Silent Madness (1984)

 

This has been a good time for me in regards to undiscovered films since all these streaming sites and physical media companies (the boutique labels) are looking for and releasing content from different eras. Since I am always interested and on the lookout for 80s slashers and horror titles, in particular, unearthed titles seemingly lost in obscurity haven't a better time for rediscovery than right now. I'm happy as a hungry dog with chicken dropped right at my mouth thanks to the likes of Tubi and Shudder. While a good many of the slashers that I find rarely leave me altogether satisfied, many of them are part of a time I love to go back to, since I was a kid in the 80s. "Silent Madness" is a rare 3D slasher film not "Friday the 13th: Part 3" (1982) so it is obviously of interest for that historical footnote alone. Being a slasher released in 1984, made in 1983, also is a doggy treat I will lick my lips for. Now, in saying all that, "Silent Madness" is very formulaic and never really at all surprising. Even the twist with Viveca Lindfors, the denmother of the film's main sorority house setting, Mrs. Collins, and the mental patient accidentally released due to a clinical error by two doctors unwilling to admit to their mistake (a last/first name switch that threw them off), Howard Johns (Solly Marx), isn't really all that shocking...too many slashers and Italian giallo thrillers in my viewing past at this point not to put two and two together when Mrs. Collins is talking to Belinda Montgomery's visiting psychiatrist, Dr. Joan Gilmore, about losing her mute son, Francis, and sorority girls taunting him with their naughty games during a notorious nail-gun incident responsible for Howard Johns' mental hospital incarceration. 

The sorority house setting, especially its boiler room, are really of significance to the film as this is where Howard Johns does most of his handiwork. He loves to use whatever is available at any given time. For whatever reason he grabs cute Elizabeth Kaitan while she's skateboarding, drags her into the boiler room (that must have been quite a struggle since she is fighting him the entire time), is able to force her head into a press with one hand, while turning a handle until the squeeze makes her bleed while screaming. It is such an unrealistic sequence and not particularly effective as the camera seems meant for a 3D effect, but the payoff seemed lost on me.

As seen below, I'm thinking that because this was shot not far from New York City (Manhattan), it might explain why we see two familiar faces from "Sleepaway Camp" (1983) and perhaps a bunch of city theater actors looking for that big break. I love the early 80s for that period where films were shot in New Jersey and New York City, and different upper Northeastern locations. There is just something distinctively Northeast USA when you watch "He Knows You Are Alone", "Friday the 13th", "Friday the 13th: Part 2", and "Sleepaway Camp". Even "Night School", shot in Boston, has that flavor.

I just thought the complete halt after Johns grabs a sorority girl, turning pipe steam on her face, moving the film's focus to Dr. Gilmore while he just sort of disappears (out of sight, out of mind) was odd. He just seems to hide away, I guess. Eventually he emerges again once Dr. Gilmore investigates the boiler room, confronted abruptly by him before she fetches a security guard with a gun as protection (he knows how to hide in the room, up in the piping). The film introduces Lindfors as a troubled denmother not at all a fan of her girls sexual remarks or behavior...it effects her mental state, practically causing her to breakdown. "Whore! Slut!" she will sound off, reminding me of Mrs. Bates. Lindfors has a dialogue scene with Montgomery, serving as a source of historical information, but besides about three specific scenes, her time in the film isn't all that substantial.

Dr. Gilmore eventually finds an ally in a newspaper man, Mark (David Greenan), looking for a big story she most certainly could provide. The hospital Dr. Gilmore works has a lot of ethical issues such as an administrator willing to tolerate her doctors' ineptitude, even providing forged docs (death certificate) through a fax to an ineffectual sheriff (Sydney Lassick) of Johns' falsely reported death in an order of protection. This administrator (Stanja Lowe) secretly works against Dr. Gilmore in order to bide enough time so her unscrupulous orderlies/attendants could locate Johns (and "have a little fun" with Gilmore before "bringing her back") while concealing his erroneous release. Not only that, her two doctors are behind very questionable and troubling "work" with patients in a ward where it appears they are experimenting on them. Dr. Gilmore is the monkey wrench none of them want in their way...she's certainly a nuisance, if anything else.

The sorority girls of the film are more or less given some basic personality, pretty and chatty without being obnoxious, they are just young women in college preparing to leave for a break prior to the fall...until the killer decides to send them on a permanent vacation. This film isn't all that gory, and, instead, the director has weapons coming right at the screen, rather than into victims. Like a sledgehammer, crowbar, and ax (thrown), weapons of destruction come at us, with the victims afterward shown worse for wear. Perhaps the most effective death involves a drill burrowing into the head of a despicable orderly wanting to rape Dr. Gilmore. Another orderly is stabbed by a crowbar (the bar goes through his side into a tank behind him with water), with the killer pulling it out of him as water bursts from the puncture. The hatchet to the back would have been more impactful but the victim seemed tasked by the director with moving the handle towards the screen for a 3D effect. The film's color scheme can be blue and blurry due to the 3D process and the gimmick for the murder spree dulls the impact and punch when Johns attacks and kills folks.

You get the big pursuit at the end as Johns refuses to give up as he tries to get at Dr. Gilmore, come hell or high water. She evades him like a mouse being hunted by a persistent cat, even locating a ventilation system leading to a fan (Johns drops a claw with a rope attached, looking to spin it into a shredding tool) and outside hatch. Mark proves to be inconsequential besides a minor distraction, his shotgun never a factor in hurting Johns as the killer seems adept at avoiding its aim. The use of a broken mirror when Dr. Gilmore has to get creative popped me big-time at the end, when Johns is consumed with hugging his mom.

As far as pop culture goes, you get one of the girls in workout attire (right out of the "Let's Get Physical" era), while another gets quite absorbed in an arcade game. Barely fifteen minutes in, there are naked breasts and a makeout van. Johns and the orderlies, with Dr. Gilmore often caught in between, is such a messy ordeal, shot by the director to be as sloppy and erratic in execution as possible. The emphasis on hurting Dr. Gilmore instead of securing a criminally dangerous patient just to avoid a scandal (that probably was made far worse by the actions of the doctors at the hospital) proves to be quite an error in judgment. Most creative kill: while hanging upside down during exercise, a sorority girl has a jumprope tied around her neck, attached to a weight, with Johns hurling that weight out a window, resulting in a broke neck. 3/5

Katherine Kamhi, of Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Paul DeAngelo, of Sleepaway Camp (1983)

While Mark seems like an obvious love interest who takes a bit of convincing regarding the escaped lunatic, the sheriff is totally a cowardly, lazy, beer-guzzling-on-the-job whiner. Lassick seems to be the comedy relief while Greenan never quite gives Montgomery the help she needs. This is very much the kind of slasher that has Montgomery relying on her own survival skills in order to avoid danger.