The Silent Scream (1979)

We begin in media res; not at the beginning of our tale, but rather at what will eventually be revealed as its end when several patrol cars roar up and park outside an isolated, multi-storied beach house. 

About a half dozen officers and two plain clothes detectives quickly bustle their way inside, but while the lights are on it appears no one is home. That is, until they hear noises of a struggle coming from the attic.

The detectives lead the upward charge through a maze of staircases, which eventually spits them out at the attic door. 

Inside, they find two bodies, presumed dead, individually lying in a bloody heap but unidentifiable at this point. Their attention is then drawn to another open doorway that leads into what appears to be a bedroom.

And as they take in the scene inside, their visual sweep comes to a sudden halt when they spy something else over in the corner, which the film is not ready to reveal just yet as this prescient preamble comes to a freeze-framed conclusion.

Cut to a small college campus several days prior, registration day for the fall semester, where last-second transfer Scotty Parker tries to explain her situation to the surly woman running the crowded line for student housing.

Apparently, all on-campus housing was booked over two months ago, says Miss Crabbypants. And so, the best the clerk can offer is a prospect sheet of all that’s left of the off-campus rental opportunities. This conversation then ends with a warning that these accommodations are unvetted and unapproved by the college.

In other words: rent at your own risk -- he typed ominously.

With no other options, Scotty (Balding) takes the list and quickly works her way through it; but she has no luck, finding either skeevy rat-holes or creepy landlords that set off way too many red flags. And as the list dwindles, she finds her way to a familiar looking beach house, which looks a lot friendlier in the bright sunshine. And compared to everything else, it seems perfect -- or at least, it’ll do; and yet, Scotty can’t get anyone to answer the door.

Circling the house to the beach side, Scotty’s calls of ‘anyone home’ are soon answered by another girl working her way up the steps from the beach below. Here, Scotty begs her for a room but turns out this other girl, Doris Prichart (Andelman), is just another tenant. 

But, she does confirm there is still a room available to rent and the person Scotty really wants to talk to is the owner, Mrs. Engels, a bit of a recluse, she says, or her teenage son, Mason; a little weird, but harmless.

Now, Mason sounds a lot like the bespectacled boy on a bike Scotty passed on the way to the house. The only problem is, they hear another car winding its way to the house, too, meaning someone else might get to that coveted room first!

Sure enough, Peter Ransom (Widelock) beats them to Mason. Here, after a really long day, Scotty is ready to fight him for the vacancy and starts rolling up her sleeves. And it might have actually come to blows until Mason (Reardon) steps in and says there's no need to fight, for they have not one, but two, rooms left to rent. Of course, they’ll still have to fight over who gets what room.

But this is quickly settled diplomatically when Scotty opts for the smaller, cheaper room that’s more in her budget. A good sport, Peter offers to take Scotty out to dinner as a consolation prize. 

Here, Doris butts in, saying if they wait for their other roommate, Jack Towne, to arrive, then Peter, who brags he needn’t worry about money because his father pays for everything, can take all three out to dinner so these fellow college students, now roomies, can get better acquainted. He agrees.

Meanwhile, Mason shows Scotty to her snug little room, which she finds to be a perfect fit. He then informs how this used to be his older sister’s room, who has since “gone away” but doesn’t elaborate any further. 

Also of note, there is only one community bathroom and shower, and a community laundry room in the basement. And the only real house rule is to pay your rent on time and clean up after yourselves. With that, Scotty starts unpacking, unaware that some shadowy figure has been silently watching her from above through an air grate this whole time.

Outside, Doris helps Peter haul his stuff in when Jack (Doubet) arrives on his motorcycle. He admires Peter’s Porsche as he grabs a box of stuff, too. And as they head inside, Doris tells him of their evening plans, saying they can walk to a nearby restaurant from here along the beach.

After unpacking, Scotty finds Mason in his bedroom, engrossed in some war movie on TV. Apparently, Mason’s father was a pilot in the war, who died before his son was born. But Mason still idolizes the man, and constantly goes through his father’s old footlocker, which contains his uniform, medals, and service revolver.  

Here, Scotty asks if there’s any place she could store her suitcases since her room is a little cramped. He offers the basement but she would prefer the attic, if available, fearing the basement would be too damp and musty. Mason mulls this for a moment but eventually says it would be okay. He instructs her how to get to the attic, which is at the top of the stairs on the left. He also gives a friendly warning not to disturb his mother, whose room is to the right at the top of the stairs.

And so, Scotty makes her way up and slinks past the other bedroom and enters the attic undetected. It's unfinished and full of old clothing and household nick-knacks. There’s also another door that piques her curiosity but this quickly dries up when Mrs. Engels (De Carlo) silently appears in the main doorway.   

Scotty apologizes but says she did have permission from Mason to stow her stuff up here. Mrs. Engels doesn’t reply, but moves to the side, clearing the way. Scotty takes the hint and vacates as fast as her feet will take her.

Later that night, as the four new roommates work their way down the beach toward the restaurant, one can’t help but notice that this adventure has turned into an impromptu double-date; Doris matched up with Peter, and Scotty matching up with Jack. 

Here, Jack wonders aloud if Doris was playing matchmaker the whole time. Scotty, obviously smitten, smiles and shrugs as they continue on, leaving the beach house behind them.

Meanwhile, the viewer lets them go on their merry way and heads back inside the house, into the basement, where we quickly enter a crawlspace through a hidden trapdoor. This also reveals a boarded-off stairwell, which, judging by the accumulated dust and cobwebs, hasn’t been used in a long, long time. 

Then, as we hear an old ballad about lost love coming from somewhere above, the camera works its way up through this rat’s nest of doglegs, HVAC pipes, slats and plaster, the music getting louder as we go, until the passageway comes to a dead end.

But as we listen, as the song ends, we hear something else scrabbling around on the other side of the wall. Could it be rats? Doubtful, as something strategically hacks away at the thin plaster between the lathes with a fork, letting light seep through the slats from the other side. 

But just when it appears this person has given up, well, they were just regrouping as whoever it was physically punches a hole through the wall. Someone that has been watching, trapped, and is desperately trying to get out… 

In his final interview right before he passed away in 2007 at the age of 77, filmmaker Denny Harris said, “My whole life I wanted to make a horror film, and finally I made one. And it worked.” Only it almost didn’t. Work, I mean. 

Harris came to filmmaking by way of advertising. He started out as a still photographer in print but soon grew bored with that format and moved to filming and directing TV commercials. And as it turned out, he was really good at it.

The Oregon Journal (March 24, 1978). 

As Harris said in that interview for Scorpion Releasing (2009), “I was lucky because I worked during a period when there were a lot of storytelling commercials -- really tiny movies -- 30 to 60 seconds long. That’s no longer true. All you have is flashiness now … And so, I practiced for over 20 years on little tiny films and developed an instinct for it. And by the time it came to make a real movie, my instincts were in a solid place. I had the technique, I knew where to place the camera, [and] which shots I would need to make a scene work.”

Over the years Harris developed a strong reputation as he garnered awards for his efforts filming national commercials for Pepsi-Cola, McDonalds and Wrigley's Chewing Gum. He started his own business, Denny Harris Inc., and established an office and production facilities, including his own sound-stages, camera equipment, and editing suites on the corner of Olympic Boulevard and Bundy Drive in west Los Angeles, near Santa Monica, accumulating a staff of writers and craftsmen as he went that kept the business humming right along.

The Los Angeles Times (December, 1981). 

Said Harris, “A [production] crew is like a watch: one little tiny spring out of kilter and you’ve had it. You have to have people you can absolutely trust. I found the best cameramen, the best prop men, the best script people. And so, when we decided to make a film it was like falling off a chair. Nothing to it.” Well, at least technically. As for the genre they would make, as we’ve established, this was already asked and answered as far as Harris was concerned.

“As I grew up one of my favorite genres, probably my most favorite genre, was the horror film. I know it’s considered a lowly genre by many people. When Alfred Hitchcock made Psycho (1960) for instance, many critics said, ‘Shame on you, you lowered yourself to making a horror film.’ I’ve never felt that way. I love the horror films of John Carpenter and Friday the 13th (1980). But my most favorite horror film of all is Psycho.”

And so, Harris put an ad in Variety calling for scripts that would meet his genre demands. “And then I proceeded to read some of the worst scripts I’ve ever read in my life,” bemoaned Harris. “They were all awful.”

According to Harris, there were some better ones -- or at least scripts that weren’t quite so odious -- but he couldn’t really afford them due to a limited budget of around $450,000, as the film would be made independently, with the financing coming from Harris himself. But Harris did have one massive advantage over other low-budget filmmakers of the era in that he had an established crew and already owned all the equipment and facilities he would need to make the picture. Lighting equipment, sound equipment, grip trucks, an onsite garage and mechanic to service those trucks, you name it, Harris probably had it.

Thus, they finally settled on a script that wasn’t too terrible by Wallace Bennett, which, unsurprisingly, was a riff on Psycho. It featured a killer dressed as someone else, multiple personality disorders, red herrings, and a handy group of boarders residing in an old gothic mansion (instead of a spooky motel) to get killed off one by one. But Harris was less interested in the body count and mode of murder and more interested in employing Hitchcock’s practical theories in building suspense.

Said Harris (ibid), “I wanted to make a character-based film. When you make a horror film the first thing you’ve got to think about is getting your audience acquainted with your characters so they feel they know them. If they feel they know them, what happens to them matters. If you don’t take the time to introduce your audience properly to your characters, they won’t care. They simply … won’t … care.

“A film doesn’t play out up there on the screen, it plays out in your mind,” Harris attempted to clarify. “The suspense you anticipate. When you just see one dead body drop after another, your mind isn’t active; sure, bloody bedlam, but when you anticipate what might happen, and there’s suspense involved, your mind becomes a member of the cast. And therefore, you’re involved. Body count [movies] don't involve anybody. You kinda feel at the end that’s kinda what [the characters] deserved.”

Thus, with the script and motifs set and the crew already pre-ordained, Harris then assembled his cast, which we’ll be discussing more in just a bit. And so, principal photography on the film -- under the shooting title The Boarding House, not to be confused with Jim Wintergate's Boardinghouse (1982) -- commenced on September 30, 1977. 23 shooting days later, the film wrapped in late October and reportedly came in under budget. But as it would turn out, that would prove to be the easy part.

“Making a film is not as easy as you'd think because the camera grabs little pieces, and you don’t shoot the pieces in the right order,” said Harris (ibid). And when you edit all of that together, hopefully, you’ve got something presentable. But as a rough cut of those little spliced pieces started to take shape, Harris knew right away, by his own admission, that as a whole his efforts did not work -- artistically or commercially. At all. But, he still felt there was enough there that maybe, just maybe, with some limited re-shoots and a little tinkering, there might be something salvageable amongst the turgidity.

Harris would screen this rough cut for anyone willing to sit through it, looking for either advice on what to do or how to fix the film. But the vast majority of responses was to eat his losses and just shelve the film permanently, fearing it would harm his reputation. He had an itch. He scratched it. It didn’t work out. Now move on. And while he seemed determined to fix it, most felt the expense of trying to salvage The Boarding House would be pointless at best and a total waste of money at worst -- all except for two dissenting voices; two brothers, Jim and Ken Wheat.

Jim and Ken Wheat. 

Aspiring filmmakers themselves, the Wheat brothers had garnered some attention with their short film Stuck on Screen. At the time, “Jim and I tried to put together a low budget feature we could produce ourselves,” said Ken Wheat in an interview with William C. Marell for Script Secrets (2004). “We wrote a story, raised a little development dough, and used that to hire a 'professional' screenwriter'. We stumbled across an investor interested in chasing tax write-offs, found a very talented guy to direct, and set up an exciting cast and crew. Then, over the course of a couple of days, a change in the tax laws killed our financing and our writer turned in a totally unusable script. Our entire package dissolved. Back at square one, the only thing we could do then was become screenwriters ourselves.”

Their first original screenplay concerned alien abductions and cattle mutilations. Their second one was a little more down to earth, and thanks to some serendipity, wound up on the desk of Harris thanks to a mutual friend. Harris liked what he read and, in December of 1977, invited the Wheats to come and take a look at his film.

“They knew they wanted to re-shoot some elements,” said Jim Wheat (Scorpion Releasing, 2009). “We agreed to look at it and give our advice.” And when the screening ended, the Wheats felt the basic premise of the film was solid but just not executed very well. They were also honest, telling Harris, “You could fix this, but you need to do more than what you’re planning on doing.”00

At the time, Harris was contemplating spending an additional $20,000 to shoot about ten to twenty minutes of new footage to patch things up. The Wheats felt that wasn’t enough. And since the vast majority of the sets were still standing on Harris’ sound-stages, and since Harris already owned all of his equipment, and his crew was already on salary, with everything essentially paid for already and ready to film, why not spend a little more and shoot an additional 30 to 40 minutes of footage instead?

Encouraged by the Wheats’ enthusiasm, Harris hired them on as producers in January, 1978, and put them in charge of salvaging his movie while he continued to keep the lights on by making commercials. The Wheats were given a budget of $150,000, no more, and set to work.

To start, the Wheats scrubbed through all the existing footage shot for the original version to determine what worked and what didn’t and what needed to be redone. They then set to work on shoring up the script, using what was salvageable as their guide. And in these streamlining efforts they would cut out some characters altogether, completely change others, remove several redundant plot threads, and overhauled and retooled the killer’s identity, motives, and their modus operandi. Essentially, the only things to survive from the original version unscathed were the boarding house setting, which, technically, was also replaced with a cheaper location, and the four college characters.

As Ken Wheat put it (Scorpion Releasing, 2009), they used the existing footage to build a better story around it. “We basically came up with this [new] version because our initial opinion was this is a really good idea; a no-brainer; college students renting rooms in a boarding house [getting murdered by some psychopath] … Part of what we were trying to do was fill in some of the texture to make it more of a believable environment for the scary parts of the movie to take place in.”

As the new version of the script took shape, the producers had an epiphany that would drastically change their proposed shooting course and schedule. “The big breakthrough came when we realized the cost of going back to shoot for one day at the house [where they shot the original footage], for that amount of money, when you combined the cost of renting the location, the insurance, and transportation, we could build additional sets at the studio and shoot for however long we needed to shoot. And then we could really redo a lot of stuff.”

And so, with a retooled script, a bare-bones crew of around 15, a reassembled cast, with a few new faces while others were noticeably absent, and a brand new title, The Silent Scream (1979), filming commenced once again in late March of 1978 and would continue until wrapping in early April with several shot-on-the-fly pickups to follow. As Ken Wheat told Marell, “It was guerilla filmmaking, with 12 days of principal photography, then several months of no budget inserts [with doubles for the principals]."

“So often you see a film and it runs out of gas. You get all the hits in the middle of the film and by the time you get to the end there’s nothing [left] to do,” noted Jim Wheat (Scorpion Releasing, 2009). “The missing ingredient [in the original version] was structure. Structure with all the twists and turns the film makes to hold your interest.” What the Wheats referred to as ‘The Big Boo!’

And in their efforts to not fall into that familiar trap, their version would “start slow at first and then increase in intensity and suspense; and it keeps on going until the end of the film, the climax, where you have the most twists and turns in the least amount of time. We tried to do that.”

As to whether these efforts of taking Harris’ existing round object of a film and forcing it to fit inside the Wheats’ new square hole paid off, or were all for naught, well, that would depend on two things; one, how their extremely doctored movie patched together and played out; and two, how well it went over with audiences.

To start, it was decided to essentially make the vast majority of the film a flashback after an opening preamble, step-framed and slightly off-kilter, that doesn’t quite give away the ending. This was done for both financial reasons and story considerations. The first in that it was cheaper to use that same footage twice to fill up screen-time; and second, Harris and the Wheats wanted to set the hooks in deep to help build up the dread and suspense by letting the audience know early how this was all going to end badly for some.

As for who exactly wouldn’t make it, well, the viewer would have to stick around to find out as we catch up with our protagonists at that restaurant, where, after eating and several rounds of drinks, Scotty and Jack bow out early and head back to the house. 

These two have obviously hit it off, they share a kiss, and Jack presses his luck, hoping the evening will end with the two of them in bed together. But! Since classes start tomorrow, Scotty takes a raincheck and they both head to bed in separate rooms.

Back on the beach, Doris is beginning to regret her choice of boys to match up with as Peter is extremely drunk and engaging in an unsolicited game of grab-fanny.

Worse yet, they tarried too long and the tide has come in, meaning they’re both gonna have to get wet as they work their way around an outcropping of rocks. When Peter fails to make it, a concerned Doris goes back but it was all a ruse just to scare her.  

Then, their evening ends with one final grope and a lewd comment from Peter about the quality of Doris’s breasts, which earns him a righteous lap to the kisser that knocks him on his can. She then abandons this drunken lout on the beach and heads home. Here, a drunken Peter struggles to get back up, thinks better of it, and promptly passes out.  

And there he sleeps until the encroaching tide creeps in far enough to overtake his impromptu bed, jolting him awake. Apparently still drunk, when someone approaches, Peter gives them a friendly hello before whoever it was violently stabs the boy to death.

The following morning, a jogger and her dog run past an elaborate sand castle that soon draws the canine’s attention -- especially the severely bloodied hand sticking out from one of the turrets, meaning, presumably, the formation was built by the killer? (That's me shrugging right now.)

Cut to the coroner’s office, where the detectives we saw in the preamble, Lt. Sandy McGiver (Mitchell) and Sgt. Manny Ruggin (Schrieber), observe the post mortem on Peter, who was savagely stabbed nine times by a knife that was, as Ruggin describes it, very large and very sharp. They then head to the beach house, where Ruggin interviews the three tenants while McGiver talks to Mason, who makes excuses for his mother’s absence.

Being the last one to see the victim alive, Doris is an obvious suspect. But since they have no murder weapon, no real evidence against her, or a motive, they don’t bring her in for now. McGiver, meanwhile, is curious about Mason’s sketchy answers about the house, his mother, and his absent sister, Victoria, whom the boy now claims moved somewhere east.

As they head back to headquarters, smelling something fishy, McGiver orders Ruggin to dig into the whole family’s background to, hopefully, get some answers and drum up a lead. And they’d best find one quick because Peter’s father has some pull and is raising a stink with their Captain to solve this case, like, yesterday.

And so, after rummaging through the files, Ruggin discovers that Victoria Engels has a criminal record. Apparently, she went a little crazy after being jilted by her boyfriend and attacked him and his new girlfriend with a knife. No one was seriously hurt, but, sure sounds like a bona fide suspect to him. McGiver agrees and says they need to find her and to keep digging.

The next day another plausible suspect is identified when Jack tracks Scotty down on campus, inviting her to go for a swim at the beach when they get back home after classes. Here, Scotty is a little worried about Jack’s detached indifference about Peter’s death, and the fact he’s ready to go swimming in the exact same spot their roommate was violently killed the day prior.

Still, twitterpation wins out and she agrees to go for that swim. To her credit, this is cut short when her unease over the whole thing, of essentially playing and fooling around on top of Peter’s grave, sends them back to the house early.

Later, as we see that Mason is a bit of a pervert as he gets a little too excited watching a girl get sexually assaulted on TV, we cut to Scotty’s room where she’s trying to get some reading done for class. But this is interrupted by that same ballad coming from somewhere inside the house. Curious, she goes exploring but can’t pinpoint the source.

She does find Doris down in the basement, doing a batch of laundry. Here, Scotty tries to cheer her friend up, who is an emotional wreck. Feeling at least partially responsible for Peter's death, having left him alone to get killed, Doris also confesses that she can no longer stay in this house and plans to actively start looking elsewhere for lodging in the morning. After a consoling hug, Doris asks Scotty to stay awhile longer, hoping to talk some more; but Scotty begs off, saying she’s got to get her homework done.

But when Scotty returns to her room, she’s startled to find Jack waiting for her inside in the dark; and he has no intention of letting her study. 

Anyhoo, long story short, the two of them start a consensual knocking of boots; and as their arousal gets rather vocal, the sounds draft throughout the house via the antiquated ventilation system, explaining why it was so hard to pinpoint where that music was coming from.

And as their sexual encounter reaches a fever pitch, their rutting wafts all the way down to the basement, where Doris listens, realizes what it is, and then smiles for the first time in what feels like forever.

But this mood is short-lived as someone springs from the shadows and attacks her with a familiar looking knife. 

Unfortunately, the girl’s cries for help are drowned out by, well, Scotty reaching full orgasm. And once the deed is done, Scotty, perhaps feeling a little guilty, kicks Jack out of her room.

Meanwhile, up in the attic, Mrs. Engels sits a silent vigil over that mystery door. We then cut to the other side, where we see a woman sitting in front of what at first appears to be a vanity mirror; but upon close inspection it’s an oval portrait of a young Victoria Engels. 

We then swing around and meet the older Victoria (Steele), observing the portrait, who, judging by her twitchy behavior, thinks the portrait is her actual reflection.

Either way, her dissociative behavior shows she is mentally unstable. This is confirmed when she moves to a closet, where we spy Doris’s dead body -- a body she’s been playing dress-up with, too, I might add. But did Victoria actually kill her? Magic 8-Ball says, Answer unclear. Ask again later.

Elsewhere, still feeling guilty for abandoning Doris in her hour of need, Scotty seeks her out but can’t find her. She checks the basement but her friend is not there. Apparently, the killer cleaned up after themselves. But while they did miss a splash of blood on the floor, Scotty doesn't see it either. Instead, she spies the open trapdoor that leads into the crawlspace.

Curious, and armed with a handy flashlight, Scotty goes spelunking into the walls and finds that staircase, which she follows up until it ends at the wall, now with a huge gaping hole in it! 

Then, as she leans in for a closer look at what appears to be a sheet covered in blood, she is suddenly seized by Victoria, who violently yanks her through the gaping maw and into her not-so-secret room!

Downstairs, Mason hears the commotion and heads up to investigate. Jack hears something, too, obscured by his headphones, and checks in on Scotty, who is not in her room. 

Mason, meanwhile, finds his mother struggling to contain Scotty in his sister’s no longer secret room and jumps into help. Jack, meanwhile, can’t find Scotty or Doris anywhere. His search eventually leads him to that door in the attic, which won’t budge.

On the other side, Mason holds a hand over Scotty’s mouth, muzzling her enough that Jack can’t hear her muffled screams as he and his mother struggle to keep her under control. Victoria, meanwhile, silently curls up into a ball on her bed. 

Then, as she struggles, Scotty manages to get her feet tangled up in the phonograph’s power cord and gives a kick; but Mrs. Engels manages to catch it before it clatters to the ground. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway as Jack had given up and left to search elsewhere.

After he’s gone, the Engels manage to get Scotty restrained, tying her wrists separately to the hanger pole in that closet with the late Doris, lashing her ankles together, and gagging her. Once she’s secured, Mason decides this has all finally gone too far as all their family skeletons come tumbling out of that closet Scotty is currently tied-up in.

Apparently, after attacking her boyfriend back in the day, Victoria attempted to hang herself but was thwarted when the ceiling fixture she attached the rope to gave way. But that was only her first attempt, and this led to her commitment in a sanitarium, a hopeless case, that eventually led to a frontal lobotomy. Mrs. Engels then removed her now mute daughter from the sanitarium and brought her home, where she hid her away and kept watch over her ever since.

Here, Mason chastises his mother for ever allowing boarders in the house with his crazy sister lurking about. But they had no choice, she says, they needed the money. When told they could’ve sold the house, moved somewhere else, and started over, Mrs. Engels said that would’ve never worked because of Victoria.

Mason then really loses it, saying how it was always about his sister, and never about him, and how she's ruined his life. Why couldn’t it ever be about him? Here, his mother drops another bombshell, saying Victoria didn't ruin his life, but he ruined hers. See, turns out Mrs. Engels is not his mother but his grandmother. That’s right, Victoria was pregnant when she tried to hang herself, meaning Mason was really Victoria’s son all along.

Of course, that also means the man he thought was his father, the man he idolized, fetishized even, was not his father at all. This revelation snaps the last of Mason’s mental twigs, who storms out of the attic and returns to his room. 

He runs into Jack, who still doesn’t know what’s really going on, and knocks him out cold. He then breaks out that old footlocker, dresses up in his father / grandfather’s uniform, and returns to the not-so-secret attic room fully decked out, and armed with that service pistol.

Meanwhile, back at police headquarters, McGiver and Ruggin have finally pieced it all together, too. The suicide attempts; the stay at the sanitarium; the lobotomy; how Mrs. Engels brought her daughter home; where she’s been cooped up ever since; everything. They then round up a detachment and head to the beach house.

Where, turns out, insanity runs in the family as Mason now thinks he is his father / grandfather. He draws the pistol and aims it at Scotty, asking his wife / mother / grandmother if that’s what she wants him to do, to clean up another one of Victoria’s messes. 

But this thought sparks off a lightbulb filament inside Mason's brain, who reasserts himself when he realizes there won’t be any more ‘Victoria problems’ if there is no more Victoria.

He then aims the gun at his sister / mother, but his wife / mother / grandmother (-- my gosh, but this is confusing --) moves to stop him. 

As they struggle over the gun, Victoria starts to move again and retrieves a large butcher knife, still covered in Peter and Doris’s blood, from underneath the mattress, pegging her, unsurprisingly, as the killer all along. 

Thus, with the blade raised, and pure madness in her eyes, Victoria slowly creeps toward the helpless Scotty in a silent stand-off for the ages.

Meanwhile, as the fight over the gun spills into the attic proper, several rounds are fired off until one finds purchase in Mrs. Engels’ chest, killing her instantly. 

Mason’s cry over the deed distracts Victoria away from Scotty, who is soon drawing a bead on her brother / son. 

But siding with the lesser form of bat-shit crazy, the desperate Scotty manages to get a muffled warning off to Mason through her gag before its too late! 

Here, Mason tries to shoot her but the clip is now empty -- and Victoria gets way too close before he gets another mag loaded and fires, hitting her. 

Then, after apparently killing his wife / mother / grandmother and his sister / mother, a distraught Mason then turns the gun on himself and fires.

Back in the closet, with the Engels all presumed dead, Scotty manages to get one of her wrists free. 

But as she moves to untie the other, it turns out Victoria wasn’t quite as dead as she’d hoped. And still armed with that knife, the wounded killer once more inevitably makes her way toward the closet.

Down below, Jack has finally come around, hears all the screaming and returns upstairs, where he finds Victoria trying to pry open that closet door with the knife, barely being held shut by Scotty’s lone free hand.  

Victoria hears him, and in her confusion, is unsure of who to attack first. 

But with her back turned on Scotty, unaware that she has finally freed herself completely, her former captive lunges forward and pushes Victoria from behind, who falls onto the very knife she killed all the others with.

Meanwhile, the film finally laps itself as McGiver and Ruggin arrive at the house in force, find the bodies, and trace more blood into Victoria's bedroom, where they find her dead, too. 

And then we finally see what they saw in the corner: 

Jack comforting and consoling a traumatized Scotty after all that terrorizing and bloodshed, which brings our rather grisly tale to an end. 

When it comes to the original Boarding House version of Harris’ film, most of its details have been lost over time or relegated to a very deep memory hole; and it's unclear if this original cut even exists in any form or format. (Some conflicting recollections said the original version was never even finished.) But from what I could glean from several interviews and commentaries, some of it will ring familiar while other parts will not.

The beach house was still owned by Mrs. Engels, who still had a daughter named Victoria; only this time she went a little crazy after being raped by the gardener. During this assault, her attacker broke a bottle across Victoria’s face, permanently scarring her. When the dastardly deed was done, her mind broke and she was sent out of the country “to recover.”

And while the reclusive Mrs. Engels kept to herself in the upper floors, the running of her boarding house fell to a man named Mason, who was no relation to the Engels at all. Also of note, on top of the four college students, there were two older tenants who had rooms, too; one of them being a huge fan of Agatha Christie novels, who joined Scotty in trying to unravel motives and uncover who was doing all the killing.

In Bennet’s script, Peter tries to rape Doris at the beach before she manages to get away. He is then greeted by another woman, identity unknown, who strips naked; and so, he tries to rape her, too, before being stabbed to death. And as things progressed from there, Doris was still killed in two different basements at the same time (-- I’ll explain that in a sec), along with Mason and Jack, who’s killed while lying in bed, listening to music on his headphones, oblivious to the killer’s approach until it's far too late, leaving it up to Scotty and the police to finally figure out whodunit before she falls victim, too.

Then, for the film’s big reveal, it turns out Mrs. Engels had died years ago and Victoria, still crazy, took her place, pretended to be her mother, applied makeup to cover her scars, and started killing people for … reasons. (No one seems to remember if Victoria killed her mother before taking her place.) She then lures Scotty back to the house. And during the climactic fight, Scotty pulls the makeup appliance off of “Mrs. Engels” face, which reveals *gasp* it was really Victoria all along.

“The best thing to do about that first version [of the film] is to forget it,” said a self-depreciating Harris (Scorpion Releasing, 2009). “It was badly cast, had a bad script, a bad story, a bad crew and, as it turned out, a bad director.”

In the original version, Mrs. Engels / Victoria was played by Susan Backlinie, a stuntwoman, most famous for playing Chrissie, the girl who gets eaten in the first reel of JAWS (1975). Her rape scene still shows up in the movie, on TV, which Mason watches a little too giddily.

Speaking of Mason, he was originally played by Murray Langston, of all people, who is probably best remembered as The Unknown Comic; though few would probably recognize him as his schtick called for Langston to wear a paper sack over his head, who kept showing up on things like The Redd Foxx Show (1977-1978) and The Gong Show (1976-1980), where he constantly busted host Chuck "Chuckie Baby" Barris’s balls.

As written and shot, Mason, our Norman Bates surrogate, was to be a homosexual; and according to the Wheats, Langston leaned into this angle a little too hard, embarrassingly so, which Ken Wheat called "an offensively exaggerated gay character, very broad, supposedly villainous just because he was gay."

Added Jim Wheat (Scorpion Releasing, 2009), “It was a badly written part. Langston played it so broadly, so over the top. His character, I guess it was supposed to be a red herring? That he was gay, and maybe you’d think he was dressing up in a dress. It really didn’t work.”

Alas, no one seems to remember whoever played those geriatric tenants of the boarding house. It really didn’t matter as those two fuddies were the first to go in the massive script overhaul, as the Wheats felt they made no sense, added nothing to the story, and made things awfully crowded at the house on Timber Cove Road. The Wheats would also remove both rape scenes, calling them unnecessary and slightly tasteless.

They would also undergo a massive retooling of the Engels, splitting Mrs. Engels and Victoria into two different characters. Thus, when it came time to recasting, the Wheats convinced Harris to think a little bigger, spend a little more, and add some punch and name recognition to the marquee. And so, for Mrs. Engels, they pursued Yvonne De Carlo.

De Carlo had been working in film since the early 1940s before finally breaking out of bit parts with roles in Brute Force (1947) and Criss Cross (1949) opposite Burt Lancaster. She worked steadily through the 1950s and early ‘60s, with highlights being the swashbuckling epic Sea Devils (1953) and westerns like McClintock (1963), where she held her own against John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara on that staircase, before sliding into TV, where she famously played the vampire Lillian, wife of Herman, the matriarch of The Munsters (1964-1966).

The Wheats invited De Carlo to The Brown Derby to make their pitch and were extremely grateful when she accepted the unglamorous role, even though the budget could only afford her for two days of shooting. Harris called working with De Carlo a pure pleasure. "She came prepared. She came prepared to work.”

In the re-shoots, Backaline was not asked back to reprise her role as Victoria. As to why, well, apparently, she and Harris were currently embroiled in a lawsuit over some caustic makeup used to either make those facial scars or cover them up that left some nasty burn marks on her face. To replace her, the production picked up some much needed horror screen-cred by casting Barbara Steele.

Like with De Carlo, the Wheats were in awe of Steele, who was back in the States after a long career in Italian horror films like Black Sunday (alias La maschera del demonio, 1960), The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (alias L'orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock, 1962) and Castle of Blood (alias Danza Macabra, 1964). She had just come off an appearance in David Cronenberg’s They Came from Within (alias Shivers, 1975) and would play a key role in Joe Dante’s Piranha (1978), which was shot around the same time.

According to the Wheats, who could afford Steele for an extended four days of filming, one of the reasons she was drawn to the role was because her character was mute, meaning she wouldn’t have to memorize any lines. Regardless, Steele understood the assignment, and delivered most righteously. “I didn’t have to say anything to her about her performance the whole time,” said a grateful Harris. “She just grasped it. Most times I only had to do one take with her.”

Mason’s character would also get a massive restructuring. The Wheats couldn’t grasp that a boarding house would have, or need, a live-in manager. And so, instead, they made Mason part of the Engels family, which allowed for a nice five-car twist-pile up at the end over his pretzel’d parentage. 

Given the age of the character, if you did the math, it’s not that hard to suss out that Mason had been lied to about who his father really was. The photos of his alleged dad are World War II vintage, putting him and his mother in their late 40s when he was conceived.

And since they now needed someone younger to play the part, Langston was also out, replaced by Brad Reardon, who showed up briefly in Jonathan Kaplan’s The Student Teachers (1973). Reardon does the best he can, adding some nice obsessive touches to a hastily underwritten character.

Also not asked to come back was Diane McBain, who originally played Lt. Sandy McGiver. Now, McBain had some name recognition, having starred in the TV series Surfside 6 (1960-1962) and had appeared opposite Elvis Presley in Spinout (1966). According to her autobiography, Famous Enough - A Hollywood Memoir, McBain said she was told the reasons for her dismissal was because her take on a female police detective “wasn’t believable enough.”

But according to the Wheats, McBain wasn’t the problem. No, it was her co-star, Ric Mancini, the original Sgt. Ruggin, who was the problem. Apparently, Mancini had failed miserably as the film's comedy relief, reduced to filling his gob full of donuts in every scene. Sadly for McBain, every scene she had in the film was shared with Mancini, meaning it all had to be re-shot. Here, the Wheats thought they could once again do a little better when it came to the marquee, signing Cameron Mitchell to replace her.

Like De Carlo, Mitchell had been acting in the movies since the ‘40s, landing a plum role in John Ford’s They Were Expendable (1945) early in his career. He would also appear in things ranging from How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) to Gorilla at Large (1954) to Monkey on My Back (1957), where he played a World War II vet trying to kick his morphine habit. He would also do a tour in Europe, appearing in one of my favorite films of all time, Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (alias Sei donne per l'assassino, 1964).

As he got older, Mitchell transitioned into TV, starring in The High Chaparral (1967-1971). Then around 1978, Mitchell starred in The Toolbox Murders (1978), another proto-slasher / grisly body count flick, which officially launched the actor on about a decade-long stretch worth of unrepentant and glorious schlock: Supersonic Man (1979), Without Warning (1980), Kill Squad (1981), Raw Force (1982), which combined zombie cannibals and kung-fu, Killpoint (1984), Terror on Tape (1985), Low Blow (1986), Hollywood Cop (1987), Deadly Prey (1987), Space Mutiny (1988), and Terror in Beverly Hills (1989); all highly recommended for all the wrong reasons.

Thus, at that point in his career, The Silent Scream was kind of right in the actor’s wheelhouse. Also like De Carlo, the Wheats could only afford Mitchell for two days. But! As the legend goes, due to multiple divorces, Mitchell was always behind on his alimony payments and was always desperately looking for some unreported cash. Which is why a lot of producers bypassed his agent and went to him directly with offers of pay-for-play work. Sure enough, when his two days were up, the production was able to lure him back for a couple hours of pickups for $500.

To replace Mancini as the comedy relief, the production looked to Avery Schreiber, who was an actual comedian. A Second City vet, with his signature mustache and spitting speech impediment (-- think Sylvester the Cat), Schreiber also had some juice thanks to appearing in a series of popular Doritos commercials at the time that always ended in some kind of slapstick violence.

Now, one of the reasons Schreiber was hired was because his schedule matched Mitchell's available dates. Most of his lines were ad-libbed, scribbled down on a yellow legal pad, which you can see him reading from during the film. And between takes, Schreiber was always cracking jokes, which drove his co-star Juli Andelman crazy, who was trying to stay in somber character mode after Peter was killed.

Thus, the only returning actors for The Silent Scream’s do-over were the four college students, who were all happy to be working again.

Andelman had made a brief appearance in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) and had appeared as a guest star in some episodic TV before landing the role of Doris Prichart. Afterwards, she appeared in the Bill Murray vehicle Where the Buffalo Roam (1980), based on the life of author Hunter S. Thompson, and Blood Cult (1985), another low-budget horror film concerning unwilling human sacrifices.

Again, the patchwork script doesn’t do Andelman very many favors, as Doris’ biggest scene is warding off a sexual assault from one of her co-stars on the beach not once, but twice. But her only real complaint was during the re-tooled climax, where she was required to go through some extensive makeup to play her corpse, propped up in the closet. And her annoyance and whining were so incessant, they eventually switched gears and had someone else play the corpse, covered in a sheet.

(L-R) Chuck E. Cheese, John Widelock (circa 1982).  

The Silent Scream would be a one and done for John Widelock, who played the entitled brat, Peter Ransom. Again, you might not recognize the face but some might recognize the voice as Widelock was the original Chuck E. Cheese from 1977 to 1983, voicing the character in TV commercials, radio advertisements, and the animated short The Christmas that Almost Wasn’t (1983); as well as providing the voice for the animatronic automata featured in the restaurant chain’s many locations.

Steve Doubet, meanwhile, started out in the Soaps, playing David Banning on Days of Our Lives (1965 to present). Jack Towne would be a rare feature role for Doubet, as most of his acting career was in episodic TV or bit parts in telefilms like The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977) and The Greatest Thing that Almost Happened (1977) before returning to daytime TV, taking up a residency at General Hospital (1963 to present) in 1983.

Which brings us to the true star of the movie, Rebecca Balding, an unsung Final Girl, who does most of the heavy lifting but carries the movie with ease -- and who is so adorably adorable, Boils and Ghouls, that I can’t even even.

“The minute she read for the part I knew immediately she was the one,” said Harris (Scorpion Releasing, 2009). “There’s something about her. She underplays, and draws you into her character.”

The Fort Lauderdale News (June 3, 1980).  

A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, the perky brunette studied drama at the University of Kansas before moving out to Hollywood in the mid-1970s, where she landed a couple of episodes on The Bionic Woman (1976-1978) before landing a role in the telefilm The Gathering (1977), where a terminally ill patriarch manages to pull his estranged family back together for one final Christmas.

After that, Balding was poised to breakout when she landed the role of crusading reporter Carla Mardigian, one of the leads in the new TV series Lou Grant (1977-1982). The show was headlined by Ed Asner, and was yet another successful spinoff of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977). Balding had co-starred with Asner in The Gathering, where the two had hit it off, and she always felt that connection was why she got the role on what was, essentially, his show.

Around the same time Balding had initially read for the role of Scotty Young but had to turn it down after being cast on Lou Grant; but then, only three episodes in, something went completely sideways with the new TV gig.

Said Balding (Scorpion Releasing, 2009), “At the end of the third episode the producers came to my trailer, and I said, ‘Omigod you’re gonna fire me.’ And they said, ‘No-no. We don’t like to think of it as firing you. We just need to let you go.’”

They cited a lack of chemistry between Balding and her co-star Robert Walden. And how test audiences felt she came off as too young, and too vulnerable, and how this kind of intrepid reporter had to be gutsier. And stranger still, the show gave no explanation for her sudden absence. Carla was just gone, replaced by another female reporter, Billie Newman, played by Linda Kelsey, who would go on to be deservedly nominated and win multiple Emmy Awards for her work. (I know this sudden disappearance confused the heck out of an 8-year-old me at the time, who had developed an instant crush on Balding that was soon dethroned by a certain princess from the planet Alderaan.)

But one of Lou Grant’s stable of directors, Jay Sandrich, feeling a little guilty over the unceremonious dump-and-switch, got Balding the role of Carol David on another TV series, Soap (1978-1980), a comedy, where she played the surrogate mother to the child of Billy Crystal’s gay character, Jodie Dallas.

Meanwhile, after getting dumped by the Lou Grant show, Balding reached out to Harris to see if the role in his film was still available for the taking. It was. And here, perhaps, this patchwork film caught its biggest break yet. And luckier still, she was still available for those re-shoots.

“I would do anything for Denny,” said Balding  (Scorpion Releasing, 2009). “Such a nice and wonderful man. He was always open to taking suggestions from anyone, cast or crew.”

The Wheats also had nothing but praise for the actress. “Rebecca Balding was such a sweetheart,” said Ken Wheat (Scorpion Releasing, 2009). “For one thing she was always funny, always on time, always knew her lines, and she was willing to get naked at the drop of a hat.”

Jim Wheat would add (ibid), “The great thing about Rebecca is this quality -- that is, it’s not so much acting, it’s just the way she is. And it comes across on film as this natural quality that the camera loves. Basically whether it's in a restaurant, walking on a college campus, or tied-up in a closet, the camera just really loves her. And it made our job a lot easier. The whole last third of the film is dependent on Rebecca, the TV trailers are dependent on Rebecca, and so, the film is dependent on Rebecca” period.

All told, the Wheats would only use 12 minutes of footage from Harris’ first try, which mostly consisted of the opening scenes on campus, Scotty’s futile search for an apartment, and Scotty and Jack’s not-so-romantic swim on the beach. Beyond that, aside from a few establishing shots and some interiors from the old boarding house location, it was all pretty much new.

The original shoot took place at one of the many old Victorian mansions somewhere along Carroll Avenue row in Los Angeles, exact location unknown. (At least to me.) For their exterior re-shoots, the Wheats secured one day of shooting at a completely different house, moving the action to the Smith Estate in Highland Park. And if the house looked familiar, it was the same one used in Jack Hill’s Spider Baby (1967). And in lieu of hauling in any lighting equipment, they planned the shoot meticulously to follow the sun around the house.

For the interiors, they used a combination of the old footage and some impromptu sets, with false stairways to nowhere, to try and match. Basically, if the shot was looking down the staircase, or someone going down the stairs, that was from the original house and footage. If not, it was new and shot on a set.

And since this new ‘beach house’ was miles and miles from the beach, this called for some movie magic. Characters would look down at a nonexistent beach from a fake set of steps, others would look up from the beach at a nonexistent house and have phantom conversations with each other.

The best example of this would be when Scotty looks out the window of the attic and takes in the beach below. The attic itself was a set. And when they cut to a closeup of her pulling the curtain open, that was shot at the beach near Malibu and the curtain was hanging from a shower stand. When edited altogether, it comes off seamlessly. They would pull the same gag with a support beam on a non-existent porch. 

And to save even more money on sets, Harris’s ad agency would also pull double duty as police headquarters. The secretarial pool room served as the squad room, and the garage was used for the city morgue.

Of course, with a new cast, new locations, a limited budget, and a limited shooting schedule, matching the old and new footage became a bit of a nightmare. “Continuity was always a problem,” said Jim Wheat. “We had a moviola on set, and so we were able to refer to the existing footage just to make sure costumes, locations, and lighting all matched.”

Another example of this ad-hoc hodgepodge of shots would be the basement laundry room. Some of that footage was shot at the original location, more was shot on a set built to match. And then a third basement set was built for Doris’s death scene. (You can kinda tell which footage is which because they couldn’t quite match the color of Doris’s yellow shirt.)

And on top of all that, they would be assigned a different cinematographer. The Wheats had nothing but praise for the original DP David Shore, complimenting his lighting and set-ups. But Shore would be replaced by Mike Murphy on the re-shoots, which was a one man show due to the shortage of funds.

“Denny picked Murphy because he was able to work a whole lot faster,” said Ken Wheat (Scorpion Releasing, 2009). “He did the lighting, ran the camera, and pulled focus.” And so, unlike Shore, Murphy didn’t have the luxury of lighting things to his satisfaction, which caused a few headaches for his novice producers.

“Low budget filmmaking is not so much 'We’re going to experiment and we’ll see how the scenes play,'” said Jim Wheat (Scorpion Releasing, 2009). “We were just getting shots. We had the existing pieces and we were creating a whole bunch of new pieces that would (hopefully) interlock.”

Added Ken Wheat (ibid), “A lot of times in movies you can get 90-percent of what you need in 20-percent of the time, and then the other 80-percent is making it perfect. [But] there was no time for perfection. It didn’t have to be perfect. We just needed the pieces.” However, it appears there was time for a little experimenting as the film utilized a couple of pretty nifty split diopter shots, especially during the climax when Scotty is trying to close the closet door.

One of the funniest tales from the set was where Harris’ prop man showed up with an expensive arrangement of German cutlery to choose the murder weapon from. This unnecessary expense nearly caused a shared aneurysm by the Wheats. But they would eventually settle on a French chef’s knife as Victoria’s weapon of choice because it was well balanced, easy to handle, and had a nice shape.

Meanwhile, since it was a film about college students, the Wheats felt there should be at least one scene set at their fictional college. And in true guerilla style, without a permit or permission, they reached out to the film department at Occidental College, set up quick, and started shooting on campus. The bad news was the person in charge of permits got wind of this and tried to shut them down. The good news was the dean of the college was already there watching them shoot and told them to continue.

Now, despite the hectic schedule and the madness of matching shots, Harris ran a very relaxed set. No one could remember any major clashes, a few minor quibbles but that was about it. Since he was using his advertising crew, it was a union shoot; but no one got bent out of shape if anyone bent the rules a little. And all the actors were paid scale.

Speaking of the actors, since they only had limited access to a good chunk of the cast, this called for a lot of double work -- mostly by the Wheats and their significant others, and mostly as corpses. Jim Wheat would shave his beard and double for Schreiber, and his future wife would double for De Carlo. And that bloody hand sticking out of the castle was Ken Wheat’s, and his wife would double for Steele. Steve Doubet’s girlfriend, Tina Tyler, would play the younger Victoria, and also served as Barbara Steele’s double in some scenes, depending on the day.

Ken Wheat also served as the hand-double for both victim and killer -- he was the one doing most of the stabbing. That’s also him breaking through the attic wall, where he injured himself, cutting his hand on one of the splintered slats. All part of getting what they needed. As Wheat told Marell, “How creative do you have to be on a budget that tight? In the big climax, I'm both Yvonne De Carlo firing a gun and Barbara Steele reacting to the firecracker -- I mean, the bullet-hit blasting the wall beside her!"

The special effects were provided by Steve Karkus. The gags are effective but not particularly bloody. The best gag was Peter’s death on the beach, where the actor was buried under the sand with a fake body placed over the top of him filled with fake blood for the killer to savage.

Also shout outs to production designer Chris Henry and his rubber cement cobwebs, who cooked up that gag with the vanity mirror. He also managed to turn one flight of secret stairs into three by removing the vent pipes and replacing them with smaller ones the higher you got. And Fredda Weiss deserved an Academy Award for Best Costume Design for putting Balding in that virginal blue terrycloth bathrobe for the final third of the film.

Helping to glue all of this together was Roger Kellaway’s score, lulling the viewer into a false sense of security before punctuating the violence. Kellaway was a noted jazz musician, who had composed the ragtime piano closing theme for All in the Family (1971-1979) as well as the instrumental scores for Paper Lion (1968) and the Barbra Streisand version of A Star is Born (1976).

The Arizona Republic (April 22, 1979). 

“You can’t make the film fit your music, you have to make the music fit your film,” Kellaway told Hardy Price for The Arizona Republic (April 22, 1979). “You see, when a composer sees a film for the first time, there’s a temporary track with it. In this case, it was some Bernard Hermann music. That can give you a clue, but most of the time the temp track is just something the director liked at the time. You sit down and watch the film with the director, spotting the places where music is needed.” And for The Silent Scream, “I tried for an old-fashioned, almost melodrama, theme.”

Harris would claim he and Kellaway flew to London for a session with the London Philharmonic to record the soundtrack, getting what they needed in one day. (Most likely because that was all he could afford.) Kellaway also composed Victoria’s lullaby, “I Love You Baby, Oh Baby I Do,” which is a bit of a Doo-Wop earworm once it works its way inside your head.

Then, by some miracle, with all those myriad pieces, all of them managed to slap together with nary a hiccup. Kudos to Harris, the Wheats, Murphy on the camera, and editor Edward Salier for pulling off a minor miracle. Not only did all of their efforts to shore-up the original version succeed, I think the biggest compliment I could give them is if they had never told anyone that the film was basically shot twice, odds are good no one would’ve ever even noticed. I know I sure didn’t.

“Denny [Harris] always wanted the film to be good,” said Jim Wheat (ibid). And on that front, I would say they definitely succeeded.

Once the film was finally done, Harris started shopping it around for distribution and finally found a taker in the upstart American Cinema Releasing. Founded in 1975 by Michael Leone as American Cinema Productions, Leone had started as a producer, finding money for films like Dogs (1977), where a pack of wild mongrels menace a college campus, the underappreciated Vietnam War take Go Tell the Spartans (1978), and Hal Lindsey’s shoveled bullshit about the end of the world in The Late Great Planet Earth (1979).

One of the first films they distributed as ARC was the Chuck Norris vehicle Good Guys Were Black (1978), which raked in over $18 million, and they would follow that up with A Force of One (1979) and The Octagon (1980). Using tactics like four-walling and radio and TV blitzes, American Cinema Releasing soon had a string of box-office hits, including The Silent Scream, reduced to just Silent Scream for the film’s promotional materials and ad mats. I personally remember that amazing TV spot scaring the shit out of younger me back in the day.

The North County Times (September 21, 1979). 

Leone would initially give the film a limited release in September, 1979, in places like Fresno and Hanaford, California. The box-office was solid and the film went wide in January of 1980, where it rocketed to the top of the box office, pulling in over $9 million in receipts. But despite the box-office bonanza, critical response was, well, for the most part, rather harsh.

It was one of the films singled out by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert in their special “Women in Danger” episode of Sneak Previews (S04.E04, September 19, 1980), where they focused on “a disturbing new trend at the movie box office: extreme violence directed at women as helpless victims,” decrying how audiences were no longer “identifying with the victim but with the killer, cheering them on.” The noted critics had drawn a line in the sand on these types of teen slashers. Things got so bad that Siskel wound up doxxing poor Betsy Palmer for just trying to make a living playing Pamela Vorhees in Friday the 13th.

The Fullham and Hammersmith Chronicle (October 31, 1980). 

Terry Lawson would echo these sentiments on the sad state of horror films in The Dayton Journal-Herald (January 31, 1980), saying, “Silent Scream is a horror film only by the post-Halloween (1978) definition. That is to say it features the kitchen-tested ingredients of teenage girls in peril, a creaky old house, multiple knifings and shootings, and a villain who is not otherworldly but simply sick and twisted. In days gone by, Silent Scream would have been pegged by Variety or The Hollywood Reporter as a suspense picture. Horror films were concerned with the supernatural, the impossible, the unbelievable -- vampires, mutants, zombies and creatures from black lagoons. Today, the nut next door is the scariest thing we can conjure.”

“The only frightening thing about Silent Scream is that there are people who will pay $5 to see it,” charged Tom Buckley of The New York Times (February 2, 1980). “Everything about the production is repulsively amateurish, and it is saddening to see performers like Yvonne De Carlo and Cameron Mitchell reduced to appearing in it.” Added Elston Brooks for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram (June 5, 1980), “Early summer doesn’t just mean school’s out and swimming pools are open. ‘Tis also time for cheapie gore movies, starring young unknowns and aging has-beens, knifing their way through scripts that were written over a lunchbreak.”

The Fresno Bee (November 11, 1979).  

“We go to shockers hoping they won’t be schlockers,” noted Michal Maza for The Arizona Republic (January 11, 1980). “Most often we are disappointed; rather than a Carrie (1976) or a Psycho, we get stuff like Silent Scream. It is, most of all, poorly written, but it's also under-directed and listlessly acted … All of this is meant to build suspense, to gear us up for a purgative (-- don't worry, I had to look it up, too), liberating startle response. But it never comes. We have to make due with a few twitches. Lest you get the idea that Silent Scream is so bad its brilliant, be warned. It is so bad it is awful. Nothing more.”

Said Catherine Chapin for The Charlotte Observer (March 10, 1980), “Denny Harris, a young director like Halloween’s John Carpenter, made Silent Scream on a shoestring. Unlike Carpenter, he has no gift for suspense or direction. Silent Scream is a non-movie. It has no plot, no good acting, and not one moment that would send even a shiver up your spine. The sex is unsexy. The violence is disgusting, but not horrifying. But the audience won’t be surprised. Horror movies you can plot by the music and camera angles aren’t horror movies -- they’re insults.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer (March 4, 1980). 

And Bill Cosford of The Miami Herald (May 27, 1980) bemoaned, “As long as there are girls who take rooms in dim corners of transparently haunted houses; as long as there are drooling psychos abroad in the backlots; as long as there are drive-ins, moldy second-run movie houses, and audiences begging to be shocked, schlocked or a little of both, there will be films like Silent Scream. The latest in the schizo sweepstakes, it serves, as more modern shock films do, as a proving ground for a debut director and an ingenue cast. Beyond that, there is little to be said for the whole enterprise.”

Meanwhile, David Bianculli of The Fort Lauderdale News (June 30, 1980), felt The Silent Scream was not a total washout. "The music is terrible, the murders derivative, the characters poorly developed, but the film boasts a genuinely creepy performance by horror veteran Barbara Steele and a few good scares in the final reel. It’s a passable diversion, but only for those who enjoy horror films because they are horror films, regardless of plot or quality. [But] if you demand more from a movie -- intelligence, for example -- it isn’t worth the time.”

The Grand Island Independent (June 6, 1980).  

And even when compared to other horror films, Marylynn Uricchio of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (June 30, 1980) felt The Silent Scream didn’t pass muster, saying, “Unlike the recent Friday the 13th, which contained graphic and gruesome murders and a good deal of evenly dispersed suspense, or Don’t Answer the Phone (1980), which alternated sex and violence at a breakneck pace, Silent Scream plods along from one off-screen murder to another, with the inevitable looming predictability on the horizon. Without suspense, and without a believable framework, the audience is left to witness objectively the climactic slaughter. A couple of good jolts in Silent Scream are mere reminders of what a good horror film should do. For Silent Scream is a classic case of the end not justifying the means.”

Other critics were slightly more favorable, like Steve Millburg of The Omaha World-Herald (June 4, 1980), who found The Silent Scream to be “a pretty good horror flick. It has a reasonably plausible plot with several surprising twists; fairly good production values, likeable heroes and bizarre, psychotic villains; generally good acting; a nice score by Roger Kellaway; a tense buildup that is deliberate without being sluggish; and some very shocking scenes that are gory but not disgustingly so. Unfortunately, director Denny Harris doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor … If only there were some humor, The Silent Scream might be a classic of the genre. But you can’t have everything.”

The Victoria Advocate (November 24, 1979). 

And Linda Gross wrote nothing short of a rave for The Los Angeles Times (January 24, 1980), stating, “Despite indulgences in improbable plotting and predictable gore, The Silent Scream is a scary, stylish Grand Guignol horror movie. Denny Harris directs very effectively. He rarely miscalculates his shocks and his quiet moments are even better. The film, in fact, contains a good deal of skillful acting and direction. Horror movies, like ballads and farce, traffic in a formula-ridden genre, and part of the pleasure is recognizing the cliches that can still scare the hell out of you.”

All told, I liked Joseph Gelmis’ more philosophical take for Newsday the best (February 9, 1980): “Cheap movies occasionally parlay their unpolished performances on real locations into seedy realism that grips the imagination. That happened in films like Halloween, Night of the Living Dead (1968), and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1975). To a lesser, yet nonetheless noteworthy degree, that happens in enough of Silent Scream to mark Denny Harris as a filmmaker of promise.

The Springfield News-Sun (February 1, 1980).  

“The old definition of an exploitation movie -- spending more money hyping a movie than making it -- fits Silent Scream. The massive bombardment of TV commercials costs millions while the movie is clearly a shoestring production in the under $1 million class. Exploitation movies are usually tacky sex and violence flicks made by hacks or newcomers. The skills involved in the marketing of an exploitation movie are typically more sophisticated than the skills involved in making the film. Given such limits, Silent Scream is a cut above the average. Make no mistake. The film is gruesome enough. But it is also suspenseful for long stretches … and brutally clever in some of its juxtapositions. The film aims low and overachieves.”

Again, as we said before, and like a lot of similar body count flicks of the era, The Silent Scream was pretty much bulletproof when it came to critics rendering their garments and teeth gnashing over content. And with the release of The Silent Scream and Fade to Black (1980), another terror tale with a Tinsel Town twist, at the dawn of the 1980s American Cinema Releasing was riding high on a string of hits.

Unfortunately, they soon outgrew their britches and abandoned their successfully prudent formula for bigger pictures, with bigger stars, and bigger budgets. The result was the box-office boondoggle Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981), which flopped.

This was followed by the runaway production of I, the Jury (1982), which officially bankrupted the company by December, 1981, who suddenly found themselves over $57 million in debt. 20th Century Fox would eventually pick the bones of ARC, and would eventually release both I, the Jury and The Entity (1982), another plagued shoot about a woman who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by a malevolent ghost.

And while ARC was on their rocket-ride to court-appointed receivership, they cooked the books on The Silent Scream, under-reporting profits. It got so bad that Harris eventually sued them. And while he never saw a cent of profits from the film's release, he was able to get the rights to the film back. A sad coda, after all the hard work and expense, to this miraculous production.

Sadly, The Silent Scream would be Harris’ one and only feature film. There were offers to take over sequels of other horror franchises, including Friday the 13th, but he would decline. He had satisfied that itch and, in the long run, his commercial business was far more profitable and far less of a headache than the feature film business.

The Wheats had encouraged him to keep going, saying with his facilities Harris had the perfect set-up to churn out one or two low-budget films a year, but he just wasn’t interested. Meanwhile, that script the Wheats had written about alien abductions was picked up as a direct to video release as The Return (1980), which they both admit was gawdawful. As Jim Wheat told Marell, “I don't think it ever played theatrically, but it showed up on video as The Return and on TV as The Alien’s Return. Oh, and it's bad enough to be funnier than embarrassing."

The siblings next wrote and slid into the co-director’s chair for the slightly convoluted thriller Lies (1983), which one IMDB user called “a primitive mockery of common sense and logic.” (For the record, I have never seen it so can’t confirm.) And they would do the same for After Midnight (1989), a horror anthology, where a psychology professor invites some of his students to his home to swap spooky stories.

Beyond that, it was pretty much sequels for the dynamic duo as they would tackle Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985), which followed The Ewok Adventure (1984), for George Lucas, who wanted Heidi and The Swiss Family Robinson in Space. They would then script A Nightmare in Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988), not quite the worst in the franchise, and The Fly II (1989), where they got to work with Mel Brooks. And while I remember that one being not THAT terrible, it obviously pales against Cronenberg’s original.

And the less said the better about the telefilms The Birds II: Land’s End (1994) -- “Hitchcock would like a word with us when we die,” said Jim Wheat -- and It Came from Outer Space II (1996). However, the Wheats finally seemed to find the temperature with the script for Pitch Black (2000), a truly effective sci-fi / horror hybrid, but even they would admit the lion’s share of that film’s surprising success should go to director David Twohy, who took about one third of their original script, junked the rest, and turned it into a whole movie.

As for their first big break with Harris on The Silent Scream, the Wheats would be eternally grateful for the chance to save his film, calling it a both a unique and educational experience. They were only paid $10,000 total for ten months of work but their crash-course into the movie business was priceless.

"What made the experience worthwhile was that The Silent Scream was number one at the box-office the week it was released, and went on to become a minor video hit," said Ken Wheat (Script Secrets, 2004). "What made it suck was that we put in almost a year of solid work for five grand each, with zero back end. Live and learn."

The Herald News (February 1, 1979). 

Rebecca Balding, meanwhile, would slide back into TV, starring in the short-lived series Makin’ It (1979) opposite David Naughton, as well as a few more failed pilots. Her second feature would be another horror film, the totally delightful The Boogens (1981), a throwback creature feature mashed-up with the burgeoning slasher tropes.

Balding would meet her future husband during the shoot, director James L. Conway, one of my cinematic heroes for ushering in a ton of cryptid and paranormal documentaries in the 1970s, ranging from The Mysterious Monsters (1976), to Beyond and Back (1978), to The Bermuda Triangle (1979).

The two would be married, have children, and lived in Colorado for a spell, making auditioning for parts difficult; and so, Balding essentially semi-retired after starring in The Boogens, showing up occasionally on episodic TV, until joining her husband on the TV series Charmed (1998-2007), where she had a recurring role as Aunt Jackie. This was all too bad. She deserved a bigger and better career because the Wheats were right about one thing: the camera really did love her.

Speaking of unfair, it’s somewhat unfortunate that The Silent Scream barely rates a mention when talking about the first wave of Slasher films. It was originally shot about six months before John Carpenter started rolling on Halloween. Of course, Halloween hit theaters over a year before The Silent Scream finally made its debut. The Wheats, while still feverishly working to stitch their movie together, saw Halloween when it first came out; and while they liked it a lot, they couldn’t help but feel a bitter disappointed that Carpenter’s film had essentially beaten them to the punch.

The Grand Island Independent (February, 1979).  

Now, calm down. I am in no way saying The Silent Scream is better than Halloween because it isn’t. Not even close. But it’s also nowhere near as bad as its dubious reputation. And once you take into consideration its patchwork origin, it makes the film some kind of Frankensteinian, sleight-of-hand masterpiece.

Again, the film owes more to the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock than the guts and gore of Sean S. Cunningham and Andre Link. I’m almost kind of surprised that they didn’t go back and redo a few more scenes to bloody it up some more to meet the new audience demand. And the rules for the new genre weren’t set in stone yet either. Note how the two teens who had sex are the only ones to survive.

The film moves along at a fairly breezy pace as it sets up its characters until that first kill drops. From there, it does kind of meander a bit but, once we reach the third act, this movie finds a whole ‘nother gear. From the moment Scotty finds those secret steps and bravely, or foolishly, you be the judge, sees where they lead, Harris and the Wheats ratchet up the suspense until it snaps. And that silent standoff between Balding and Steele deserves to be in the Hall of Fame of such things.

With time and distance, Harris would be pragmatic about getting screwed over by his distributor (-- adjusted, his film brought in over $40 million), saying (ibid), “I used them just like they used me.” And besides, “I did not make it for money. I wanted to scare the crap out of people.” And that he most assuredly did. It’s just a shame that he only did it once.

Originally posted on October 29, 2025, at Confirmed, Alan_01.

The Silent Scream (1979) Denny Harris Inc. :: American Cinema Releasing / EP: Denny Harris, Joan Harris / P: Jim Wheat, Ken Wheat / AP: Leslie Zurla / D: Denny Harris / W: Jim Wheat, Ken Wheat, Wallace C. Bennett / C: Michael D. Murphy, David Shore / E: M. Edward Salier / M: Roger Kellaway / S: Rebecca Balding, Barbara Steele, Cameron Mitchell, Avery Schreiber, Yvonne De Carlo, Steve Doubet, Juli Andelman, Brad Rearden, John Widelock