Ed (Jack Chatham), becoming a drunk and declaring that his son will pay for what he has done.

Jump forward several years later and Ed Jr. (Matt Miller) is now in college. When Big Ed calls and demands that Ed Jr. spend his fall break taking care of their beach house, Ed Jr. is reluctant to take the job. But then his friends convince him that this would be a great chance for all of them to spend their fall break hanging out on the beach.

When they finally reach the beach house, Big Ed is nowhere to be found. Ed Jr. figures that Big Ed has already gone back home. After all, Big Ed’s battleaxe — which he usually leaves hanging on the condo wall — is gone. “Dad loves his battleaxe,” Ed Jr. explains.

Of course, what Ed Jr. and his amazingly stupid friends don’t realize is that Big Ed is still in the house. He’s in the basement, surrounded by empty bottles and sleeping with his battleaxe. When Big Ed wakes up and discovers that his son and his friends are in the condo, Big Ed decides to kill them all.

And that’s pretty much what he does.

The Mutilator was directed by Buddy Cooper and the end credits are full of other people named Cooper. This was Buddy’s only film and, for the most part, it’s definitely an amateur production. And yet, that amateurishness works to the film’s advantage. The start and the middle section of the film are so inept that when the murders start and when they turn out to be shockingly brutal and the gore effects turn out to be surprisingly effective, it’s a total shock.

Along with that fish hook (Agck!), we also get decapitations, drownings, strangulations, pitchforkings, and disembowlement by outboard motor. Making all of this all the more disturbing is that nobody really struggles or screams and tries to escape while being attacked. Instead, it’s almost as if they all realize that they’re in a slasher movie and the appearance of Big Ed and his latest weapon of choice almost puts them in a trance. It’s as if almost all of them have accepted their fate. And I realize that’s probably more due to inept directing and bad acting than anything else but still, it gives the film a disturbingly dream-like feel. In the end, The Mutilator becomes one of those films that should not work and yet somehow does.

The Mutilator will be released on Blu-ray by Arrow Video in September.