On The Silent Scream - A Review

I should be forgiven for calling The Silent Scream a "girly" slasher flick, because I actually mean that in a good way, not a misogynistic way. And also because only fatgirls and lesbians use the word "misogynistic," and you are neither. Right? Ri-ight. Hey, forgive me and we'll move right the hell on...

Released in 1980, The Silent Scream was filmed in the late-1970s but considered unwatchable, so massive rewrites and reshoots had to be undertaken -- yes, the movie industry actually did such things in those days (it is not some charming myth we old people created). The boy, Mason, is actually watching a screening of discarded shoots when he is in his room, enjoying TV. I saw the streaming version, not the DVD, so I did not get to hear the director's commentary or interview, but IMdB and elsewhere explain enough of the story for me to gather the gist of things: The original had at least one rape scene (reportedly the footage Mason is watching in the scene which shows the TV's picture), as well as more consensual sex, and was a bit gorier.

Still, The Silent Scream isn't without its charm. The body count is low, the blood is mostly spatter (not splatter), and there's still one good sex scene. But more than all that, The Silent Scream has just what I said: Charm. It owes a lot to earlier films, such as Psycho (to which it is often compared and director, Denny Harris, even admitted to being influenced by in an interview he gave shortly before his 2007 death), but it makes a lot of what it has.

The rewrites and reshoots explain the sometimes disparate pacing, but Harris does a fine job of both evoking and capturing the mood and tension, where there is any. The Silent Scream is slow-paced and plot-heavy, but if Halloween hadn't beaten it to screens, The Silent Scream would likely be remembered as a fair slasher. As it is, it better falls into the category of "psychological thriller," although The Silent Scream is really a somewhat mawkish melodrama.

Or a girly movie; one for the girls.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010