Sept 22-28 Chuck Vincent Week: No one did it like Chuck! He’s the unsung king of Up All Night comedy, a queer director making the straightest romcoms but throwing in muscle studs and drag queens. His films explore the concept of romance from almost every angle – he was deeply passionate about love.

Chuck Vincent always gave Veronica Hart something great to work with. In Deranged, she’s Joyce, a woman trapped in her own home, reliving the moments of her life after a home invasion and a miscarriage. Influenced by Gerald Damiano’s movie Memories Within Miss Aggie, Vincent saw this as a stage play, shooting it in continuity over five days. It also has lots of Repulsion in its heart.

Joyce (Veronica Hart using the alias Jane Hamilton) and her half-sister Maryann (Jennifer Delora) drop Joyce’s husband Frank (Paul Siederman, who is really “Raw Talent” Jerry Butler) off at the airport, as he’s going to London for a month. As for Joyce, she’s stuck with her controlling family as she’s in the final weeks of her pregnancy. Despite her mother, Sheila (Jill Cumer), throwing her a baby shower, she’s trapped in her own mind, hearing the voices of her family, her husband, and herself. Even her home isn’t safe, as a man attacks her, stomping on her stomach until she miscarries; she stabs him with scissors right in the eye.

You or I would call the police. We’re not Joyce, who fakes her pregnancy and hides the body in her house while remembering how her father Eugene (Jamie Gillis!) killed himself after learning that Maryann wasn’t his child, but instead belonged to Darren (John Brett). The family accuses Joyce of the murder; she marries Frank, who is really in love with her half-sister. Additionally, she was probably sleeping with her father, so there are many reasons why the voices in Joyce’s head are screaming.

While the neighbors complain about the smell of the rotting food and dead body, and her only visitors are Maryanne and a deliverman named Nick (Gary Goldman), who is into pregnant women, she starts to believe that the dead are alive inside her small, even more confining apartment.

This has the line, “Joyce, I don’t want to fuck you, I want to cut you!” and I don’t know how anyone can dislike it. I mean, I know how they can, but they shouldn’t.

This is so much better than it has any right to be, and it’s a shame that Hart’s adult past kept her from being a mainstream actress. No matter — she’s better than any of them.

You can watch this on Daily Motion.