Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The Endangered List (Case File #18)


SILENT DEATH
(1983)


Director: Vaughn Christion
Producers: Joe Sollazzo and Chuck Geiger
Exective producers: Doyle Taylor, Chris Christion

CAST
Freddy James, Doyle Taylor, David Arts, Natalie Carter

A Reina production
Filmed in "T.C." - Total Color
Shot in May and June of 1982 in Elizabeth, Union and Freehold, NJ

Rick Sullivan erroneously credited the director of SILENT DEATH as "Jor Chirichella" in the Gore Gazette, but as far as I know he was the only person to review the movie when it opened at the Paramount Theater in Newark, NJ on February 18th, 1983 (I think even Richard Green of Confessions of a Trash Fiend sat this one out). "An almost unwatchable slasher/black exploitation/police drama about a masked assailant who is carving up members of an organized crime ring with a straight razor," Sullivan wrote. "Two inept detectives are assigned to the case, and what follows is the most inept film I have ever seen. That is a strong statement, but SILENT truly makes other hack directors like Andy Milligan and Larry Buchanan look like Stanley Kubrick and Werner Herzog with its static, constantly out of focus camera, inaudible sound and cheesy looking orange blood." Sullivan also described it as "a 69-minute sub-Z abomination" and "the ROBOT MONSTER of the 1980's!"

Vaughn Christion and Doyle Taylor collaborated on two other films, THE WRONG DISCIPLE (1991) and HEAVEN (1997), before pursuing separate projects. Christion's original web series WILDFLOWER will make it’s debut on Amazon.com’s premiere “Video on Demand” website this month.

1 comment:

  1. Wow - thank you for this info - been trying to figure out the origin of this one for years. I have the same newspaper clipping displayed that I collected from The Star Ledger when I was a kid - and have found no other record of it existing. Filmed around where I grew up. Anyone have a vhs or dvd-r copy of this one available?

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