The Silent Scream (1980) My Ninth Must See Pick for the Halloween Season

Word to the reader: The video above ^^^^^ is the actual movie and not a trailer. Below vvvv are my thoughts of the film…

You know nothing ever good can come about with screaming police sirens or when detectives enter the house find bodies, so goes the opening scenes of ‘Silent Scream”, an 80’s scare fest along the lines of “Psycho”.

College student, Scotty Parker (Rebecca Balding) finds that she waited so long to register for her college semester that there is not any dorm room or any campus housing and most of the off campus palces have been filled as well. But she lucks out and gets a list of places renting rooms but with the awesome administrative words of wisdom “They haven’t been check yet. So who knows what they look like…” Ah, nothing like sending your daughter to a quality school.

While house hunting Scotty comes across a creepy looking mansion (and this being a horror film you know what that means: creepy places like that hold dark secrets and it is no different with “Silent Scream”) renting rooms. But before she can seal the deal, rich kid, Peter Ransom (John Widelock) tries to steal the room from out from under Scotty. Although all is well because as it turns out creepy teenager, Mason (Brad Rearden) that not only lives there but is the landlord (in-between his viewing pleasures of war flicks and smack-them-around porn) in stead of his mother played by none other than “Lily Munster” herself, Yvonne De Carlo (because for some reason lives in a room in the attic), has two rooms for rent.

Good natured Peter offers to take all his new roommates (there are four including him) out for dinner to celebrate the last night of freedom before the start of school. Unfortunately, for Peter, he gets turned into a drunken pincushion on his way home from the restaurant -the rest of his roommates were kind enough to leave him passed out on the beach.

After the discovery of poor “Pincushion” Peter, things begin to settle down long enough for the other roommate, Jack (Steve Doubet), to score with Scotty. However, while Scotty is turned in a pincushion of the fleshy kind with Jack, things do not bode well for other roommate, Doris, because she gets to meet the other person they share -unbeknownst to them- the place with. And when you meet someone you do not know about in the basement of the creepy mansion you are living in you know nothing good can come about it.

From there it just gets crazier.

Look for “Dark Shadows” (TV series) alum, Barbara Steele.

Until next time…