Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on August 22, 2008, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
While MGM’s upcoming Pumpkinhead DVD celebrates one of Stan Winston’s greatest triumphs outside of his usual role of FX creator, Code Red/BCI’s double-DVD edition of The Unseen reveals a chapter in his filmmaking history that has gone, if not unseen, than largely unacknowledged. One reason for that is that while Winston shares a story billing on the actual movie with fellow makeup master Tom Burman and director Peter Foleg, the writing credits in The Unseen’s ad and press material, and thus almost all of the film’s reviews, and even the billing block on the DVD case cite Foleg and three different co-scribes (among them Texas Chainsaw Massacre veteran Kim Henkel). Add the fact that “Foleg” himself is actually a pseudonym for Danny Steinmann, who would go on to direct the fifth Friday the 13th, and there’s the clear suggestion of a creative history as tortured as any of the onscreen victims, one explored at length in the disc set’s supplements.
Back in the early 1980s, TV newscaster was the career of choice for countless horror-film heroines, but this ’80-lensed, ’81-released flick does the rest two better by having a trio of newswomen imperiled by the titular menace. Arriving in the town of Solvang, CA to cover a real-life Danish festival—which lends the production a bit of free local color—Jennifer (Barbara Bach), Karen (Karen Lamm) and Vicki (Lois Young) find themselves without a place to stay, and wind up boarding at the remote house of nearby museum owner Ernest Keller (Sydney Lassick). An at first harmless-seeming eccentric, Ernest has a withdrawn sister, Virginia (Lelia Goldoni) living with him, along with something in the basement that’s able to creep behind the walls and below the floor vents, grabbing the pretty visitors and dragging them to horrible offscreen fates.
The vibe is part Texas Chainsaw (no surprise given Henkel’s involvement) and, especially as the Keller family history is revealed, part Psycho (which the DVD supplements reveal was intentional on Steinmann’s part). Like those movies, The Unseen has touches of black/quirky humor here and there, as when the threatening-sounding heavy breathing over the opening credits turns out to be the exertions of Jennifer’s useless boyfriend (Doug Barr) pumping iron. The goings-on in the Keller house have their creepy moments too—but everything goes to pot in the final act when Jennifer becomes trapped in the cellar, and “the unseen” turns out to be a chubby, babylike, mentally defective man (Stephen Furst) who just wants to play with Jennifer, and hardly seems like the type to wantonly murder her friends. While Furst’s performance is technically good and Craig Reardon’s makeup for “Junior” is convincing, the sight of Bach reacting with stark terror as a “monster” that amounts to Animal House’s Flounder in a diaper making goo-goo noises at her elicits laughs that the filmmakers surely didn’t intend.
On both the DVD’s audio commentary and in an interview segment, Furst recalls visiting a facility for mentally impaired adults to research his part, and the perils of eating barbecued ribs with his Junior facial prosthetics on. Otherwise, he comes up with distinct memories for each supplement, recalling his most hazardous moment in the on-camera bit and the fun he had with the role on the talk track. Barr also has an interview featurette, but doesn’t have much in the way of specific Unseen memories—in fact, he offers more detailed reminiscences of his other 1981 fright feature, Wes Craven’s Deadly Blessing! (And someone should have lightened up on the repetitive oompah music from that Danish festival that backs portions of both chats.)
Furst shares the commentary with producer Anthony B. Unger, who took over for Winston and Burman in that capacity and thus wasn’t privy to all the details of the movie’s development. But he dishes a good amount of dirt anyway, from the original interest in casting Carl Weathers as Jennifer’s beau until a foreign sales agent balked at making the romance interracial, to the substance-abuse problems of some of the cast (Bach went into rehab and Lamm died of an overdose post-Unseen), to revealing which member of the crew left his wife for Bach—who promptly threw him over. The topics sometimes entertainingly stray from the movie at hand, as Unger discusses his previous supernatural film Tam Lin (a.k.a. The Devil’s Bride, and Roddy McDowall’s directorial debut) and Furst reveals that Animal House’s studio wanted Meat Loaf for the part of Flounder. (When all else fails, moderator Lee Christian even asks Furst about his 1984 river-raft comedy Up the Creek.)
The real meat, though, is on disc two, which contains longer, revealing interviews with Reardon and Burman that shed light on The Unseen’s contentious gestation. Burman makes no bones about his distaste for the script by Henkel et al. that Steinmann brought to him, which he and Winston ultimately rewrote; Reardon reveals that when the pair left the film, they retained the rights to the Junior designs they had already developed, with Burman even paying a visit to Reardon’s shop to make sure his concepts (given a showcase in a terrific photo/art gallery here) didn’t infringe. Both artists are full of intriguing anecdotes (Burman shares a few from his early career, including a fun story about Dick Smith and another about Planet of the Apes) and, like the others among The Unseen’s extras, help create a portrait of the absent Steinmann. Apparently he was an exacting craftsman who could be difficult to work with, and left the project after dragging his feet in postproduction.
He thus might not be totally happy with The Unseen’s 1.85:1 presentation, apparently derived from a print in what one must assume was the absence of negative materials. It’s generally pleasing, with rich hues and good clarity, though there are moments of speckling and color fluctuation, and the clear mono sound bears soft hissing and crackling at numerous points. On the other hand, even if the movie isn’t pristine, it was well worth Code Red’s while to unearth The Unseen when they could supplement it with so much that merits watching.
