HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR EPISODE 7 - THE SILENT SCREAM

DIRECTED by Alan Gibson

SCREENPLAY by Francis Essex

STARRING - Brian Cox as Chuck, Elaine Donnelly as Annie, Peter Cushing as Martin Blueck, Anthony Carrick as Aldridge.

PLOT - Chuck has recently been released from prison and is looking to go straight.

Whilst in prison, Chuck was befriended by an eccentric pet shop owner Martin Blueck- a visitor from the outside world. Upon Chuck's release Blueck offers him a part time job looking after the pets in his store.

However - all is not as it seems...Blueck is a Nazi war criminal in hiding - an ex-concentration camp commandant - who is experimenting on new ways of imprisoning living creatures. Blueck has a cellar full of wild cats who he uses as guinea pigs in his twisted experiments, but Blueck isn't satisfied with testing his theories in animals...he wants a human guinea pig to work on next. Looks like Chuck has a job for life...

PERFORMANCES - Brian Cox and Elaine Donnelly play Chuck and his wife Annie.

Chuck is an habitual criminal who is struggling to go straight - it's heavily implied that Chuck is a kleptomaniac, he struggles against his nature and is backed up in his efforts to go straight by Annie who clearly loves him deeply but seems to be getting slightly tired of his fatal personality flaw.

On top of this Chuck has a fear of being trapped in confined spaces (something which surfaced whilst he was serving out his jail time), it basically comes down to a conflict between Chuck's inherent nature and his darkest fears. Unfortunately for Chuck (and eventually Annie) his worst instincts win out when he decides to rob Blueck's safe. Blueck (who's a good reader of human nature) was counting on Chuck making this decision and sets a trap for him. The long and the short of it is that Chuck ends up trapped in a cell in Blueck's cellar - an unpredictable electric force field keeping him in restraint. Understandably Chuck flips his shit over this.

It's not long before Annie falls foul of Blueck when she goes looking for Chuck and she too ends up imprisoned alongside her husband. Both Cox and Donnelly perfectly capture Chuck and Annie's horror, desperation and anguish in this awful situation. Chuck starts to lose it, whilst Annie seems to find hidden depths of strength and determination. Ultimately they're both still doomed though.

Hammer veteran Peter Cushing plays Blueck in his swansong for the studio and it's safe to say he goes out on a high note. Cushing is nothing short of BRILLIANT in this (to be fair when is he anything but ?).

When we first meet Blueck he's full of the old world gentlemanly charm that Cushing always seemed to display in real life, there's a dash of eccentricity there that seems slightly off kilter but nothing to really suggest the extent of the monster that lurks beneath the civilised veneer.

The mask first starts to slip when Blueck introduces Chuck to his experimental chamber. A coldness seems to come into Cushing's eyes (and line delivery) that is reminiscent of Cushing's take on Baron Frankenstein. Indeed, like Frankenstein, Blueck is a total pragmatist when it comes to his horrible experiments - the advancement of his branch of science is all that matters and anyone who gets in his way will be systematically destroyed - all in the name of science of course.

Blueck continues on in this cold, detached and smoothly maniacal way until the story's climax - needless to say he gets his comeuppance but it's a phyric victory for Chuck and Annie as they too end up just as compromised (and doomed) as Blueck.

It's a masterclass in cold precision from Cushing and just goes to show that even as his career was slowly drawing to a close that he still had it in spades.

VIOLENCE - There's a few scenes where some animals (a Tiger and a Puppy) get zapped to death by Blueck's electric force field. What is it with this show ? The animals always seem to get it worse than the humans.

Chuck gets zapped several times by an electric shock (mainly to "condition" him to his entrapment).

At the end Chuck and Annie succeed in ensnaring Blueck in his own trap. They go home only to find that Blueck has rigged up the electric force field outside thier home. They too are now trapped. Seeing as both parties are reliant upon the other for freedom and that they're both now subsequently trapped, it's heavily implied that both Chuck and Annie and Blueck now face a long, slow, agonising death by starvation...

They all scream in terror but nobody can hear them (hence the title), the end credits roll...

The end shot of Blueck screaming is one of THE iconic images of the series.

SFX - Some stuffed fake looking "dead animals" smoking slightly to show that they've been electrocuted to death.

RATING - Another classic episode of the series and yet another excellent performance from Cushing (Cox and Donnelly are pretty damn good too).

Dark, disturbing and suitably twisted. 5 mad pet shop owners out of 5. Great stuff.

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