Dead Silence (1989) — Triskaidekafiles

DEAD SILENCE
WRITER: Hugh E. Gallagher

DIRECTOR: Hugh E. Gallagher

STARRING: Cindy Weichbrodt as Terri
Kevin Patterson as Martin
Ron Scroggins as Neil
Brad Foltz as Sam Mason
Flint Mitchell as Judge Keller

QUICK CUT: A woman tries to write an article on her sister’s murderer on the anniversary of his execution.

THE MORGUE

Terri - A budding reporter waiting for her big break, and it’s come in the form of writing about the man who killed her sister. That’s going well.

Neil - Terri’s boss at the paper, with a wandering eye. He might think his reporters’ ideas are stupid, but he’ll give them a shot.

Sam Mason - A devil worshiper trying to achieve immortality with a lot of dead bodies and blood.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! I'm getting November going with a look at Dead Silence, a ridiculosuly underrated James W...what? This came out in the 80s? It's barely an hour long? It's shot on video?! There’s no killer ventriloquist dummy?? Fuuuuuu...

The movie opens with a man being strapped into an electric chair - or as best this movie could do on a budget - and gets prepped for his executional.

Eventually the warden comes in to sign off on things, and he tells the convict he'll see him in hell, to which the doomed man retorts, "You can count on it."

So we are not even five minutes in, and the killer is already dead. I knew this was short but...oh, he comes back? Fuuuuu...

We then jump to a few years previous, and witness the killer taking one of his victims. He just blithely walks into the house, grabs her, and drags her down the hall. Meanwhile, Terri hears the screaming and peeks out at all the commotion.

Now, sure, it is probably the right call, but it is still very funny to me that Terri does not try and help in the slightest and instantly runs and goes to hide.

Terri then wakes up and IT WAS ALL A DREAM...but I'll allow it, since it's also a flashback and probably more true rather than not. And also, she gets woken up when her dream self gets her throat slit, in one of the worst attempts I've seen. It looks more like he’s cleaning off the blade against her neck.

Later, Terri sits down to watch what is basically an "Unsolved Mysteries" knockoff called Super Natural. I will do my best to keep the Winchester related jokes to a minimum.

The segment the movie shows us has the show's host waltzing through a graveyard, talking about trying to talk to the dead, and how someone supposedly has done it, by simply placing a recorder on a grave, and it will capture voices.

Saving people, hunting things. The family business.

And lemme tell ya, the cinematography in this little side jag is *special*. The host suddenly kneels down to look at us through the tall grass, for no real reason, and then the camera focuses on the grass.

But then Terri gets a call from her boss at the paper, to hound her about the article on Sam Mason she should be writing. As we have seen, it's not going well since he KILLED HER SISTER.

On top of that, everyone has written up this guy to death, and Terri wants a fresh angle. Wait, she's got it! She'll place a recorder on his grave, and see what his spirit has to say!

And the editor has the absolute perfect response, "Well, that's pretty stupid."

This is also when we learn that Sam was a devil worshiper, and he was collecting blood so he could do some immortality ritual. Yeah, how'd that work out for ya, Sammy?

After watching some schlubby guy doing a bit of graverobbing (We'll get back to him), we jump to the next day, with Terri driving to work, and I swear they show the ENTIRE drive to work. Skipping this is like, filmmaking 101.

She shows up at the office, gets sexually harassed by her boss, thank you so much the 80s, and she gets a recorder from their stash of equipment.

Once she leaves, oh no, are they going to make us watch her drive ALL THE WAY back h...oh no, good, she's stopping.

I love old shot on video movies that have colours never before seen by human eyes.

Terri sets up the recorder, and would a guy who killed a dozen people and was executed, have a marked, known, grave in a public cemetery?

...Where was I? Oh right, she sets up the recorder, then heads back to her car to take a nap, because this movie is going at such a breakneck pace.

As she takes a break, the movie jumps back to the graverobber who was sleeping in his car, gets up, and takes a piss on a skull hidden in the flora. Uhhh??

Did I just find the American Rowsdower??

The movie faffs about with this guy for awhile, trying to pad out an already slight runtime, before he finally decides to drive into Plotsville for more beer.

He comes across Terri, and he decides she's asleep enough that he can do some more graverobbing in peace. Fortunately, he finds a tape recorder just laying about, and doesn't have to do any work for it!

The schlub also is given the honour of delivering the line, "What is she recording, DEAD SILENCE?".

Just a small town girl…livin’ in a lonely world!

He foolishly listens to the tape, and we gets pixelated flashbacks to what we've already flashed back to. I hate the reused footage in such a short movie, but it does make sense.

Terri finally wakes up, finds the tape recorder lying in the road, and nearly gets run down by American Rowsdower. The car turns around to try and get it right this time, and Terri takes off in her car.

While the car chase goes on down the backroads, Terri's editor goes to talk to a supernatural expert; the local psychic at the state fair. Ah yes, a clearly reputable source.

Is this the veil they're always talking about being thin?

She just so happens to know all about the immortality ritual, like it's almost common knowledge. She says that blood must be collected from 13 victims, the last being done in a full,ritualistic ceremony.

But Mason was only convicted of 12 murders, so whew! Oh wait! Was THAT the random skull getting pissed on?? Man, not that guy's decade, huh?

With the editorial exposition out of the way, we have a car chase to get back to, at least, until Terri's car stalls out.

The Sammortal shows up and continues chasing her though, but with her on foot. You would think this would be a short chase, but his car IS a piece of shit. Seriously though, how many movies have I seen where a murderer is executed but comes back via deal with the devil??

I didn’t know the Giving Tree did knives.

Sam gets bored with this, and finds some poor random couple to kill, so we can at least have SOME death in this movie.

Terri finds a random house to break into and calls her boss to come get her, since everyone's car is dead. Good thing he's also the only one who knows the plot.

We have to sit through some more cat and mouse shenanigans, and eventually, Terri tries to steal her pursuer's car.

He chases after her with a pickaxe, and actually hooks onto the top of the roof as she drives off, carrying him along like the T-1000.

I love car chase stunts in no budget movies, because you KNOW there was zero safety consultant on set.

The fight culminates when Terri traps this guy, whom I BELIEVE is “Martin” in the credits, traps his hand in the rolled up window and slams on the brakes. The possessed guy goes flying, ripping his arm right from the hand.

But that is not enough to stop the Sammnortal, as he sits up and gets ready to keep things going. Terri has other ideas though, and cuts his head clean off with an axe. Who knew that being possessed made your shred apart like tissue paper? Oh, but that STILL doesn't kill him, so the headless Samsman has to be run over.

She tries to drive away, but the tape recorder is there, and Sam's recorded essence tries to possess her. A definite upgrade, if I do say so myself.

But before Sam can become Samantha, Terri tosses the recorder out the window.

Which is when her boss shows up, ten minutes late to the movie with Starbucks, and finds the recorder.

The now possessed editor makes his way to the warden's house, where we see he's a massive perv, watching porn, and we get a callback to "See you in hell!" before the Sammortal blows his brains out.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: You can probably tell this isn’t the best, but on the positives, it’s at least all clear. But the medium definitely gives you some…interesting visuals.

Audio: Serviceable, but not great, it sounds like its recorded with whatever mic was on the camera, half the time. Which is a shame since a literal sound is the main plot gimmick.

Body Count: Not terrible but it still feels lacking.

1 - Two minutes in, and Sam Mason is electrocuted
2 - A girl gets drained and then stabbed
3 - And then Terri gets slashed in the neck
4 - Boyfriend gets his throat slashed
5 - And then the girlfriend goes next
6 - X beheads the poor guy possessed by Sam Mason
7 - The warden gets killed by

Best Corpse: One upside of the movie, the deaths are all fairly decent, aside from that dodgy throat slash. The Sam possessed body actually gets some decent comeuppance though, with the missing hand, beheading, and still lumbering around before being smashed with a car.

Sex Appeal: Nothing I can recall, save for the Warden’s video collection.

Drink Up! Every time someone gets into a car.

Movie Review: There’s a decent idea here, dodgy plot mechanic aside. The idea of someone doing a ritual for immortality, and that gets translated to “my disembodied voice on a recording can possess people” has something to it. If they had thought it through a bit more, fleshed out the idea and how it worked, and maybe had a few more deaths in it to really build up this guy’s rep, that might have helped it. But the plot is slight, a lot of it is spent running around even then, and it feels like a good concept in search of a story. Two out of five cassette tapes.

Entertainment Value: As previously noted, the deaths are actually well executed for the budget. And they are bloodier than expected, and that helps the movie have more going on. If this was a low budget movie with a meh plot and so-so acting, with zero blood, this would be a total whiff. And there’s a few moments where the movie genuinely…not quite cooks, but it’s got something in the oven that isn’t terrible. You see flashes of ideas, that I can see a good remake coming from this. As is though, you can tell it’s a situation of “the best we could do with the resources and skill sets at hand”. Three out of five ketchup bottles of blood.