Census Bloodbath: Omega Woman

Year: 1984

Director: Simon Nuchtern

Cast: Belinda Montgomery, Solly Marx, David Greenan

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Silent Madness begins with the scariest of all horror movie plot developments: a clerical error. When homicidal maniac Howard Johns (Solly Marx, a stunt performer from Death Spa) is accidentally released from Manhattan's Cresthaven Hospital rather than the mild-mannered John Howard, he instantly returns to the scene of his famous sorority girl murders: Barrington, New Jersey. Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery) decides to chase him down, because nobody at her hospital, especially the slimy maximum security wing director Dr. Kruger (Roderick Cook), seems to much care about the situation. She finds herself teaming up with local reporter Mark McGowan (David Greenan) to infiltrate the Delta Omega sorority and try to catch this killer once and for all, protecting the sorority girls including the prudish Jane (Katherine Kamhi of Sleepaway Camp), all while facing naysayers and nonbelievers like the lazy Sheriff Liggett (Sydney Lassick of Pandemonium and The Unseen) at every turn.

Analysis: I don't really understand why Silent Madness doesn't have a huge reputation, even within the slasher community. If nothing else, it's the only other slasher movie released in 3-D during the boom in the early '80s, other than Friday the 13th Part 3-D. It's also, after The Mutilator, the only other slasher I've ever heard of to be set explicitly during Fall Break. Those two factors should be enough to get Silent Madness circulating, even if the film wasn't good at all. And it's kind of good! Color me surprised!

Notice I didn't say great, however. It certainly has its faults both as a slasher and a 3-D film. For one thing, it lacks a clear organizing principle to guide the body count. For a film that is largely set in a sorority house, it spends far too little time establishing young co-eds and letting them get stabbed with sharp implements. Instead, it heavily weights scenes of hospital intrigue as Dr. Gilmore attempts to uncover a conspiracy, scenes that are dialogue rich and interest poor, especially considering how goddamn obvious it is that Dr. Kruger is lying, even on the page (there are multiple moments where he and another doctor trip over themselves trying to correct a blatant contradiction in their stories).

It also doesn't really make sense why they thought this film would be interesting in 3-D, as most of the kills aren't particularly geared to shine within that visual format. However, the 3-D of it all results in a variety of incredibly appealing deep focus compositions that show off the detailed production design. It's not an atmospheric movie by an stretch of the imagination. It's cheerily lit and full of bright colors that pop off the screen, even in 2-D. However, it not only visually legible (which is not a quality to overrate in a mid-80's slasher) but absolutely aesthetically pleasurable from top to bottom. The Americana designs of the buildings of Barrington are put to full use, and the interiors are excellent and lively spaces that the 3-D allows viewers to explore in full force.

The kills don't reflect the same level of care and attention that the rest of the film does, unfortunately. They're not very bloody (the MPAA crackdowns of previous years had really come to a fore here), they're frequently awkwardly framed (try as he might, Solly Marx does not nail a scene where he's asked to swing a sledge directly into the camera without breaking it), and in one of them, the 3-D effect is created by literally turning the midair axe into a cartoon. The killer is also pretty boring to behold, looking like nothing in the world other than a man who didn't apply enough sunscreen and fell asleep on the beach.

However, the third act Final Girl chase sequence has enough energy to allow the film to claw its way back toward being interesting. Belinda Montgomery is a low urgency runner at the best of times, but the sequences where she is trapped by the killer - and especially the moment where he is menacing her while she is at the bottom of a vertical air duct - are quite tense. There is also an added wrinkle in this sequence of having the threat come from multiple directions, as men from the institution have arrived to silence her right as the killer begins his rampage. 

Silent Madness is a hard movie to love, perhaps, but it's an even harder movie to hate. It's a perfectly charming slasher romp that is worth checking out if you haven't seen it, which you probably haven't, even if it can't quite earn the coveted title of "hidden gem."

Killer: Howard Johns (Solly Marx)

Final Girl: Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery)

Best Kill: The most elaborate and thus most exciting kill involves Pam hanging upside down from a pull-up bar and having a rope attached to a weight tied around her neck, at which point the weight is tossed nonchalantly out the window. Ouchie.

Sign of the Times: One sorority girl dies while playing a Dragon's Lair stand-up video game.

Scariest Moment: After Virgil kicks Dr. Gilmore out of Ward L, he stares at her through the opaque glass of the ward door.

Weirdest Moment: In the morning, one of the sorority sisters pours a can of Coke on her cereal.

Champion Dialogue: "That worm would crawl his way back here if you dropped him on the far side of the Moon."

Body Count: 14

1. Susan's Boyfriend is sledgehammered in the face.
2. Susan has an axe thrown into her back.
3. Barbara is crushed in a vise.
4. Lorraine has her face blasted with steam.
5. Flashback Sorority Sister #1 is shot between the boobs with a nail gun.
6. Flashback Sorority Sister #2 is shot in the neck with a nail gun.
7. Flashback Sorority Sister #3 is shot in the forehead with a nail gun.
8. Flashback Sorority Sister #14 is shot in the back with a nail gun.
9. Cheryl is stabbed in the back.
10. Pam has a rope tied to her neck that is attached to a weight, which is thrown out the window.
11. Jesse is drilled in the back of the head.
12. Virgil is impaled in the chest with a crowbar.
13. Mr. Hackler is stabbed in the back with an awl offscreen.
14. Howard Johns is stabbed through the neck with a shard of mirror.

TL;DR: Silent Madness has its weaknesses, but it's a totally pleasant slasher that deserves more of a reputation than it has.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1096

Census Bloodbath: Y Is For Yay! Almost Done!

This Blogging From A to Z Challenge post returns us to our regularly programmed Census Bloodbath, as I attempt to remember the fact that I originally intended to do this chronologically but was thwarted by my Nightmare marathon.

Year: 1980

Director: Danny Steinmann

Cast: Barbara Bach, Sydney Lassick, Karen Lamm

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Let us begin by saying that old slasher films had the absolute best marketing people in the business. That poster up there is dagummit fantastic and it's equally as good as the alternate poster. So much so that I almost just included both of them at the top of this page.

If posters and videocassette box designs were an adequate judge of a film's quality, this entire series of slasher reviews would unearth masterpiece after masterpiece. Needless to say, the publicity is misleading. Although The Unseen is certainly a unique entry in the slasher genre, it would take an Olympian stretch of the imagination to be able to call it "good."

The Unseen is one of those slasher films that was released in the twilight period during the few months after Friday the 13th came out, unable to rip off that film because they were already shot before it became popular. These films largely ripped off Halloween or Psycho and had a tendency to break the rules largely because they hadn't been invented yet.

The Unseen with its low body count, utter lack of gore, and sympathetic killer is one of them. Now, remember this does not make it good. Slashers tend to be graded on a curve and part of that curve is assessing what new or interesting things the film does within the confines of the genre. If it can't even follow the paradigm (through no fault of its own, considering that the paradigm didn't exist yet), it becomes something else entirely and that something else is usually just no darn good.

Think of this man as an early slasher: Dressed up real nice but untrustworthy.

The Unseen follows a trio of female reporters as they cover a Danish festival in the California town of Solvang (it's great to see a slasher set in a real life location that I've actually been to - it feels like they knew I was coming). The lead anchor, Jennifer Fast (Barbara Bach, the Bond girl from The Spy Who Loved Me), has just gotten out of an unfulfilling long term relationship with a pro footballer (Doug Barr, who would appear in Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing just one year later) who was benched permanently due to a knee injury. 

Her sister Karen (Karen Lamm) and their coworker Vicki (Lois Young) are interchangeable blondes so you know they're not going to live to see the closing credits. In fact, Vicki doesn't even get a name until after she dies, in the grand tradition of oh so many expendable Friday the 13th teens (several hundred of which were slaughtered in director Danny Steinmann's universally despised Friday the 13th: A New Beginning).

When their hotel reservations in Solvang fall through, the trio makes their way out of town until they stop at a secluded hotel. This hotel turns out to be out of service as it has been converted into a museum, which makes it the perfect location for a slasher film. Unfortunately the proprietor, Ernest Keller (Sydney Lassick) does not understand the opportunity that is being wasted and instead invites them to stay at the stately home he shares with his wife Virginia (Lelia Goldoni). 

Luckily for us, this home is well furnished with polished oak furniture, a full service restroom, and mysterious grates in the floor that lead to a cellar from which mysterious clanking noises emanate. When the sick Vicki is left alone to relax and take a bath, she learns all too well what those grates lead to as an unseen (geddit?) assailant drags her underneath, leaving behind her head. Because this is an 80's horror film after all, we get a glimpse of some full frontal before everything goes down.

And we're not the only ones.

As the girls begin to recognize the danger in the house and succumb to it, it is slowly revealed that the Kellers aren't all that they seem to be. I mean, obviously. They have a crazed killer in their basement. It turns out that Virginia is Ernest's sister, whom he has been abusing sexually and physically for years. The creature in the basement is their illegitimate child, a large mutated man who is essentially a giant baby who doesn't understand that his strength is hurting people.

In an interesting twist, it becomes clear that Ernest is the true villain despite never murdering a single person as has been tormenting Virginia and their son for decades. This storyline as well as several side plots about attempted castration, abortion, and shattered career dreams make The Unseen an unusually dark member of the proto-slasher family. Although the film that holds their story is tremendously boring at times, it's hard not to connect with the victimized Kellers and their plight.

Although watching the cycle of abuse being carried out is harrowing, much of the movie is spent on Jennifer and her dull exploits as she traipses around being the single least effective horror movie heroine of all time. In fact, her entire Final Girl sequence could have been wrapped up in a solid minute if she was smart enough to realize that the kindhearted but scaryfaced Junior didn't want to hurt her.

Honestly, the best performance of the film. He's surprisingly adorable.

Or if she thought to grab the axe that's just sitting there in the chicken coop she hides out in. Or if she understood the fact that a couple bags of chicken feed aren't going to kill a man. Or if she could crawl at more than .01 miles per hour. Jennifer is the worst. But luckily her lack of prowess allows Virginia to empower herself in an attempt to save herself, her baby, and his potential victims.

It's satisfying in an unusually resonant way for a film of this pedigree, although it's still not enough to lift the film up from being a muted slog. The best I can say is that it's halfway decent. For every good element like the slinky jazz score that actually sounds like its own entity and not just a John Carpenter riff like all other 1980 horror, there's an equal and opposite negative element like the roar of white noise that fills in the space between every line of dialogue, making it sound like the house has an unusually persistent janitor using a Dyson.

It's endlessly frustrating and the film stops and starts too many times to get any real momentum going, all of which is killed during the final twenty minutes where the entire plot gets stuck in the mud for all but two or three shimmering moments. All in all, I don't regret having watched The Unseen because the story it told was interesting, even if it was mega depressing. But I would never ever ever watch it again.

Killer: Junior Keller (Stephen Furst)
Final Girl: Jennifer Fast (Barbara Bach)
Best Kill: Karen is killed when her scarf dangles above the grate and is pulled through, slamming her face against the metal.
Sign of the Times: The very first scene opens with this guy.

Scariest Moment: The way Ernest treats Virginia when they're alone together is a disarmingly blunt look at incest and domestic abuse.
Weirdest Moment: Ernest has an angry conversation with Virginia while he attaches an increasingly absurd number of clothespins to his face.
Champion Dialogue: "Blow your nose, my sweet little honey bunch."
Body Count: 4; including the killer but not including the decapitated chicken.

1. Vicki is pulled into the grate and is crushed in the process.
2. Karen's scarf is yanked into the grate and her face is smashed into the metal.
3. Junior is hit in the head with a nail stuck through a board.
4. Ernest is shot through the chest by his sister/wife. 

TL;DR: The Unseen is an interesting and dark early entry in the slasher genre, but it's not good enough to merit a rewatch.
Rating: 5/10
Word Count: 1376