Pamela De Graff The Silent Scream is a dated relic of the "Unusual '80's" horror movie phenomenon. The 1980's produced a glut of highly conventional, large-draw slasher flicks such as Friday The 13th and the Halloween sequels. The decade also produced a couple of dozen unusual and distinctive efforts such as Fade To Black, My Bloody Valentine, Grandma's House, and Motel Hell. Odd films like these dwell on a darker, more rarefied level, one that hasn't been visited much in the intervening years. Newly released on DVD after 29 years, The Silent Scream is a noteworthy entry in this later category of period horror. Until last year it had been lost in the mysterious, silvery mists of screen-scream antiquity.Barbara Steele stars as the villain in this dated '80's American-made shocker. Good character development, strong performances, and relatively little gore distinguish this effort from the usual slasher fare.Here's the setup: Cute and saucy Scotty Parker (Balding) transferred to her university a couple of weeks late and missed out on the fun of bunking with a bunch of freaks she doesn't know in the dorms. Challenged to find accommodations. she gravitates toward the old Engels house, a foreboding, sea-side edifice.The creepy Engels place is run on behalf of his very reclusive MOTHER! (De Carlo). by a wrapped-awfully-tight, real-life Milhouse Van Houten character named Brad (Reardon). Brad is harboring a wide variety of deeply seated personal issues. (Hey, who's that looking through my air vent?) Three more hormonally bloated students sign rental agreements and the school year is off to a beer and bodily fluid saturated start. For most of them that is. The fratboy-playboy ass-wipe barely gets out of the starting gate before he is found filleted rather than fellated on the beach, A psycho is roaming the dunes. Worse yet, there is something sinister going on in the Engels House, something really F ' D-UP in the attic. SOMETHING TERRIBLE!!!!! Creepy 50's music is mysteriously wafting down through the air vents, and who's burning that light bulb up there and thumping around at night? The cops show up and an erstwhile detective (Mitchell) starts keeping an eye out the desolate beach. But with more secret passages, hollow walls, trap doors and concealed rooms than H.H. Holmes' Chicago Murder Castle the real danger, don'tcha know, may be creeping through the crumbling walls of the old mansion itself.The Silent Scream is variously reminiscent of The Unnameable (1988), The Shuttered Room AKA Blood Island (1967), Black Christmas, (1974), American Gothic ( 1987), Psycho (1960), and Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, (1987). With plot elements of all of these movies, The Silent Scream could be an unremarkable horror yarn, but instead it manages to add a fresh twist to the genre, and establishes itself as one of the more memorable 'old scary house at the top of the lonely hill' type movies.While not the bloodiest '80's slasher piece, The Silent Scream offers genuine tension with a distinctive and offbeat feel. There's plenty of atmosphere for a small budget (but well-produced) '80's horror flick and a few stylishly shot, memorable scenes that will stick with you. (And yes it is a "flick" in very since of the word. No, not a film, a flick. Write that down.) Not so much a horror story as a thriller about a seriously dysfunctional family, The Silent Scream's plot falls a bit short in that it misses out on some chances to include more twists and turns, but it's still a good ride for nostalgic '80's horror fans.PRODUCTION NOTES: Barbara Steele is noted for her Giallo and Euro-thriller characters among other types of roles. Despite Yvonne De Carlo's tremendous body of dramatic work, viewers may remember her best for her role as Lily Munster in The Munsters television series. Cameron Mitchell appeared in numerous horror and thriller films in the 1980's and Rebecca Balding may be familiar to audiences from her part as "Trish" in The Boogens (1981) as well as for a gigantic volume of television work. Jim and Ken wheat are the writer/producers behind films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Pitch Black, The Fly II and The Birds II.The Silent Scream was first filmed in 1977 by Denny Harris. The original project was scrapped, then picked up and reproduced by Jim and Ken Wheat who constructed new sets around fifteen minutes of salvageable footage filmed at the original location house. A more appropriate house in Highland Park was used for the exterior shots in the re-shoot.As an aside, The Silent Scream is one of the first horror movies to use CGI editing techniques. According to old timers (those antiquated souls who were coming of age in the 1980's) "everyone wondered how they did that." Apparently general audiences weren't that computer savvy in the nearly pre-silicon, medieval 1980's.Utilized in establishing shots under the opening credits, the CGI created the illusion that the action in each frame was halted abruptly for a moment and frozen in time. This same result was achieved with freezes during the opening credits in the 1979 Chuck Pierce film, The Evictors. In that instance good old fashioned film lab printing techniques were applied to frames in the opening sequence to give a sense of antiquity to the past events they portrayed, and to emphasize the significance of those shots to the plot's subsequent events. Today, CGI editing is overused and abused so much that we take it for granted.Thanks to the newly established company, Scorpion Releasing, The Silent Scream has been re-released on DVD in high definition after 30 years of obscurity (as "Silent Scream, not "THE Silent Scream"). The soundtrack has been remixed in true 5.1 and 2.0 stereo, with bonus featurettes, audio commentary and interviews.

Scott LeBrun A better than average cast helps to make this horror film a decent watch, along with a reasonably good script (written by brothers Jim & Ken Wheat and Wallace C. Bennett) that has some memorable twists. It's graphically bloody at times but also has fine atmosphere, and a healthy nod to "Psycho" in its use of an imposing beach side house.College student Scotty (Rebecca Balding) is in desperate need of a place to live and ends up at this house, owned by a weird family, the Engels. Unfortunately, Scotty and her fellow roommates won't know just *how* creepy this family is until it's almost too late. When one of the kids is murdered, a subplot develops with two detectives (Cameron Mitchell, Avery Schreiber) investigating the case.The cute Balding is an appealing lead in this story, given effective theatrical treatment by commercial veteran Denny Harris (in his only feature credit). Helping a great deal is a grandiose music score by the under-rated Roger Kellaway, who also composes a period style song for the show. There is some good suspense and many ominous shots of the house and its interiors. The shocks are well realized, as well.Yvonne De Carlo is also among the familiar faces appearing. Mitchell and an effectively serious Schreiber are fine as the detectives. In addition to Balding, Steve Doubet and Juli Andelman are similarly likable. Brad Rearden is great in the role of the nerdy Mason Engels, the films' one true tragic character. And horror genre icon Barbara Steele is a treat to watch in a non-speaking role.Lovers of the horror films from this period should find a fair deal to enjoy here. "The Silent Scream" is enjoyable stuff that deserves a viewing from them.Seven out of 10.

BA_Harrison Unable to find accommodation on campus, pretty college student Scotty (Rebecca Balding) rents a room at an isolated seaside mansion, unaware that the owner Mrs. Engels (Yvonne De Carlo) keeps her lobotomised homicidal daughter Victoria (Barbara Steele) hidden in the house in a secret room. You can't keep a good psycho locked up for long though, and it's not long before Vicky is out and about getting stabby with the tenants...The Silent Scream doesn't score many points for originality, its 'murderous insane relative' and 'old dark house' schtick hardly breaking new ground. But despite the over-familiarity of the material, and a disappointing lack of gore, The Silent Scream still manages to be an reasonably effective little horror/thriller thanks to solid direction from Denny Harris, who makes good use of his creepy location, and decent casting: Balding (The Boogens) makes for a very likable protagonist (of course, it doesn't hurt that she's very easy on the eye); De Carlo (Lily from The Munsters) is suitably creepy as the maniac's mother; Brad Rearden is convincingly freaky as Mrs. Engel's weirdo son Mason; and both Juli Andelman and John Widelock are more than irritating enough to make very deserving victims.It is horror legend Steele, however, who 'steeles' the show; she might not have any lines of dialogue, but she still manages to make her character completely menacing.

udar55 University student Scotty (Rebecca Balding) finds campus housing is full so she secures a room in a creepy house overlooking the beach. She makes quick friends with the other three students there but is a bit creeped out by teenager Mason and his mother Mrs. Engels (Yvonne DeCarlo). The night she moves in, one of her newfound friends is murdered on the beach. While the police investigate, Scotty stays in the house to fall in love with Jack, unaware that the killer is lurking between the walls.For some reason, I never saw this early slasher flick despite a pretty wide video release on the Media label. Checking it out 27 years after its debut, it is a pretty effective little horror film that mixes the old dark house scenario with the popular slasher trend of the time. The first hour or so is pretty standard stuff. It is in the last half hour that the film really makes it point. Once Scotty discovers the hidden path in the walls, it is a pretty good freak out with a deranged family. Best of all, you have a wonderfully deranged (and wordless) performance by Barbara Steele as the psychotic killer Victoria. Despite her character having a lobotomy, she is still hot! Cameron Mitchell and Avery Schrieber (!) have small supporting roles as the cops investigating the case. Director Denny Harris handles the scares well with the end in the attic being rather suspenseful. Sadly, this is his only feature to date. Composer Roger Kellaway delivers a really nice score as well. Writers/producers/brothers Jim and Ken Wheat went on to direct EWOK: THE BATTLE FOR ENDOR and the horror anthology AFTER MIDNIGHT. They then took sequel writing duty, churning out THE FLY II, parts of ELM STREET 4, THE BIRDS II, THE STEPFORD HUSBANDS and IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE II. They also wrote what eventually became PITCH BLACK.