Grotesque on AllMovie

Somewhere amid the filmmakers' attempts to disorient the viewers of this film with the old movie-within-a-movie trick, it would seem they also got themselves completely lost in the process. The story opens with a false start, depicting an elderly woman being stalked by a faceless maniac (actually a scene from a retired special-effects artist's demo reel). The "real" story begins as the man's daughter (horror's head-spinning sweetheart Linda Blair) is waylaid by a band of hooligans en route to her dad's mountain cabin. This incurs the wrath of Blair's mutant brother, who lives in a hidden compartment within the cabin. As if that weren't enough, even more monsters from Blair's gnarled family tree show up for a lightning bonus round -- including Tab Hunter as a homicidal plastic surgeon. All is revealed (sort of) as yet another movie-within-a-movie, clear evidence of a writer in way over his head. Cable TV prints actually contained an additional twist ending, apparently for no reason whatsoever.