Product Details

• Actors: Belinda Montgomery, Viveca Lindfors, Solly Marx, David Greenan, Sydney Lassick
• Format: NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Media Video
• VHS Release Date: May 15, 1990
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: 6302215773
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #283,943 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Oops, we accidentally released the Sorority Slaughter killer, October 6, 2007

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Silent Madness (DVD)

I don't think it's worth a herculean effort to track down, but this rather hard-to-find slasher film from 1984 isn't bad at all. It does feature a couple of relatively creative kills, even though there's not a lot of blood and gore on display here (and rumor has it that the important few seconds of one particular scene were cut from the DVD release). Don't get too excited about the fact that the murders take place in a sorority house, though, because the murders takes place over fall break, so you only have a handful of coeds on hand - and they certainly aren't throwing any slumber parties. Interestingly, though, Silent Madness was apparently shot and originally released in 3-D, which explains why some scenes feature deadly implements being hurled directly at the camera - it's just a shame that there's really no way to experience these 3-D effects on video or DVD.

Seventeen years ago, Howard Johns was locked away in the Cresthaven mental institution after carrying out the murders dubbed the Sorority House Slaughter. Now, thanks to a "clerical error," this dangerous psychopath has been accidentally released back into the world. No one seems to care (or even notice) except for Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery), an idealistic young psychiatrist who investigates the matter herself. Sleazy Dr. Kruger (Roderick Cook) and his L-ward lackeys Virgil (Dennis Helfend) and Jesse (Philip Levy) try to cover up the mistake by claiming Johns died, but Dr. Gilmore doesn't trust any of her colleagues (especially after she sees the conditions of the L ward for herself). She heads out to the scene of Johns' barbarous crimes, trying to find the psychopath before he kills again. The wormy little sheriff (Sydney Lassick) is no help to her, but Mark McGowan (David Greenan), the newspaper guy, comes up with a plan for Dr. Gilmore to learn about the original murders by spending the night in the sorority house (as if the current sorority sisters can give her all the details of a massacre that happened when they were all crawling around in diapers). Needless to say, Dr. Gilmore does find Johns (actually, it's more like Johns finds her), at which time her lack of a plan for actually subduing him reveals itself quite painfully. As if that isn't enough, Dr. Kruger has sent Virgil and Jesse, both of whom are basically subhuman monsters themselves, to cover up the whole "we accidentally released a psychopathic killer" mistake by catching Johns and then taking care of Dr. Gilmore, for good measure. There's sort of a two-pronged twist at the end, which works well since one of those surprises is not completely unexpected.

The film does have a couple of oddities, such as a security guard roaming around the sorority's boiler room. And speaking of that boiler room - Freddy Krueger would be jealous of these digs, as this sorority house boiler room is of TARDIS-like proportions. It's huge; not only is it absolutely sprawling horizontally, it even develops different vertical levels in time for the big chase scene at the end. On the plus side, though, Howard Johns is a pretty creative killer. Like any good psychopathic murderer, he has a fondness for your standard old-school implements, but when he has sufficient time, he's a regular MacGyver of malicious mayhem, adapting whatever materials are at hand to send someone to their eternal reward with quite a story to tell when they get there.

There are a number of forgettable 1980s slashers, but Silent Madness isn't one of them. Don't knock yourself out trying to find it, but it's certainly worth picking up if you happen to run across it.