Hammer House of Horror S01E07 - The Silent Scream

Welcome back to midnight Viewing. I'm your host father Alone, and this season we are surveying the eighties UK horror anthology classic of the Hammer House of Horror and with me checking the water pressure while I'm measuring the square footage is the projection boost? Mike White, Hey, Lisa's free dinner tonight. We're looking at the seventh episode of the only series of Hammer House for us. It's Doctor Frankenstein versus Doctor Hannibal Acter spelled with a k inexplicably.

This is called The Silent Scream. October twenty fifth, nineteen eighty was the day it was released. Written by Francis Essex and directed by Alex Gibson, who was a huge Hammer guy. Directed Dracula AD nineteen seventy two, directed Satanic Rights of Dracula, which is actually my favorite Christopher Lee movie, and he did ten episodes of Tales of the Unexpected. So we're going to be tangling with mister Gibson a whole lot very soon.

And this one stars speaking of Hammer Horror icons, Peter Cushing, Brian Cox, and Elaine Donnelly. This is about a pet shop and private zoo owner who hires a recent released convict to work with him tending to his animals. But can he be trusted with the company safe and can they owner be trusted at all? Mike, what do you think. This show continues to impress the heckotomy.

I knew that Peter Cushing was going to show up, and I was not disappointed. I didn't realize that Brian Cox was going to be in this episode. This is Brian Cox. This is young Brian Cox before he's doing McDonald's commercials, before he's just like showing up collecting a paycheck kind of thing. I still love the guy, but this is him at his prime and just doing such a wonderful job.

And yeah, I again, if I had seen this when I was a kid growing up, I would have been talking about this today. Oh do you remember that. Episode where this guy he's got all these animals in the back room and he's and then there's that convict that comes on up. It's just amazing the way that they set this thing up again one hour, not even fifty four minutes, so tight and such a rich story. Yeah, I noticed when we tend to watch these episodes back to back listeners, what I noticed from watching this one and then the next woman we're going to be talking about was that at right around the twenty two minute mark, which is where Tails from the Dark Side would be ending.

That's where these stories actually begin. So you get the full thirty minutes of cuckoo crazy horror and or supernatural or thriller business. But we do spend a goodly deal of time with our leads, get to know them and like them and figure out who they are, and it's never uninteresting. That continues here. It would continue to be interesting if it weren't Brian Cox and Elaine Donnelly as that couple.

But they're fucking great here. Yeah, Brian Cox just a few years from Manhunter, And like I said that Lector with a k Roll. If you haven't seen Manhunter, everybody and you like Hannibal Lecter, go watch that movie. It's fucking amazing. Yeah.

I had never seen this one until about four or five years ago. For some reason, my hammer house of horror knowledge was pretty much just the house that bled the Bloodbath episode. A friend of mine had recommended this one to me, and I thought, with Peter Cushing, it's definitely going to be supernatural. They're going to have some Nope, it's so much worse than that. Oh yeah, yeah, so grounded in reality that it hurts, and just this, I would recommend people don't go out to the Wikipedia and read the description of this.

We will be splaying this episode. So if you haven't seen this, turn off us right now and go watch it, because there are some great twists in this and it's right there in the Wikipedia article and I'm like, oh, for God's sakes, guys, don't say what is going to happen in this episode, because it really takes you for a ride. They figured out the art of the twist, and then another twist, which they have a fake out twist. Usually that's not the case here, each twist it builds upon the last. And then, Mike, when you had me on your show to talk about Escape from New York, I mentioned that the idea of an open air prison or a prison without rules is probably the like one of my worst nightmares, found another one.

Anything going on in this fucking episode as far as containment goes, it's really terrific. Oh yeah yeah, And it's like we start with this kitchen sync drama with Brian Cox and Elaine Donnelly and just yeah, like you said, it's fascinating. There's already tension being set up right away where he is just fresh out of prison, getting a ride home, coming home and having this envelope the money already setting up tension between these two characters is like, where did you get this? This isn't what they gave you when you came out of prison. Of course, way too much money.

And he's hitting the sauce already, he's drinking. I'm like, oh jeez, this guy is so going to be going back to prison, and he kind of does Bud, he doesn't, but it's worse. Oh yeah. What I love is that they hammer home the hammer the notion that he had to get out of prison. It's implied that he might have done extra duties or something to get out early, maybe thinking on somebody, even because he was so confined and it was driving him absolutely mental.

Look, he does this to himself, right, But okay, let's just spill the story a little further. Yes, he gets out of prison, meets the wife and then goes to visit who a benefactor I guess you would call him showing up in prison. I never understood why Peter Cushing was giving him money in prison though, Yeah, just to talk like they ever made that clear if it had been a situation where remember do you remember all that money I kept sending you from prison that was actually this guy? You know what I mean. It's just that it seems too transactional a thing to not have something given back to Peter Cushing.

Oh, trust me, he'll get it back, right, Because yeah, it's like, how does he know who Brian Cox is? How does he figure out this person? And is Brian Cox just an experiment? Is this just a big I don't want to say stand for prison experiment because it's not that. Is this just a big experimental thing where he's got all of these wild animals in his back room and is taming them through these electric barriers.

And now he's got the man it's the greatest animal of all right, and he's now it's time to try some new tricks. Yeah. And I love the fact that they set up very early on that Peter Cushing had been in a concentration camp. He's someone to be trusted. He knows something about confinement and he's definitely on the up and up.

And when we get to his pet store, which by the way, is just one room with a puppy and a bird, neither of which seem to actually be for sale. And then the hidden back room that is just filled with cages that are they've got jungle cats basically in each of them, tigers and lions and pumas and lynxes and such, and a kangaroo. And I think there's a baboon back there. Maybe I think so too, Yeah, yeah, because a couple of the animals are looking pensive throughout. Those are the higher mammals.

But every time I see an animal in an enclosure that is effectively just a cage, it makes me think of an X Files episode called Fearful Symmetry, which was written by Steve Dejarnett, the guy who did a miracle mile, and it was about aliens abducting animals on Earth, the idea that they were making their own arc like a seed a library, based on our animal And one of the characters is a conservationist and he's talking about the range that an elephant needs to just roam free, like what they would do in the wild, and he said, the equivalent that we've given them here is like you or I living in a pickle barrel, and that is such a disturbing thought to me that every time I see a lion pacing in a five foot enclosure, all I can think is, man, what are we doing to that poor thing?

And I guess that's the point of this whole episode. But yeah, it doesn't even look like they have enough room to lay out fully, like the way that your dog, my cat, the way that they will stretch themselves out and suddenly you're suddenly you're like, oh, look at that long cat, look at that long dog, and you pick them up and you're just like, look how long you are. These animals cannot do that. They cannot put their paws out and their back paws out. And you look, we warned you about the spoilers.

But continuing to speak about the animals, they do have a rather adorable puppy and Mike I couldn't watch. I turned fully away when they sacrifice that poor puppy. That is heartrending. And when his wife just starts beating up on Brian Cox, I'm like, yeah, I would too. You killed that puppy, and yeah, it really tears the heart out of you.

And it's such a perfect tension moment because there's nothing you can do that puppy just wants to come back with the stick. It doesn't know that there's an electrical field about to fry it. Yeah, I'm just watching in horror. Is it all unfold? My goods, I'm so smart to have that pre credit sequence of Cushing there with all those animals and then has the food out, and then the one tiger goes and hits that barrier and you see him, see the tiger about to hit the barrier.

He's yelling. Tiger hits it next and cut the Cushing cut back to this smoldering pile of meat basically which used to be the tiger, and you're like, Okay, what I'm iying for with this episode? And they just keep ratcheting. Okay, here's this kind of strange old concentration camp survivor who's trying to help out these animals and trying to team them and give them a world where they don't need cages, because he has them conditions so well that they will stop. You can open up the cages and just put the food right there, and they come out and meet that.

One nice little thing that I noticed the second time I was watching this is in that basement, which is just pretty or back room, which is just pretty much all cages with wild animals. There's all of this artwork piled up at one point, and I'm just like, I think that might be a clue for us as far as the nature of the Peter Cushion character. And the one most prominent piece of course I see is Mooks the scream, which is going to presage so much. And then when he does the big reveal, can I do the big reveal? Yeah, go for it.

When he does the big reveal and says, oh, yeah, I was in a concentration camp, but I wasn't one the prisoners, You're just like, oh, fuck, here's an escape Nazi who is now here in England and just completely out of his fucking. Mind, and you've been befriended by him this whole time, and he's got a plan that is a labyrinthine at the least. This script is so clever. I watched the episode two or three times and every time it gets better because all the artwork is like the rarest of clues, Like they're pretty blatant with it when you're trying to hear it. They have a conversation one of their first conversations where Peter Kristin says it all depends on the right bait.

With the right bait, you can catch anything. And then like literally the next thing Brian Cox says is so why did you invite me here? And he says, oh, I didn't. You came of your own accord. I went, oh, Jesus Christ, he just told you to run man.

Oh yeah, yeah, And he might as well have turned around and been like, oh, let me go check my safe. I'll be leaving this safe unattended. The same way that the baboon's cage is open and the leopard's eating this raw meat. Yeah, here's this beautiful safe that I have. Wouldn't it be a shame if somebody robbed me a safe cracker?

I don't know somebody who was in prisoners anyway. This character, I do want to mention one thing because in the opening, when we're getting to know our characters, and as you said, it seems like he is bound for recidivism where he's drinking and the money issue is obviously going to come up again, and which is a stressor in most of these anthology tales, but even tells from a dark side as good as those scripts could be sometimes they always leaned in on the Harrod and wife, the why don't you get me some money? That's not the case. Here he has the greatest wife in anthology history. This fucking woman goes down to the police, finds them all to be imbeciles, goes and investigates Peter kushing herself, figures out he's in there, breaks into the fucking place, fucking goes and gets a fucking rope and everything.

Oh my god, Like she only didn't look behind her, that was her only mistake. Yeah, she's amazing. And I was so surprised at just how competent she was, just because we see these incompetent characters, not just women incompetent characters all the time. But yeah, and just her showing up at the police and oh yeah this is going on and they basically just laugh her out of the precinct. It's so frustrating.

It is just so frustrating to have her experience this. But I'm like, yeah, this is true to life. We've seen this a thousand times. I think we even saw it. Yes, and here we have with this oh yeah exactly.

Yeah, as are recording today, we've got Pam Bondi who refuses to look at the victims of the Epstein Files and just yeah, just being like she's the. Yeah, exactly, and yeah, and here that what I really liked is they not only involve the police and make them as ineffectual as they tend to be in these stories, but they keep coming back because sometimes in these stories the police finally get it together and go, holy shit, this woman was right all along. That doesn't happen. The final scene with these cops are like, oh whatever, and then we don't see them again. Yeah, bunch of income poops.

Absolutely just so frustrating. And that's what I like about this. It's just that it does feel more true to life. We're dealing with a I don't want to say, like you said, supernatural, it's not supernatural. It's just diabolical.

And the whole thing of these electric fields that show up, Yeah, this could really actually happen. And I find that it just even at the end when you think, oh, all is right with the world and Peter Cushing is going to get his come up, and no, no, not at all. Surprise. And you know what, I just answered my own question, Mike, we don't know what he was giving him. He does know the reason that he was giving to Brian Cox in prison.

I'm giving you this money, but we know why he was giving him specifically the money, because the wife keeps saying throughout the episode, like why you, why us? What does he need from us? Exactly? And it's because they had been chosen the entire time because the house that they had just recently moved into is his house. He's that's a fucking prison and they don't know it yet.

What a fucking twist upon a twist upon a twist, Like it was enough that he was a prison guard, it was enough that the wife would end up down there with him and them get out what Okay, the false hope that they gave here at the end was absolutely masterful. This was a masterclass in just fuck you, you're wrong and it's much worse than you expected. Oh god, yes, yeah in that so yeah to the end part of it where okay, great, we trapped cushion. He's now in this little cell. He's experiencing the same hell and torment that Brian Cox was, and eventually the wife would and guess what when they escape and they get to run home, now they're trapped as well, so to have I think there's even like a a why am I blanking on the word not as dissolved, but like a super disposure.

Yes, of them in their house and him in his little prison, and that shot from the distance of them in their house, I'm like, nobody's ever gonna come and get them. They're just gonna die in the fucking house. And he's gonna die in that fucking cell. Absolutely starvation all around. And Mike, you know that I spent many years driving across these great United States of ours.

Right, we only see horror movies where it's a cabin in the woods or it's the farm way off in the distance. But way scarier than that are these little houses that are just right off the highway. This is one of those houses. People are just driving past seeing it. They can see people from where they are.

It's just close enough to make it even more maddening. Yeah. Yeah, And they can't you can't hear the screams, not from the car, and they can't open the window and send out a flair or something because they'll get electrocuted. That can just picture them, and that is the beauty of this episode. I can picture them three months from the end of this episode, six months maybe from the end of this episode, because they probably have a larder.

They probably have some food in there. But what happens when they run out? And how long until they turn on each other? This puts all of these seeds in your brain that are even more terrifying than what you actually get to see, because your imagination will fill in those gaps. This episode came very highly rated amongst fans, and now we see why.

This is one of the best anthology episodes of anything we've covered. And we've covered entire series, four separate series so far, and my god, this is right at the top. Absolutely yeah, one of the best episodes of one of the best series we've seen. How could they get out of there? Here's my only I think they have one possibility, power outage.

Yeah, that's it. Pray for rain, pray for something, or if they could potentially flag down a mailman. That's the only other way to be freaking out. You would have to I guess really, you'd have to light the house on fire. Yeah, yeah, and pray you don't die before the before they get there.

Yeah, And how many firemen are going to die on the way inside the building. But if they're spraying it down with water, that's another thing they could have tried. If the taps work. We don't know if the TAP's working up. They had to have if she was living there for a while, so they you could short out the electricity with that.

Probably all right, good, thank you for giving me a glimmer of hope. Ah woo, we did it well. On the next episode of Midnight Viering, we're gonna be donning some Wolve's mane and carrying our silver topped walking sticks as we look at the children of the moon. Until then, where can people see you howling at your particular moon? Mike White, I howl at the moon once a week over at Projection Booth podcast dot com, which is part of the weird Way Media network.

So you can go over to Warningwaymedia dot com and see all the shows that Father Malone or I or that the two of us do together. How about you? F then, as for me, this is it baby Midnight Viewing we're on twice a week. Father Malone's weekly roundup is on Friday. That's new and the streaming theatrical releases every Monday.

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