User reviews

Mostly predictable slasher flick with one nice twist towards the end and some fun 3D effects. The story itself sounds more interesting on paper than it ends up in the film, but it's anchored by a great performance by Belinda Montgomery who seems to think she's in a much classier film than she is. Viveca Lindfors chews up the scenery in the best way as the housemother of a sorority where a series of brutal murders took place. It's not a movie you'll remember much about when it's over, but it's not the worst way to spend 90 minutes of your time.

I recently saw a nice 35mm print of this in a collection of a friend who had a print that hadn't been run that he had held onto for 20 years. Appropriately enough, I saw it on Halloween.

The film itself is entertaining and keeps the viewer's attention. It's a generally psychological thriller about a killer that through the error of a psych ward that's been having seedy events behind the scenes. Most of the plot is predictable, and the acting is pretty mediocre, but the cinematography and good locations coupled with some clever moments make this one worth seeking out (even moreso in 3-D).

Some notes about the film: Apparently it opened in LA in 3D and pretty much did a roadshow tour. By the time it hit NY, it was being shown flat, which goes to show it really sort of hit the tail end of the 3D craze of the early 80s, which is too bad, because the photography in this one is tenfold that of anything else that was being done at the time (it was done with the over-under polaroid process, not anaglyph, and this was the way it was presented to me). Several murders have some great effects that really work well in the 3-D.

The film, while not being totally obscured with nobodies, does rise to the occasion with some character actors. The sheriff, a security guard and the housemother of the college make for some interesting roles and those actors/actresses stuck out in my mind as being some of the most memorable portrayals. Not too much gore, and everything is done well enough to leave the imagination up to the rest. My hands got sweaty during the show, so I was somewhat tense.

Worth catching if you can, particularly for an indie production. 7/10

Reasonably obscure, low-budget comprised b-grade slasher item with a misogynistic edge (though light exploitation) and with a scathing blast on the processes of a mental hospital. As it stands there's nothing really out of the ordinary, but for such a trimmed production it's commendably done, as I went in expecting something truly inept. Still some might find it so and it's not completely flawless. While the death sequences can look laughably kitsch, few do show bits of innovation (though the killer seems to pick off whoever is about with no real pattern to it) and some scenes looked like they were made for novelty 3D, and coming to this site I found out it was the case.

Howard Jones is a psychotic in Cresthaven asylum, who ten years ago massacred some sorority sisters at the Omega Sorority house. By accident he's released into society, and heads back to Barrington where the original massacre occurred. Dr. Joan Gilmore discovers the mishap and tries to get something done about it, but the staffs seem to want to cover it up. So Gilmore goes to Barrington to convince them that Jones has returned, before he begins his bloody rampage again.

Quite predictable and dry, until it crops up with a shock ending (that's obviously hinted early on) and an unusual revelation that kind of brings it down to tell the truth. The pacing is too limp, as little bit of urgency would have not gone astray. Director Simon Nuchtern's genetic handling has its moments, by managing to build upon the characters and ominously growing situation. Sure sometimes it was clunky, but he tries with the tired material at hand. However being diluted of suspense and atmosphere, it wallowed on murkiness and a clumsy sounding score that incoherently pounded out the notes/cues.

The characters aren't particularly sympathetic, but Belinda Montgomery as Dr. Gilmore is believably resistant in her solid portrayal. Roderick Cook enthusiastically works as one of mischievous doctors and Sydney Lassick is rather facetious as the lazy sheriff. Viveca Lindfors shines in her small part and Jeffrey Bringham was sturdy as the psychotic killer. Low-budget horror/b-movie fans will have a treat with the support cast with likes of Solly Marx (who's mainly a stunt-man), Katherine Kamhi, Paul DeAngelo, Dennis Helfend, Paige Lyn Price and the sorely forgotten b-actress the lovely Elizabeth Kaitan.

An undemanding slasher effort, though make sure get the uncut version.

A dangerous lunatic escapes from a mental hospital. A girls college is nearby. You figure out what happens next. And if you can't, you haven't seen enough movies. Or I've watched too many. Anyhoo, as the body count rises and we get a couple of obligatory boob shots, no-one believes the one sane female doctor who knows what's going on, so she sets out to stop the guy herself. After all, those vestal virgins ain't gonna be much use in a fight...

Apart from a nostalgic glance at an old Dragon's Lair arcade machine, there is NOTHING that separates this from the surfeit of others slashers from the 80's. Bad hair, awful editing and plot holes are here in abundance. Why for instance, when our mad psycho catches up with the good lady doctor, is she the only victim he doesn't dispatch straightaway... He ties her up (not very well) thus giving her a chance to escape. Not only is he crazy, but also incredibly dumb.

File under FORGETTABLE NONSENSE. Next... 4/10

80s Slashers for Dummies. I don't know if such a book really exists, but if yes then "Silent Madness" surely followed it word for word! Admittedly most contemporary teen slasher movies suffer from a lack of originality, but Simon Nuchtern's film is truly an amassment of clichés, stereotypes, predictable plot twists and trite killings. It's like our director first watched a dozen of other movies and took notes. We need a mental asylum, a sorority house with a bunch of underdressed coeds, a black-and-white flashback of a massacre that took place twenty years ago, a cocky news reporter and a deadweight sheriff. The funniest thing about "Silent Madness" is, in fact, that the lunatic didn't escape from the asylum, but that he was accidentally released following the dumbest administrative error in history. The release papers were signed for tame patient John Howard, but instead they let go the paranoid and dangerously insane Howard Johns. Two decades ago, he killed several college girls with a nail gun and now promptly heads back to campus to finish his work. There's a reasonably interesting sub plot about the head doctors at the mental institution being deranged psychopaths themselves, and they are even sending creepy goons after the one good-hearted shrink who's trying to correct their mistake! Maniacal Howard murders a handful of pledge sisters and hides in the basement of the sorority house, which is - hands down - the biggest basement I've ever seen. This basement looks more like an underground steel factory! Regardless of how hard the film tries to be special, it's a suspenseless and unmemorable horror effort. The 3D effects (quite the hype around the time of release) are poor and derivative, while most of the murders are uninspired. I am afraid, however, that I watched a cut version since the amount of gore was very limited and the running time was nearly six minutes shorter than indicated on IMDb. The beautiful Belinda Montgomery gives away a likable performance and there are neat supportive roles for veterans like Viveca Lindfors ("Creepshow") and Sydney Lassick ("One Flow over the Cuckoo's Nest"), but they all deserved a better screenplay. The foreseeable climax even shamelessly rips off the mother (pun intended) of all eighties slasher movies!

This is a relatively well written and well shot 80s Slasher film that deserves to be better known. The acting by the main actors stands up (a few of the extras are a little weak but that adds to the 80s Slasher charm), and the story, while not the greatest, is definitely good enough for the genre. There's a pretty high kill count, and actually more than one bad guy (there's a couple "sub" bad guys).

Now, it's pretty important what cut of this movie you end up watching, as many are heavily edited as well as poorly cropped. I grabbed the latest Vinegar Syndrome release which has been beautifully restored as well as released in 2D, the original anaglyph 3D as well as an amazing Blu-Ray 3D release (for those few movie nerds like me that still have a 3D TV kicking around).

This movie was originally in cinemas as 3D, unfortunately I saw it in 2D, so maybe I lost some of the amazing effects! This is a very typical horror movie where all the characters make all the obvious bad mistakes. The plot is a re-hash, the acting poor and the music awful. The only thing that got my attention was Vivica Lindfors playing the head of the girls school. She also played the English teacher in John Cusack's movie 'The sure thing'. For horror buffs only.

This was an enjoyable movie with good characters, plot, acting, directing, music and effects. It must have been heart breaking to put the work into the gory fx only to have annoying censors delete it just cause. This movie really had the potential be more than a cheesy B horror.

Either ways, what's left is a nooted horror with little actual depictions of the numerous grizzly death scenes in the movie. I would say this movie could have been as good as the original friday the 13th's or sleepaway camps but they destroyed it in its prime. Still worth seeing though for everything else.

Silent Madness is another obscure horror film from the 80's that has never found it's way into DVD. It was originally shot with 3-D "graphics", but I don't think it ever made it to theatres for it to be shown in that format. The plot is about a mental patient named Howard Johns who gets released from the hospital accidentally due to a computer error. When a psychiatrist Dr. Joan Gilmore discovers the mistake, she tries to alert the hospital's senior staff about it. However, they do not want to tarnish the reputation of the hospital so they cover it up and make it look like Howard Johns is dead.

Our main character Dr. Joan Gilmore makes her way up to the sorority house where the murders took place years prior and, with the help of a local newspaper reporter, manages to stay the night at the estate with a few girls. Her goal is to capture Howard Johns before he murders again. Eventually a few people are murdered, nothing really shocking or special about the kills. This movie for the most part has no gore at all. It's a very tame slasher flick compared to others. We also know who the killer is right away, so it takes away any sort of mystery or suspense. The best part of the whole film is the big chase scene at the end between Joan and the killer. There is also an interesting twist at the end which I could see coming early on.

Silent Madness is sort of a rip off of the original Halloween. The story involves a psychiatrist (like Dr. Loomis) who goes out to find a mental patient (like Michael Myers) who has been let out of the mental hospital . The acting in Silent Madness is pretty good, especially from Belinda Montgomery. But their are very little scares to be seen. I give credit for the unique idea of having it not just be "main girl v.s killer", but "main girl v.s hospital staff". Joan having to fight off deranged hospital attendants who are determined to cover up the release of Howard Johns adds a bit more to the movie and makes it different from your average eighties slasher.

5/10

It's a low budget horror film but with a decent story and amazing 3d!! The 3d makes the movie nothing that we haven't seen but it's a get drunk or smoke a bowl and put on your glasses and have some horror fun!! Its so funny this is from 1984 with 1 1000th of today's budget yet the 3d effects are better than 90 percent of the crap we get now!!! Fun 3d flick!!!!

Silent Madness (1984) is a movie that was highly recommended on Twitter and is available for free on YouTube. The story focuses on the head of a Psychiatric ward who releases an inmate and blames it on a computer glitch. A group from the ward tracks down a trail of murders to a sorority house where they hope to finally catch the killer. This movie is directed by Simon Nutchtern (Savage Dawn) and stars Belinda Montgomery (Tron: Legacy), Vivica Lindfors (Creepshow) and Sydney Lassick (Carrie). This was a fun old school slasher film with some better than expected kill scenes and predictable but well done sequences. The premise was also entertaining as was the dialogue between characters. This truly has a classic 80s slasher feel to it you'll thoroughly enjoy. I'd score it a 6-6.5/10.

A murderer is released by accident and he returns to the sorority house which functioned as the scene of a crime he committed many years ago. In the meantime, a doctor from the hospital tries to find him before it's too late.

The basic structure calls to mind Halloween with its escaped mental patient returning home to kill again as the doctor tries to stop them, but it seems less concerned with suspense and more concerned with silly 3D effects. Some death scenes are creative, but it's lacking the blood usually associated with the horror films of this time and, without scares, it could have used a little excitement in that area.

Due to budgetary constraints and human error, homicidal madman Howard Johns (Solly Marx) is released from a mental institution. Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery) attempts to figure out what went wrong, while Johns heads for a sorority house for a night of murderous mayhem.

SILENT MADNESS is another forgotten slasher from the golden age of the sub-genre. As such, it has a certain charm. All of the prerequisites are in place: A maniac on a mission, beautiful female victims, nudity, gore, and an explanatory flashback sequence.

The sorority sisters are all suitably silly, and Marx's goggle-eyed portrayal of Johns is gleefully crazy. Ms. Montgomery is believably exasperated.

An enjoyable enough ball of bloody yarn.

Watch for Sydney Lassick as the Sheriff and Viveca Lindfors as the -underused- house mother...

Silent Madness is one of those sad last ditch efforts than came right at the end of the slasher cycle that's depressingly low on creativity or spark. No one involved seems to care much about how the movie will turn out and it gives the entire film a sleepy feeling as if they've given everyone in front of and behind the camera a Xanax.

A mental patient escapes due to some shady behind the scenes dealings at the asylum and returns to a sorority house where he'd murdered a bunch of sorority girls years prior. A idealistic doctor decides to track him down, putting herself in harms way.

It's not a bad idea for a story, but it's told without any style or excitement and every plot twist and development feels telegraphed from the get go. The most interesting thing in the film is Viveca Lindfors more than earning her paycheck as the daffy housemother of the sorority who seems like she might be even more insane than the killer wandering around. She's worth seeing it for and, if you can catch a 3D print of the film, I'm sure that might add a few extra thrills.

If Silent Madness had been less concerned with throwing 3D effects in our faces and more concerned with an interesting script, it might be a more memorable movie. They take the usual escaped mental patient storyline and adds in so many subplots and character you can hardly keep track while being surprisingly tame and bloodless for an 80's slasher movie. Viveca Lindfors as the unhinged sorority house mother gives the film's most spirited performance but Belinda Montgomery is likable as the film's lead.

I can't believe some of the talent that participated in that crap, the great Vivica Lindfors of all people. She ought to be stoned. There are a couple of impressive moments, but that simply joins all those other crap 80 horror pics. The movie starts off trashily, it had me thinking, "Oh, it's not gonna be like this?", but then got better, for a while, but then it fell back, below average. Gore hounds will share a madness of their own, where gore is scarce and restrained. The most effectively terrifying scene, is the sledge hammer attack van scene. Due to a computer glitch, a most dangerous infamous patient, is wrongly released, where he's a guinea pig in an underground operation by some bad eggs at the psychiatric facility, repellent ones who belong with the other psycho's. One young nurse, Montgomery, one of many talented performers in this, knows something's rotten in Denmark, and does some snooping around where she ends up on a girl's campus, where this nutter, once massacred a sorority, who were pr..k teasing him. She meets a handsome reporter and they form a partnership, to find out if this presumed dead nutter is still alive, which we already know he is. Lindfors's secret, I saw straight off. Montgomery as a goody goody, kind of gets annoying, where our nutter who we view full on, mostly in the end, is SCARY, while also looking like an extra on a zombie movie. This flick, will disappoint, and comes up short on many things, although it's not badly made. It walks paths of predictability too, as it becomes all too familiar with other films of it's ilk. Montgomery overacts big time at the start, Sydney Lassick, simply used as the town cop, while Lindfors, of course walks away with her acting reel. From the makers of the much better House, this bad film, with a good story line, just wasn't utilized properly, in it's last half hour.

A computer mix up at a mental hospital leads to an accidental discharge of a madman who murdered several sorority girls many years ago and, now that he's on the loose, he heads back to the scene of the crime to terrorize a new batch of sorority girls.

Silent Madness doesn't do anything that we haven't seen in other sorority slashers and, in actuality, the script feels much less interesting in sorority slashings than medical world drama between doctors and psychiatrists. Some of this drama is interesting, but you might find yourself wishing they'd have focused a little bit more on giving the horror elements a boost.

A criminally insane patient is accidentally released from a psychiatric hospital due to a computer error. Psychiatrist Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery) suspects what has happened and attempts to alert her superiors, but is obstructed by other members of staff who are keen to cover up their mistake. Following a trail of clues, Joan heads to the sorority house where, twenty years earlier, the lunatic slaughtered several girls. Guess who is there to meet her...

"You sluts, you whores", screams batty house mother Mrs, Collins (Viveca Lindfors, Aunt Bedelia in Creepshow) at a group of fun-loving sorority sisters who innocently dare to reveal a little bare flesh; this hysterical outburst is easily the best thing about obscure, mid-eighties slasher Silent Madness, the rest of the film being over-talky, virtually bloodless, and lacking in style.

Originally shot in 3D, the film initially looks as though it might at least be a bit of laugh thanks to some gratuitous 'in your face' moments designed to exploit its gimmick to the max, but this novelty soon wears off. Sydney Lassick, of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' fame, puts in a reasonably quirky performance as a disbelieving small town sheriff, which helps alleviate the boredom a tad, there's one imaginative kill involving a girl suspended upside down by her ankles, a length of cord and a dumb-bell, and a bonus point is awarded for getting the obligatory topless babe scene in pretty quickly, but even then, my rating is still only a paltry 3/10.

God I love this movie. Its the type of film you need a few beers to truly enjoy.

If you have a skin full and you check out this movie I guarantee you will love it. You will find yourself quoting non stop such great lines as "Theyre the living' dead doc... we got em plugged in . . juiced up 24 hours a day.... Dr Gilmore!!".

The guy who plays Virgil the hospital's nurse is fantastic in his role. Also the special effects are very ahead of their time.

Makes films like Star Wars look pitiful! Nothing beats the 3d hatchet scene! Trust me, watch this film with an open your mind and it will change your life!!

Psychotic serial killer with traumatic past is accidentally released on an unsuspecting world.He promptly returns near his place of staying and begins to stalk and kill teenage sorority girls."Silent Madness" features Sydney Lassick,Viveca Lindfords and two cast members of "Sleepaway Camp".It's a watchable slasher flick with heavily censored and thus bloodless death scenes.The action is quite slow and there are some drawn out and uninteresting scenes.The gore is also absent;only one death on an exercise machine is pretty shocking and creative.Still if you are into slasher sub-genre you can give this one a look.Recommended for fans of "Doom Asylum" or "Final Exam".6 mental asylums out of 10.

Silent Madness (1984) A psychopath is accidentally released from an asylum after a mix up with the names , the madman returns to the sorority where he killed four girls 20 years ago.

A psychiatrist spots the mistake and travels to the sorority hoping she'll find him ,she informs the police but the asylum cover up the mistake and send 2 nutty attendants to track down the killer and kill him.

This film was made in 3D and features some overly long shots of things pointing at the screen , the version i watched was 2d .

The killer is a tall mute with red around his eyes.

The acting is a mix of terrible and good (it features aunt Bedelia from creepshow) The music is ok ,The gore is crap apart from the drill in the head scene and some girl flashes her breasts once .

Basic 80s slasher which could have been a lot better if they add more gore.