A young woman, Linda, is gang r*ped at a stable. This causes her to be institutionalised. She’s then released and collected from the sanitarium by her husband who, unbeknownst to her, now has a mistress who he met whilst she was convalescing. Linda has flashbacks to what happened to her previously and is having a hard time differentiating what’s real or not.

Demented is an apt name for this movie. Its like I Spit on Your Grave was combined with Repulsion and made into a TV movie by Polyester-era John Waters. That’s quite the accolade.

I also love that none other than Harry Reems is cast as the philandering husband. Completely inappropriate casting but it works! Reems being cast would mean that major distributors would refuse to take the film on.

It’s not just the liberal presence of ‘psycho-camp’ here that reminds me of John Waters. The interior design and the furniture upholstery here is so lurid, so tasteless (just what I love), that they can make your eyes bleed. It’s like Francine Fishpaw was in charge of set design.

I remember the very explicit video artwork for Demented from when I was a kid, salivating over it in one of my local video stores. I’m glad the actual movie is every bit as great as this artwork.

4 out of 5 stars