| Silent Madness (1984) 93 min |
| aka - Beautiful Screamers The Nightkillers The Omega Factor |
| Silent Madness is another slasher to come out of the mid 1980s, while it's not without any redeeming value it isn't quite as enjoyable as some of its peers. I'll be the first to admit that slashers aren't always particularly strong in the script departmen, but usually they have other things going for them. This one is lacking in many of those areas. The script has some good ideas and some interesting (if not somewhat generic) situations, but it plays like a first draft. The direction and choreography of the action sequences is kind of embarrasing. When people are fighting, it looks like they're making up everything as they go along. A lot of it looks so fake that it's difficult to suspend disbelief long enough to get into the story too much. Usually some good murders and explicit gore can save a slasher that's fighting for dear life. Unfortunately, most of that is missing from Silent Madness. Most of the murders are quick and take place right offscreen, making it appear that quality gore just wasn't in the budget. |
| I don't mean to come down so hard on the movie. It frusterated me though, because I feel like it had a good deal of unrealized potential. Some of the actors worked quite well with what they were given. Most notable of these are Roderick Cook as Dr. Kruger (this was the same year as A Nightmare on Elm St., so I don't think this is a reference) and Katherine Kamhi (from the previous year's Sleepaway Camp) as one of the sorority sisters, Jane. The music from composer Barry Salmon is very good and actually saves a few scenes. |
| As for the plot, it involves a psychotic mental patient who was erroneously released from an institution when his name was confused with that of another patient (John Howard = sane, Howard Johns = insane). Before you know it, he's set free and no one is the wiser until the new Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery - Doogie Howser's mother!) stumbles across the mix up in her computer. She tries to warn everyone, but her superiors tell her that it was merely a clerical error and that Howard Johns died this past week. She goes to the sight of the lunatic's original crimes to learn more about him. She soon finds out that 17 years ago he was a janitor at an all girls school and killed a bunch of sorority sisters who were making fun of him. Before long, Joan is in the middle of everything as she developes a close relationship with the owner of the local newspaper and ends up on the sheriff's shitlist. Meanwhile, back at the hospital the administration is trying to find ways to cover up this potentially scandelous foul up. They wend goons out to find and kill Johns before he can hurt anyone and to silence Dr. Gilmore in the process. They're a little to late to stop Johns though, as he's been hacking people up since the first reel (including another Sleepaway Camp alumni, Paul DeAngelo). |
| I know that you're probably thinking to yourself that this sounds pretty good, and it does...on paper at least. The execution is this film's main problem. It's not done so bad that it makes this one of the worst movies I've ever seen, or even painfull to sit through, it isn't. It has a potentially fun and memorable premise and just isn't polished enough to come off as an effective picture. The twist at the end is a good idea, and must have sounded good in a pitch, but is so predictable that it's embarrasing. None of the effects are glimpsed for long enough, and this doesn't add to suspense or any sort of tension, it just looks kind of cheap. The killer is played by is played by stuntman Solly Marx (Phantasm III) and is never really presented in a way to make him seem intimidating. He's a stark reminder of why killers in these types of films generally either wore masks or weren't revealed until the end. Some guy trying to look disturbed by making his eyes bug out is more humorous here than threatening. |
| It's hard to believe one of the writers would go on to turn out the John Travolta hit The General's Daughter! There are three writers credited here. The story has a good structure, it just feels like the mechanics could use a good fine tuning. Director Simon Nuchturn also gave us Snuff (along with Roberta and Michael Findlay) in 1976 and co produced Puss 'N Boots (see Something Weird Video's DVD double feature of The Black Cat and Fat Black Pussycat for the utterly bizarre trailer for this one! |
| The film's major draw card was that the original print's were projected in 3-D. Cinematographer Gerald Feil also worked on Friday the 13th Part 3's 3-D photography. To be completely fair to the film, I bet it was more entertaining in 3-D as a lot of the action is obviously geared towards that. In the standard video print it can be distracting if characters swing and poke objects directly into the camera lense. Not to mention that the Media home video I watched had obviously seen better days (as I'm sure virtually every copy of the film has). The film is never especially dark, so that's not a problem, but the image isn't very stable all the time and the 4:3 cropping is just plain brutal. Some scenes (especially the ones in the beginning in the institution) have their shot composition just completely ruined. You can seen characters on either side of the frame but the focus looks to be on something irrelevant to the scene. This is in no way a fault of the film makers, but just rienforces the frusterations of old beat up VHS videos. It would nice to see the film in a widescreen DVD, which would at least be closer to the director's original intentions. In the end, this film remains middle of the ground for me. Not the best, but certainly not the worst. Oddly enough, there is a region 2 DVD available, but I don't have any details regarding it. |
| I give this one 3 mental hospital mix ups out of 5 |
| reviewed by Joe Canistro 05/10/2002 |
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