Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

20th Kill

All right, I don't mean to shake your world or anything with this bombshell I'm about to drop, but I don't think I watch cheap 80's slashers for the kills alone. I've noticed most folks have given Silent Madness a pretty mediocre review because the kills are a little bloodless and unconvincing - and that's true about a lot of the kills, but HELLO!!?? Did everyone just not notice how fucking insanely entertaining this movie is regardless? It's total joy from start to finish.

It looks beautiful - let's start with that. Quite a gorgeous looking bit of film - really very impressive for such an el cheapo production. The fact that it was filmed for 3D and that gives a hazy sheen around the edge of frame for the wide shots is like an unintended bonus - I think that creates a beautiful visual effect. If nothing else it makes it super obvious that we are watching real film, not that almost clinically clean digital image we've all become so used to by now, and that makes it that little bit more special.

I don't know how much actual set design took place here as opposed to just finding amenable locations, but there's just so much colour. Are the interiors the most garish rooms in history? I've seen louder in early 70's gialli but this is a commendable effort to send any discerning interior decorator to the same institution in which the film takes place, and I like that.

But it's the characters who make this film sing to me. The killer himself is almost a blank slate - that poster makes it look like he kills with great emotion (he looks like he's about to start crying, awww) but nothing could be further from the truth. His character note was "open your eyes really wide so you look crazy" but the rest of his face is so expressionless he just looks really surprised whenever he is attacking people.

The main protagonist looks a lot like my mum did in her younger days, so I was very relieved that she kept her clothes on. Her love interest, the local newspaper man, is supposed to come across as charming and debonair, but his instant fawning over her instead made him seem like a sex pest. There was this amazing moment on the YouTube rip I watched, which would throw adverts on at inopportune moments, where right in the middle of one of his lines, just as I was thinking "Who does this guy remind me of?", it cut to an ad for the new Alan Partridge series and the resemblance was so uncanny it genuinely took me a second to realise he hadn't just suddenly burst into song - absolutely hilarious!

Meanwhile, the doctors in this asylum are so blatantly and obviously unscrupulous, it's a thing of wonder. The evil boss even has a supercilious posh British accent, just to make him as hateable as possible. We get two pervert orderlies who try so hard to look sleazy and gross that they go beyond it completely and become almost lovable, they're so ridiculous. The MVP for me, though, is Sidney Lassick. I think maybe Sid was self conscious about how improbable it clearly would be for any county in the US to elect someone like him sheriff, so he overcompensates by being really angry and insulting at all times - and still he can't manage to be offensive because he's just such a lovable little poo and you just want to pinch his little cheeks.

This one goes on my giant 80's slasher wall of fame - the one in our front garden that my wife is so embarrassed about (she's such a square, man).

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

OK, a lot of them are a little bloodless and the moments where a sledgehammer or something is swung right at the camera to get that 3D effect look pretty silly because they've been badly edited and you can basically see the actor pull the blow and just hold it there for a moment. But there are some good ones, my favourite being the drill to the back of the head someone gets - ouch! Nasty!