The Silent Scream
The Silent Scream is a great slasher movie, unfortunately somewhat forgotten in the midst of its more famous counterparts. It was made after Black Christmas and produced before Halloween; it is therefore the second slasher movie, and despite its relative obscurity is much better than Black Christmas and -- dare I say it -- much better than Halloween.
It never fails to irk me how horror fans act as if Halloween is the Beatles of horror movies. I'm ready to admit that Halloween is a great movie, but it has its share of faults: it takes itself way too seriously; Jamie Lee Curtis -- I'll say it if no one else will -- is a spaz; and, aside from Loomis's attempts to find Michael, it doesn't have much of a plot. While it does build suspense and has a chilling atmosphere and its influence certainly can't be denied, it's not a perfect movie and doesn't hold up on repeated viewings. The faults become more apparent and the characters, even Loomis, begin and never stop to get on your nerves.
The Silent Scream avoids the self-seriousness of Black Christmas by having a simple romance subplot rather than a curtailed one about abortion; it avoids the sluggish pacing and skeleton structure of Halloween by focusing on the characters more and having the courage to go full soap-opera at just the right time.
But, you might say -- wouldn't a romance subplot detract from the horror? Whoever would think, I'd rejoin -- that a slasher movie was ever supposed to be scary? There are essentially three plots in the Silent Scream: one involves a blooming love affair between two roommates at mansion that houses college kids; another that centers on the murders of those roommates by a secluded woman in the attic; the third, and least important, involves the police investigation.
Whereas Black Christmas -- and, to a lesser degree, Halloween -- flunked by focusing too much on the police investigation plot, the Silent Scream focuses on it just enough. Police procedural plots don't mesh well with slasher movies because they necessarily bring with them elements from other genres -- giallos and serial killer movies -- that are hard to match in tone with the other elements needed for a slasher movie: romance and comedy. If you want an example, take Tenebrae or the Silence of the Lambs and inject a scene from Revenge of the Nerds or Animal House every fifteen minutes and see how well that goes.
The police procedural plot in the Silent Scream is in no small way bettered by the presence of the one and only Cameron Mitchell himself. He doesn't get mad, which is disappointing, but then neither did Saxon use karate nor Loomis oink like a pig in their respective movies either. The police plot serves more like the framing device in an anthology movie than a plot for its own sake.
The romance plot isn't, I admit, exactly Pride and Prejudice. But it didn't need to be; it just needed to be more than the emotional wreckage of a probably already failed romance we got in Black Christmas. (That abortion subplot, in retrospect, feels rather voyeurish; I told y'all that movie got dumber the more you think about it.)
Two roommates at the mansion -- Scotty and Jack -- are hooked up through the clueless maneuverings of another roommate, Doris. Initially Scotty had been approached by Peter, the stand-in rich frat-boy character who is so dumbly charming that he might be the best exercise in that character type I've seen in a slasher movie. Peter however isn't in the movie that long; he's swiftly dispatched after he's abandoned by Doris --whom he tries to get with or flirts too hard with or greatly annoys -- then passes out on the beach and is stabbed to death. The killer, rather from the scriptwriter's sense of humor or her own, delightfully tries to hide his body by building one hell of an elaborate sandcastle over him.
While the love affair between Scotty and Jack isn't rushed, it does escalate into a sex scene that has a few funny things worth mentioning. This movie is unique among slasher movies, as far as I know, for having an acid jazz and sexy saxophone soundtrack. The saxophone starts up as Scotty and Jack look into each other's eyes, and -- I might be going crazy -- it has such a parodic effect that I expect the movie to pan out and reveal a man with sunglasses on playing a saxophone while sitting on a chair right by the bed. Doris, washing clothes somewhere in this large-ass house, hears either Scotty or Jack or the saxophone and watches them have sex through an air duct and this also has a feeling like something torn from a Naken Gun movie.
The greatest thing about the Silent Scream, and where it truly stands out, is its insane third act. The movie had been restrained and, although verging on sappy at times, had avoided the usual pitfalls of romance movies. You know, like that couple, we all know one, that drag their fight into a party and let it resurge every now and then in little and big ways instead of just fucking going home?
Those pitfalls.
But man oh man does this movie take a soap opera turn if I've ever seen one. The family renting the house is comprised of the mother, the female killer in the attic, and the son, Mason. After Doris's body is discovered, which the killer adorably dresses up, and Scotty goes sniffing around and is attacked by the killer, Mason and the mother tie Scotty up in the closet while Jack goes sniffing around for Scotty. (The structure of this movie is just great.) During an argument, the mother reveals that Mason's father was really his grandfather and the killer, played by horror goddess Barbara Steele, is really his mother.
After that there's a flashback in which Steele hangs herself over a pregnancy, and this scene is somehow both sad and funny as shit. This information entirely derails Mason and, after he knocks the shit out of Jack, dresses up in his grand- fathers military uniform, loads a .45, takes on the persona of his grand- father, and tries to shoot Steele but winds up shooting his grand- mother in the process. He shoots himself after that.
Steele, predictably, isn't dead and, after a well-shot struggle over the closet door, is killed when Scotty shoves her into a wall and she stabs herself. The movie courageously and perfectly ends after Cameron Mitchell shows up to discover the many bodies strewn about that would be a chore to reconstruct the deaths of if Scotty wasn't there to explain the whole business. It closes on a shot of the dead grandmother, with no pathos and no ceremony, bringing back the soundtrack to add a sweet coda to this crazy song.
The Silent Scream is a great movie, one which mastered early the balance of tone and structure a slasher movie needs if it wants to be entertaining. It wasn't influential to the evolution of the genre, and perhaps for that reason is much better than the many to follow that ate up Halloween like fucking gospel. Had it been more influential, we might have gotten better movies, but Halloween happened to strike some stupid fetish in the horror fandom with William Shatner masks -- I don't think there's a better reason to explain the franchise's popularity -- and that fetish appears insatiable.
But that doesn't detract from how good the Silent Scream is. It was hugely successful, deservedly so.
And it hasn't been remade by Rob Zombie.
So suck on them apples, Halloween.
The Silent Scream is a great slasher movie, unfortunately somewhat forgotten in the midst of its more famous counterparts. It was made after Black Christmas and produced before Halloween; it is therefore the second slasher movie, and despite its relative obscurity is much better than Black Christmas and -- dare I say it -- much better than Halloween.
It never fails to irk me how horror fans act as if Halloween is the Beatles of horror movies. I'm ready to admit that Halloween is a great movie, but it has its share of faults: it takes itself way too seriously; Jamie Lee Curtis -- I'll say it if no one else will -- is a spaz; and, aside from Loomis's attempts to find Michael, it doesn't have much of a plot. While it does build suspense and has a chilling atmosphere and its influence certainly can't be denied, it's not a perfect movie and doesn't hold up on repeated viewings. The faults become more apparent and the characters, even Loomis, begin and never stop to get on your nerves.
The Silent Scream avoids the self-seriousness of Black Christmas by having a simple romance subplot rather than a curtailed one about abortion; it avoids the sluggish pacing and skeleton structure of Halloween by focusing on the characters more and having the courage to go full soap-opera at just the right time.
But, you might say -- wouldn't a romance subplot detract from the horror? Whoever would think, I'd rejoin -- that a slasher movie was ever supposed to be scary? There are essentially three plots in the Silent Scream: one involves a blooming love affair between two roommates at mansion that houses college kids; another that centers on the murders of those roommates by a secluded woman in the attic; the third, and least important, involves the police investigation.
Whereas Black Christmas -- and, to a lesser degree, Halloween -- flunked by focusing too much on the police investigation plot, the Silent Scream focuses on it just enough. Police procedural plots don't mesh well with slasher movies because they necessarily bring with them elements from other genres -- giallos and serial killer movies -- that are hard to match in tone with the other elements needed for a slasher movie: romance and comedy. If you want an example, take Tenebrae or the Silence of the Lambs and inject a scene from Revenge of the Nerds or Animal House every fifteen minutes and see how well that goes.
The police procedural plot in the Silent Scream is in no small way bettered by the presence of the one and only Cameron Mitchell himself. He doesn't get mad, which is disappointing, but then neither did Saxon use karate nor Loomis oink like a pig in their respective movies either. The police plot serves more like the framing device in an anthology movie than a plot for its own sake.
The romance plot isn't, I admit, exactly Pride and Prejudice. But it didn't need to be; it just needed to be more than the emotional wreckage of a probably already failed romance we got in Black Christmas. (That abortion subplot, in retrospect, feels rather voyeurish; I told y'all that movie got dumber the more you think about it.)
Two roommates at the mansion -- Scotty and Jack -- are hooked up through the clueless maneuverings of another roommate, Doris. Initially Scotty had been approached by Peter, the stand-in rich frat-boy character who is so dumbly charming that he might be the best exercise in that character type I've seen in a slasher movie. Peter however isn't in the movie that long; he's swiftly dispatched after he's abandoned by Doris --whom he tries to get with or flirts too hard with or greatly annoys -- then passes out on the beach and is stabbed to death. The killer, rather from the scriptwriter's sense of humor or her own, delightfully tries to hide his body by building one hell of an elaborate sandcastle over him.
While the love affair between Scotty and Jack isn't rushed, it does escalate into a sex scene that has a few funny things worth mentioning. This movie is unique among slasher movies, as far as I know, for having an acid jazz and sexy saxophone soundtrack. The saxophone starts up as Scotty and Jack look into each other's eyes, and -- I might be going crazy -- it has such a parodic effect that I expect the movie to pan out and reveal a man with sunglasses on playing a saxophone while sitting on a chair right by the bed. Doris, washing clothes somewhere in this large-ass house, hears either Scotty or Jack or the saxophone and watches them have sex through an air duct and this also has a feeling like something torn from a Naken Gun movie.
The greatest thing about the Silent Scream, and where it truly stands out, is its insane third act. The movie had been restrained and, although verging on sappy at times, had avoided the usual pitfalls of romance movies. You know, like that couple, we all know one, that drag their fight into a party and let it resurge every now and then in little and big ways instead of just fucking going home?
Those pitfalls.
But man oh man does this movie take a soap opera turn if I've ever seen one. The family renting the house is comprised of the mother, the female killer in the attic, and the son, Mason. After Doris's body is discovered, which the killer adorably dresses up, and Scotty goes sniffing around and is attacked by the killer, Mason and the mother tie Scotty up in the closet while Jack goes sniffing around for Scotty. (The structure of this movie is just great.) During an argument, the mother reveals that Mason's father was really his grandfather and the killer, played by horror goddess Barbara Steele, is really his mother.
After that there's a flashback in which Steele hangs herself over a pregnancy, and this scene is somehow both sad and funny as shit. This information entirely derails Mason and, after he knocks the shit out of Jack, dresses up in his grand- fathers military uniform, loads a .45, takes on the persona of his grand- father, and tries to shoot Steele but winds up shooting his grand- mother in the process. He shoots himself after that.
Steele, predictably, isn't dead and, after a well-shot struggle over the closet door, is killed when Scotty shoves her into a wall and she stabs herself. The movie courageously and perfectly ends after Cameron Mitchell shows up to discover the many bodies strewn about that would be a chore to reconstruct the deaths of if Scotty wasn't there to explain the whole business. It closes on a shot of the dead grandmother, with no pathos and no ceremony, bringing back the soundtrack to add a sweet coda to this crazy song.
The Silent Scream is a great movie, one which mastered early the balance of tone and structure a slasher movie needs if it wants to be entertaining. It wasn't influential to the evolution of the genre, and perhaps for that reason is much better than the many to follow that ate up Halloween like fucking gospel. Had it been more influential, we might have gotten better movies, but Halloween happened to strike some stupid fetish in the horror fandom with William Shatner masks -- I don't think there's a better reason to explain the franchise's popularity -- and that fetish appears insatiable.
But that doesn't detract from how good the Silent Scream is. It was hugely successful, deservedly so.
And it hasn't been remade by Rob Zombie.
So suck on them apples, Halloween.