SILENT MADNESS

Director: Simon Nuchtern Screenplay: Bob Zimmerman, Bob Milling, Simon Nuchtern Starring: Belinda Montgomery, Sydney Lassick, Viveca Lindfors Runtime: 93 minutes By 1984, slasher mania was probably at its absolute peak. The success of Halloween and the ever-growing Friday the 13th series meant we were drowning in low-budget tales of teenagers being picked off by some masked (or unmasked) psychopath. Sure, the quality control wasn’t exactly stellar. Not everything in ’84 could be A Nightmare on Elm Street, but there was still plenty of scrappy B-movie fun to be had. And Silent Madness is definitely one of those.

Like most of its peers, it’s got a pretty intriguing title. It doesn’t exactly scream “slasher movie,” but by the time the credits roll, it makes perfect sense. For the uninitiated, here’s the gist. Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery) is a psychiatrist at a New Jersey mental institution. She’s only been there a few months, but she’s already fed up with the incompetence (and attitude) of some of her colleagues. And rightly so. One day she spots a glaring error: a homicidal patient named Howard Johns has been released due to a computer mix-up. Honestly, these bloody computers will be the end of us. When she raises the alarm, she’s told by a couple of fellow doctors (one called Dr. Krueger!) that Johns actually died a week earlier and the system should have read “deceased,” not “released.” Phew. Crisis averted. Except… not quite. Joan doesn’t buy it for a second. After doing a little digging with a local newspaper reporter, she goes undercover at a New York sorority - the very place where Johns carried out a massacre nearly twenty years earlier. Has he returned to his old hunting ground, or is he really dead? Well, clearly the former – otherwise the film would be a bit shit!

Silent Madness is quite a lot of fun. It didn’t exactly set the box office alight in ’84, partly because it was overshadowed by Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. Despite its modest $600,000 budget, it had surprisingly lofty ambitions and even tried to secure some serious acting talent. Anne Bancroft and Shelley Winters were both linked to a role that eventually went to Viveca Lindfors - hardly a downgrade. Sydney Lassick, best known as Charlie Cheswick in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, shows up as the utterly reprehensible local sheriff. And while the title and synopsis suggest pure schlock, the film actually plays things a bit straighter than you might expect.

Although it has all the ingredients of a disposable stalk-and-slash flick, it almost feels like a proto-slasher in some ways. It’s far more interested in its adult characters than its teen victims, and at the centre of it all is Dr. Joan Gilmore. She’s in her mid-30s, intelligent, successful - and constantly forced to endure condescension and lechery from male colleagues, orderlies, and local law enforcement. But Joan’s no shrinking violet. She’s proactive, sharp, and determined, and the film spends as much time on her uncovering corruption as it does on stopping a killer. It’s surprisingly refreshing. Montgomery is excellent in the role, and overall the performances are stronger than you’d expect from your average ’80s slasher. Lindfors makes the most of her limited screen time, and David Greenan is solid as Joan’s reporter ally. There’s also an appearance from Katherine Kamhi, who plays superbitch Meg in 1983 slasher Sleepaway Camp. Lassick, who plays the hilariously awful Sheriff Liggett has the best dialogue though. ‘Just because a goddamn broad is so good-looking, don't mean we all have to think with our d*cks!’. The guy sits around all day in a police station that looks like a caretakers closet, quaffing beer all day too. Not that you’d expect more from law enforcement in an 80s slasher.

The kills here are pretty decent and there are a few of them to admire/enjoy. A couple of them are pretty brutal too, especially the one where a (canoodling) couple are terrorised in a camper van. There’s also a great scene late on where a couple of students are attacked whilst working out in a home gym. As for the killer himself, he’s… fine. The only issue is that we see his face a lot. It might have been more effective if he’d remained unseen, a la Friday the 13th, or at least hidden behind a mask. With his pale complexion and red-rimmed eyes, he looks less like an unstoppable force of evil and more like he desperately needs a decent night’s sleep. Still, he gets the job done. Walking, slightly tired-looking death machine or not.

There’s an Indicator release available that has the film in 2D and 3D formats (oh yeah, we forget to mention that it was made for 3D!) – but the film is available to stream on Tubi here in the UK. Well worth a look if you’re in the mood for a slightly smarter slice of ’80s slasher madness.