IHdb

ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - January 30th

"THE SILENT SCREAM" released in 1980

Four college students - Scotty (Rebecca Balding), Jack (Steve Doubet), Peter (John Widelock) and Doris (Juli Andelman) - who are unable to find on-campus housing, take up residence in Mrs Engels's (Yvonne De Carlo) hilltop mansion, where she lives with her strange son, Mason (Brad Rearden), and her daughter, Victoria (Barbara Steele); whom Mrs Engels secretly keeps hidden in the attic after a botched lobotomy left her mute and homicidal. After one of the students is found dead, a police investigation led by Lt. Sandy McGiver (Cameron Mitchell) uncovers the history of the mansion and its owners, as the remaining students are hunted by an unseen killer, in Denny Harris' debut feature The Silent Scream!

Don't miss out on future blogs, trailers, and clips IHdb has coming up
by Following IHdb's Facebook page above

Filmmaker Denny Harris was already a successful TV commercial director with his own self-named studio before he embarked on making his first feature horror film. Using his own staff, facilities, and money - reportedly Harris spent over $450,000 - the film was shot in the summer of 1977. Starring Rebecca Balding, the actress had originally turned the project down to star in the TV series Lou Grant (1977); however, after the third episode was shot, Balding was "let go" from the series and then accepted the part in the film. Joining the her in the cast were newcomers Juli Andelman, John Widelock, and Steve Doubet (Doubet also recruited his girlfriend -and future wife - Tina Tyler to play the role of the young Victoria).
 
The Engels house location was actually a Highland Park, Los Angeles home called The Smith Estate, and it was previously known as the Merrye house in the cult classic Spider Baby (1967) (in both instances the house was chosen because it stands upon a hill, which made it easier to shoot wide angles and obscure the view of the neighboring homes in order to achieve a sense that the house is very isolated). In order to shoot all the exteriors on the Engels house in a single day, the filmmakers mapped out where scenes would appear in the film and they moved the camera around the house throughout the day, taking full advantage of the sunlight.

TRIVIA:   Steve Doubet did vocal exercises before each take. "It's like he had pneumonia and was coughing up phlegm," recalled co-star Rebecca Balding.

Top and Above:   College students (L-R) Peter (John Widelock), Doris (Juli Andelman), Scotty (Rebecca Balding) and Jack (Steve Doubet) decide to live in the strange hilltop mansion.

Over the course of filming, three different locations were used for the laundry room scene: a real basement, a small basement set and a smaller set for the dark corner next to the furnace and hidden staircase. The hidden staircase from the basement to the attic was a single set. To achieve the illusion that it snaked up multiple stories, the lighting, cobwebs and furnace pipes were switched, with narrower pipes on the upper floors. A scene was scripted in which the killer wraps a rope around Doris's corpse and drags her up the hidden staircase, which explains how she got into the attic. The scene was deemed too technical and time consuming to properly achieve, so it was never filmed. Apparently, Andelman did not like playing background as Doris' corpse in the closet after her character was killed, so she intentionally moved around and ruined takes. Eventually the filmmakers decided to have another character cover her body with a sheet so the actress would not have to be present during the filming of those scenes.

With filming wrapped, Harris began post-production, but soon realized that the first cut of the original version was completely unrelease-able! Harris turned to screenwriters Jim and Ken Wheat to help improve the story, but they had the radical idea to re-shoot the bulk of the film with name-actors to replace certain characters from the original. Yvonne De Carlo, Barbara Steele, Cameron Mitchell, and Avery Schreiber were soon brought in, for an extremely limited schedule. Mitchell and Schreiber were hired to work on the film for two days, with most of their scenes covered with two cameras (unbeknownst to Mitchell's agent, the actor returned for one afternoon to film a few pick-up shots and was paid $500 cash). Barbara Steele completed her scenes in four days. Being her only film appearance in the 80's, Steele stated she accepted the role because it afforded her a rare opportunity to play a mute character.   

TRIVIA:   Reportedly, Rebecca Balding claimed she had never heard of Barbara Steele until the actress was hired for the reshoot.

Top and Above:   Mrs Engels's "odd" children, Mason (Brad Rearden), and Victoria (Barbara Steele).

The actors and actresses who played the college students were brought back for re-shoots in March 1978. Because the name actors had a short shooting schedule and additional coverage was needed, co-writer and producer Ken Wheat appears as a double for both De Carlo and Steele, while his brother, co-writer/producer Jim Wheat, appears as Avery Schreiber's double. Jim's girlfriend/future wife also doubled for De Carlo's character in various shots and Ken's girlfriend/future wife doubled Steele. Shot in the days before video playback, the Wheat brothers had to bring a Moviola to the set to try to match shots that would inter-cut with existing footage which was filmed 8 months earlier. In the end, only 12 minutes of footage from the original version was retained in the final finished film!  

Released theatrically by American Cinema Releasing, The Silent Scream had an extremely limited run in Victor, Texas, before a wider release on January 30th, 1980, beginning in Bismarck, North Dakota. The Silent Scream also screened regionally throughout the 1980 and eventually grossed over $15 million at the box office - making Harris' debut a huge financial success. Due to it's limited exposure, not many reviews have been able to be found. However, in 2012 Jeremy Heilman of MovieMartyr.com wrote, "The Silent Scream is something less than a classic of its genre, but still manages to be worth a look for aficionados of the era's horror films." 

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   31%

__________________________________