$_ is a global variable. Your while is setting it to the last record of your filehandle and since your files end with a \n, $_ returns blank (I guess $_ gets set before the test is done to see if it has a value). Since this is Perl there is more than one way to get around this:

You can localize $_ in your sub like so:

sub screwed {
  my ($in) = @_;

  local $_; # basically a temporary $_ just for this sub  

  open(IN, "<$in");
  while(<IN>) { print "file $in contains $_"; }
  close(IN);
}
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Or you can set each line of the file to a variable in the while like so:

while(defined(my $foo = <IN>)) { print "file $in contains $foo"; }
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Hope that helps

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