Disconnected (1984)

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

I enjoy weird low budget horror from the early 80's more than most. Disconnected is weirder and lower budgeted than most early 80's horror. We were meant to be together...Here we have the lovely Alicia for a heroine, cracking up as her identical twin Barbara-Anne screws around with her boyfriends. Tormented by hallucinations and noisy psyche freak-out phone calls (which succeed in being genuinely creepy) she happily sets to it with a geeky new beau. But what does all this have to do with a crazed killer icing his way through the ladies of the area...? While other no-budget horror of the era was content with aping popular slashers of the time, Disconnected has more on its mind. References to older films, notably Shadow of a Doubt (which a character spoils) as well as various posters, and the heroines video rental job (where at one stage she comes across an obnoxious porno patron) give the impression of the film riffing on its own milieu even as it inhabits it, its an approach that can come off awfully obnoxious but here it works because everything is so damned strange that its tough to unpick any meaning. The joy is that the construction is as strange as the plotting, so the strangeness becomes inescapable, it curls out of just about every frame in a captivating web of strange and if you can succumb, well its a good experience. There are strange things that seem a result of ineptitude, like the main character referencing the lateness of the hour while sun clearly shines in her window, or one bit where the brightness through her window makes a scene near impossible to make out. Then there are strange things that seem deliberate and beautiful, like editing that shuns plot rhythm so the audience can never settle into a scene in case it cuts away without discernible point (a pivotal moment of the film takes place off screen in this way), but really likes cutting to weird background objects in scenes where the action is of interest. Occasionally the wacky technique comes up unsettling trumps (a couple of interesting kills) but mostly it's bewildering, and I sure like bewilderment. There are bar scenes that skip dialogue and environmental sound so we can see mouths move but hear only disco pop, there's even a cop talking straight to camera against a white backdrop for some kind of documentary touch. There's more of course, but I could carry on a long way on it and I haven't got all day. It is worth mentioning that the ending explains virtually nothing and summons suspicions of a lost script (or final scenes dreamt up on the fly), which may be a problem for some. Acting-wise this is about what you'd expect. Frances Raines is pretty solid as Alicia/Barbara-Anne, effectively frayed as the former and sexy and combative as the latter. Helps that she's a lovely looking lady as well (and shows her boobs). Mark Walker is convincingly awkward and strange as new boyfriend Franklin, and to be honest I can barely remember anybody else worth mentioning. Most people are going to hate this one, but I had a grand old time, its mixture of unabashed strangeness and cold sincerity with trash art musing aesthetics place it as one of the most unusual of its era, giving perhaps even Horror House on Highway 5 a run for its acid burn out money. I give it a 7/10, but suspect this is more like a 4 for the majority.

Disconnected is quite a strange movie. It is half slasher film, a quarter crime thriller, and a quarter art film. It is, surprisingly, quite unpredictable, and even a little bit shocking at times. Unfortunately, the movie is brought down drastically by a low budget, making the film sleazy and unrealistic. The film itself kind of brings this feeling of "What the hell just happened?" at the end of each scene, not because of twists in the plot, but because the film is confusing.After coming home from work one day, Alicia (the beautiful, yet sadly unknown Frances Raines) finds an old man at her apartment, wanting to use the telephone. She lets him use her phone while she leaves the room to make some tea. When she comes back, the man is gone. She begins to receive obscene phone calls, which consist of a loud, electronic voice screaming at her. Meanwhile, Alicia begins dating a man named Franklin (Mark Walter) after her twin sister, Barbara Ann (Also played by Frances Raines), steals her boyfriend, Mike (Carl Koch). Little does Alicia know that Franklin is a serial killer who kills women after he sleeps with them...Made in 1983 (A golden age for slasher films), Disconnected is probably one of the rarest and most original slasher made for it's time. However, like mentioned before, the budget is so small that the film is basically a porn film without all the sex (Even though there is a ton of T&A in the film). Despite the low budget, the acting is actually not that bad for such a bad movie. Frances Raines is pretty good in her role as a damsel in distress, especially towards the end of the movie, which leads to her nearly having a breakdown from the phone calls. One of the things I didn't entirely like about the movie is why there are scenes that consist of the director of the film (Gorman Bechard) and a policeman who is trying to solve the case (Ben Page). There really isn't much explanation as to what these scenes are completely about. The policeman usually talks more about himself than the actual case, and ends up just disappearing from the film entirely towards the end.Overall, the idea the writers had wasn't a bad idea at all, the plot isn't bad at all. The actual movie, however, was bad. The budget, the confusing scenes, the music, and the strange artsy scenes made the film bad.

OK, I don't normally like to trash filmmakers and this director seems to want to make something way beyond his abilities. But seriously anyone who gave this film high marks needs to have their Thorazine doses lowered. This director makes Ed Wood look like a genius. I had never heard of this film (and for good reason). The plot is non-existent. The editing appears to have been done by throwing all the film into a Veggiematic and then randomly splicing it together. There are numerous "wall reaction" shots (seriously) that go on for literally 30 seconds. The sound is terrible. The photography aspires to good but fails miserably. There is one whole sequence that is shot directly into the sun where you can't make out at all what's going on. In a climatic scene (as though it would really exist in this movie) the entire action happens off-screen. This is a train wreck of movie. It just doesn't get worse than this.I can only imagine the director apparently went to the the Xavier Cogat School of film and failed. The only redeeming thing in this is Frances Raines who is great to look at. I am stunned by the IMDb info that this filmmaker went on to make more films. I have to think he must be a rich kid whose parents indulged his every whim.

Once again we're in the realms of slasher movies that just about fit the guidelines of the category. As with Dead Kids and Murderlust, Disconnected attempts to branch away from the hackneyed likes of The Prowler and Edge of the Axe without straying too far from the stalk and slash rulebook.After the credits have rolled we meet Alicia (Francis Raines) the protagonist of the feature. On her way home from work one day she finds an elderly man hanging around mysteriously beside her apartment. Sympathetically she allows the stranger to come inside and use her phone, but whilst she's making a cup of tea, he vanishes from her living room without trace. Later that night, Alicia tells her twin sister Barbara Ann (also Francis Raines) about the mysterious visitor, but she laughs it off telling her sibling that he probably just made a call and left suddenly. We soon learn that these twins don't exactly see eye to eye, mainly because Barbara Ann keeps sleeping with Alicia's boyfriends behind her back. Mike (Carl Koch) is the latest in the line of unfaithful partners to get the chop, not only for the aforementioned cheating, but presumably also because he has the worst case of 'bad mullet syndrome' that I have ever seen! Imagine a mid-eighties geek with a poodle on his head and you may be able to conjure up your own visual image.Down in the dumps and on the rebound, Alicia meets up with a guy named Franklin (Mike Walker) and agrees to go out on a date with him. Franklin comes across as a polite fellow and he hides pretty well the fact that he loves nothing more than picking up promiscuous women, taking them back to his flat and then slaughtering them with the handy switch blade that he keeps in his bedside cabinet. Around the same time that Alicia meets this undercover maniac, she begins receiving bizarre and frankly quite credibly eerie persistent anonymous phone calls. As the bodies pile up around the city the Police get more and more baffled. Is Franklin the mysterious caller or is the petrified female just a little disconnected? Disconnected is certainly an oddity of a feature. Almost as intriguing as it is bemusing, it will at times leave you staring at the screen in confusion. After the killer is revealed and dealt with half way through the runtime, the mystery is still un-resolved and to be honest the conclusion remains inconclusive to the viewer. Gorman Bechard's direction will have you as baffled as the illogical plot line. 88 of the 90-minute runtime looks to have been shot and edited by a retarded gibbon, but then every once in a while he manages to pull off a standout shock sequence that feels out of place amongst the rest of the point and shoot mediocrity. The director's obsession with wide, spacious and eminently tedious backdrops is as tedious as a HBO documentary and the chapters look to have been sewn together using a chainsaw and a tub of wallpaper paste.The dramatics from the supporting actors are generally non-existent, but Francis Raines showed flashes of potential. OK, so she's certainly no Merryl Streep; in fact come to think of it, she's no Sharon Stone either; but for a breakout performance, I've certainly seen worse. One thing that is worth mentioning is the cheesy but still rather enjoyable soundtrack, which must have soaked up the majority of the minuscule budget. Look out for the hilarious nightclub scene, which in true slasher cheese on toast tradition shows us why the early eighties will always remain a bad disco memory to those that were alive and kicking at the time.Bechard didn't attempt to hide the fact that he was making a shlock-a-lock feature. One character says, "I feel like I'm stuck in a low budget horror film, because some man is going round killing young women!" Another mentions something about nudity and violence and you can tell that the director knew exactly which audience he was aiming to satisfy. I guess in a way he succeeded, because for all its nonsensical and off the wall ramblings, Disconnected remains worth a watch. Yes it's confusing, and yes it makes very little common sense; but as an authentic take on the slasher formula, there are worse attempts floating about. Track it down if you can find it.