The Silent Scream poster & wallpaper

Avery Schreiber, Barbara Steele, Brad Rearden

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57% liked it

144 ratings

R, 1 hr. 27 min.

Directed by: Denny Harris

Release Date: November 12, 1980

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DVD Release Date: November 24, 2009

Stats: 16 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (16)

  • YosemiteSamFan
    November 3, 2007
    YosemiteSamFan
    "Silent Scream" is a great atmospheric 1980 slasher film released the same great summer as "The Shining", "Friday the 13th" and "The Empire Strikes Back", which is probably why it became so forgotten. Apparently it was released on VHS for a limited time, but it took me 27 years t...( read more)o finally find a copy to view. This needs a DVD release.

    The opening credits still felt very 70's with a police car driving towards the camera, and officers rushing into an old house to find a series of bodies. It doesn't make much sense until the end of the movie, when we can say "duh" to the movie makers for revealing essentially nothing significant.

    A cool premise: a group of college kids move to an Oceanside old mansion on a cliff, owned by a mysterious old lady and her peculiar son. There is also something creepy and murderous lurking deep within the walls of the house, watching them. I liked when the killer is watching one of the girls through a ceiling vent in her bedroom.

    One by one, the youth would meet up with their doom. The killings, though few, are quite shocking and blood-soaked. Most of the characters were likeable. The one annoying guy didn't last very long. The movie drops a notch halfway through when the killer's identity is revealed and shown onscreen too much. There were a few nice twists in the final act which were a lot of fun.

    The movie has a really good musical score, with screeching instruments and suspense building cues. There's a great scene where one of the vicious killings is viewed through the slats of the wall boards. Another good scene has a victim hiding herself in a bedroom closet while the killer repeatedly thrusts a sharp knife through the door frame. It's got that great 80's slasher feel.
  • Blaxunshine
    September 19, 2009
    Blaxunshine
    Sorta a lost slasher from the 80s that I hadn't heard of until recently & was excepting perhaps a diamond in the rough. Not so the case but Silent Scream (that title always reminds me of the Slayer song..Crucify the bastard son...now that would have been a movie) as it takes its ...( read more)sweet time introducing characters & playing eerie music that something terrible is going to befall. I have to admit (the few there are) the kills are startling but I pretty well knew how the climax was going to play out (they showed you snippets during the opening credits) including who the killer was (but not the twist)...An extra 1/2 * though for having Avery Schreiber in the cast making me hungry for Doritos & featuring Olympia Beer (damn I need to get me a taste of some Olympia someday)
  • TheQueensShilling
    August 5, 2009
    TheQueensShilling
    ...( read more)
    As a side note, this is one of the first movies I know of to use CGI editing. It's subtle, but slightly dramatic the way it is used in this one instance during the opening credits. It was employed to make the individual shots look like the action in each frame was halted abruptly, and briefly frozen in time. This same effect was achieved with freezes during the opening credits of The Evictors. The idea appeared to be to emphasize the significance of the portrayed events, as well as the fact that they occurred
    in the past. Now CGI is overused to the point where we barely notice it.

    Is it a REQUIREMENT of landlords that they only rent when they have a homicidal, knife welding relative locked up in the attic? This isn't so much a horror film, as a crime thriller about a seriously dysfunctional family.

    Silent Scream has some good creative elements, such as creepy 50's music mysteriously wafting down through the air vents at night. The multi-storied, beachside Victorian is a perfect haunted house. Somehow this film's plot fell a bit short, missing out on some chances to include more twists and turns.
  • HarleenQuinzel
    June 30, 2008
    HarleenQuinzel
    If someone has a link to a torrent for this, tell me.

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