Silent Scream (1980) American Cinema/Horror-Thriller RT: 87 minutes Rated R (violence, language, nudity, sexual content) Director: Denny Harris Screenplay: Ken Wheat, Jim Wheat and Wallace C. Bennett Music: Roger Kellaway Cinematography: Michael D. Murphy and David Shore Release date: March 1980 (Philadelphia, PA) Cast: Rebecca Balding, Cameron Mitchell, Avery Schreiber, Yvonne De Carlo, Barbara Steele, Steve Doubet, Brad Rearden, John Widelock, Juli Andelman, Jack Stryker. Box Office: $15.8M (US)
Rating: ****
I remember seeing the commercials for Silent Scream in early 1980 and really wanting to see it. Naturally, the MPAA rating kept it off limits to 12YO Movie Guy 24/7. I couldn’t talk the parental units into lifting their unconstitutional ban on R-rated movies so I could check out what looked like a really cool horror flick. I didn’t get to see it until I rented it from the good old reliable Video Den in August ’86. It was totally worth the wait. It’s a pure B-movie delight.
As you all know, I absolutely love B-movies. Silent Scream is one of the better ones. It’s your basic “college kids staying in a big creepy house” horror movie. It definitely doesn’t win any points for originality, but it takes the formula and does something interesting with it. At least I find it interesting although some would argue the plot could just as easily be an episode of Night Gallery. All that’s missing is an introduction by Rod Serling.
Okay, that’s a valid point, but so what? This movie has atmosphere, a great cast, and a handful of decent scares. What else do you need? It has a few good violent scenes as well, but it’s not a mad slasher movie, so don’t expect to see a masked homicidal maniac running around. But then who’s killing off the co-eds staying in that big creepy house just off the beach? I’ll get to that momentarily.
College student Scotty Parker (Balding, The Boogens) needs a place to stay. Campus housing is all filled up so she checks out a bunch of places before securing a room at the Engels’ hilltop mansion with three other students – rich kid Peter Ransom (Widelock), fun girl Doris (Andelman, Where the Buffalo Roam) and nice guy Jack (Doubet). The boarding house is run by Mrs. Engels (De Carlo, The Munsters) and her strange teenage son Mason (Rearden). Mrs. Engels never leaves her room in the attic so it’s up to Mason to take care of the tenants.
That first night, a drunken Peter gets murdered on the beach. With little to go on, Lt. Sandy McGiver (Mitchell, Kill Point) and Sgt. Manny Ruggin (Schreiber, Galaxina) start looking into the history of the Engels house in hopes that it will lead them to the killer. It goes without saying there’s somebody else living in the house besides Mrs. Engels and her son. That would be Victoria (Steele, Black Sunday), Mrs. Engels’ disturbed daughter who lives in a secret room in the attic. I won’t go into all the details, but Mrs. Engels has good reasons for keeping her daughter locked away and hiding her existence from everybody outside the family including the now-endangered tenants. Maybe I just revealed the identity of the killer or maybe I didn’t. Either way, there’s much more to this story. You won’t be hearing it from me. All I’ll say is this is one seriously messed up family.
The house in Silent Scream makes a wonderfully appropriate setting for this sufficiently suspenseful story; cobweb-covered passageways, a creepy basement, and a secret room in the attic, I’m loving it! The images from the commercials have always stayed with me – the hand breaking through the cobweb-covered wall, the girl being pulled into a secret room. It’s great to finally add context to them.
Director Denny Harris, in his one and only movie, puts together a nice little horror movie that would play very well as the bottom half of a double feature. I absolutely love the great B-movie cast here – Cameron Mitchell, Avery Schreiber, Yvonne De Carlo, Rebecca Balding, and Barbara Steele. They all do a good job. I was elated when this movie finally made its DVD debut in November ’09. It’s one of those movies I never get tired of watching.
Here’s the thing, Silent Scream might carry an R rating, but it’s a soft R. It’s actually relatively tame compared to a lot of the other horror movies released around the same time. I’m saying this because I think it’s an excellent choice for a preteen’s first R-rated horror movie. The violence isn’t overly graphic and there’s only one brief sex scene with a few seconds of nudity. It was originally released by American Cinema Releasing, the studio responsible for such B-movie schlock as Good Guys Wear Black, A Force of One, The Octagon, Fade to Black, Force: Five and the film adaptation of Beatlemania (which I’ve never been able to find).
In any event, Silent Scream is one of the coolest B-movies of the 80s. I wish they still made pictures like this.
