forecastfortoday 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.

A F McNeil 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.

FieCrier Not very good, but somewhat watchable. Someone is killing young women in a small town; we don't see the killings or bodies until the killer is identified. Meanwhile, an odd but polite young man tries to date Alicia, a young woman who is working at a video store. She has a slutty identical twin sister. Alicia is getting strange phone calls: nobody there, or horrible sounds, or overhearing other people's phone calls. The calls may or may not be related to the killer.The movie gets a little odd after the killer is dealt with by the police. A restless night Alicia has is depicted through a series of black & white photographs. An old man in a black hat and black coat who was seen at the beginning of the movie shows up again at the end. I'm not sure if he is significant or not.As in Gorman Bechard's other movies, Carmine Capobianco talks to the camera. Here, he's a cop talking to someone, a journalist? Oddly, he's shot against a white wall, and wears the same shirt in scenes supposed to be taking place on different days.Lots of pop/rock songs on the soundtrack. Sometimes scenes play without dialogue or environmental sound, serving as little more than music video montage scenes. There's some good music by XTC and Hunters & Gatherers.If this was Bechard's first film as a director, as it seems to be, it's not bad considering that.

Phroggy I'd like somebody to explain exactly how this movie was made. It starts as a (bad) psychokiller where basically nothing makes sense : it's just one scene after another without reason nor logic. Then we witness the killer's demise (do we ? I'm not even sure) and then, the heroine suddenly gets persecuted by her phone in a flood of weird, "arty" shots. The movie ends because they ran out of time, or somebody yelled "cut !", or everybody fell asleep, I still don't know?. In a way, it is a movie to be experienced : your latest dream had more logic in it than this attempt. What were they on ? Who made this ? Who released this ? What will become of the world ? What time is it ? What are you reading ?