DISCONNECTED (1984)

DISCONNECTED (1984)

Tagline: Is anybody there...

(Horror, Drama, Just Unplug Your Phone) [R]

Note: This movie was released direct to video so it did not get a MPA rating. It definitely would have been rated [R].

In this one, we have the story of Alicia who works at a video rental store. She is having issues with her twin sister who is sleeping with her boyfriend so she dumps him to start hanging out with a creepy but nice guy named Franklin who has started showing interest in her at the video store. Shortly after dumping her ex, Alicia starts getting bizarre phone calls with strange noises before disconnecting. 

First off, this is probably one of the crappiest horror flicks when it comes to production, writing, and acting of the 80s. It’s got to be at least the bottom 10, I say that, because, in spite of some of the better ones, there is also just a ton of terrible out there. This is one of those. 

The film's female lead is Frances Raines who was only in 9 films in her career, but actually had a horror lineup that is well known, including BREEDERS, THE MUTILATOR, and LATE PHASES. Due to terrible direction and a horrifying bad script, she wasn’t able to shine in this thing at all. She actually plays both Alicia and her twin sister Barbara. Franklin is played by Mark Walker who is still acting to this day. He is probably best known as Big Boss from the TV show “Titans”. 

I can see where some people might be into the alt-80's rock soundtrack, which isn’t fully terrible, but it’s far from great, but that is about all this movie has to offer aside from that. The killings are not gory (which is fine because I am not a gore guy), there is just a lot of red 80’s tempera paint happening. This is also yet another direct-to-video slasher where the killer is just a dude. No mask, no gimmicks. He just pulls a black widow on every girl he meets and that is that. Director Gorman Bechard has some of the worst editing I have ever seen in this thing and to be honest, there are 5th grade plays better than this thing. He also directed CEMETARY HIGH which was so bad I didn’t even bother reviewing it. 

Part of this movie is clearly filler where someone is just interviewing the guy telling this whole story. Alicia does have a pretty cool couch though. So there’s that. I guess we do get a little bit of insight into what it might be like being an introvert in the situation that Alicia finds herself in. Which kind of brings me to the moral of this 80s nightmare. Never go full Alice from FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2, or Alicia from this movie. After a series of killings where you were just the final girl, always find 526 friends and 743 machine guns, and 86 flame throwers and move to an undisclosed location guarded by alligators and tigers with laser eyes. Being an introvert and just wishing the problem away is not going to help you. 

Sorry ladies and gentlemen, this thing just sucks all the way around and there really isn’t much good to say about it. The last 20 minutes just drag on needlessly giving us more terrible acting, more terrible camera work, and more chain smoking after I really wanted this thing to just be over. 

My advice is to never watch this garbage movie. It sucks. Just start emailing every streaming service telling them to take this off their platforms now. DISCONNECTED gets a 0 out of 7. That’s right, a 0, not a 1, not a 2, just a lousy 0. That’s it. The review is over.

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