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| Images courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome |
For a short time between 1982 and 1986, there was a short-lived
resurgence of films produced using the 3-D process that went dormant in the 1970s. Luring people back into theaters using action
or horror movies (usually the latter), the 80s saw such fare as Jaws 3-D,
Friday the 13th Part III and even Amityville 3-D. One which seems to fly under the radar of
many horror fans occasionally dabbling in 3-D is Simon Nuchtern’s Silent
Madness from 1984, recently picked up and restored in 4K by Vinegar Syndrome. An 80s slasher shot in slick widescreen using
the ArriVision 3-D camera system, the film while not always the most coherent
narrative delivers some of the more interesting uses of the 3-D technology in
that era with effects that perhaps predated the eventual use of the Playstation
VR and the Resident Evil games as far as hiding from a stalking villain
goes.
At an asylum for the criminally insane, a computer problem
accidentally frees a dangerous oversized homicidal maniac named Howard Johns
(Solly Marx) who has a proclivity for murdering college girls. Only one of the institute’s top doctors, Dr.
Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery), stands to track down and apprehend the man
but not before one of the admins of the asylum, eager to quell bad press, sends
a couple of dim-witted hitmen after her.
While evading their pursuit and trying to ascertain how to deal with
Howard Johns, the serial murderer inevitably eventually does find his way back
to a local sorority of young girls, culminating in an unexpected showdown for
all involved and some most brutal 3-D kills and gore effects ahead.
Shot by Gerald Feil, the same cinematographer behind Friday
the 13th Part III, this is among the best looking 3-D shot
horror films of the era with occasionally brilliant uses of the technology such
as wide shots of the insane asylum with glistening, shiny wet floors, scenes
where blood seems to drip into the camera and a hide-and-seek chase sequence that
will remind some viewers of a certain PS VR game. Penned by Bob Zimmerman and Bill Milling who
coproduced the film with director Nuchtern on a meager $600,000, Silent
Madness while being something of a Friday the 13th and Halloween
clone with respect to an escaped mental patient nevertheless delivers
precisely what moviegoers of this era were hungry for.
Replete with gory kills including a first-person POV axe murder
to the face, a scene that must’ve influenced the vice tool torture in Martin
Scorsese’s Casino, ample nudity of horny teens waiting to be killed and
a unique spin on the good doctor’s pursuit of a dangerous patient on her own,
this is one of the more inventive 3-D horror films made on such a tight
budget. Despite this and the bevy of
cast members including Creepshow actress Viveca Lindfors, Phantasm II
stuntman Solly Marx and eventual TRON: Legacy actress Belinda
Montgomery, the film more or less fell under the radar and few horror fans went
for it, just as the genre itself was about to change forever with the release
of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Moreover, the film was difficult to see in its original intended form, diluting
the power of many of the visual setups and uses of 3-D.
Thankfully in the years since with the concerted efforts of
Vinegar Syndrome and the 3-D Film Archive to repair these previously broken and
misaligned 35mm negatives have allowed for smaller, more clandestine slashers such
as Silent Madness to have another shot with cult horror fans. Seen now, in addition to being one of the
more innovative examples of how to mix horror with the 3-D format on a smaller
scale, Silent Madness is interestingly one of the more subtle horror
slashers of the 80s. Despite all the slashings
onscreen, it takes its time to build tensions and alliance with the main
protagonist who is the only one who can stop the killer.
While serving up a high and fast body count, you get caught
up with Belinda Montgomery’s resourceful heroine as she ventures into
increasingly dangerous territory at her own risk and when she’s hiding around a
corner as the killer stalks nearby, we absolutely feel the tension in the 3-D
rendering in a way that wouldn’t have worked as effectively otherwise. Whether or not 3-D completely really comes
back or not remains to be seen but with the proliferation of 4K projectors
capable of 3-D playback, we might start seeing more of these previously
forgotten independently produced 3-D horror films reflooding the marketplace.
--Andrew Kotwicki
