No One Heard the Scream Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

No One Heard the Scream Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 27, 2021

Is the Blu-ray industry celebrating some previously unknown festival known as Stockholm Syndrome Month or something? Arrow Video relatively recently released Blind Beast, a film which echoed certain elements of The Collector by positing a hapless young woman taken captive by a man, forcing the damsel in distress to then navigate some emotionally treacherous territory with that man, with the woman either resorting to a bit of romantic subterfuge in misleading her captor, or actually kinda sorta falling for him in her own way. Now comes Severin Films with No One Heard the Scream, a film which takes Stockholm Syndrome to a whole "new, improved" level by having a woman witness what appears to be the aftermath of a murder and who is then "enlisted" (more or less, anyway) to help the murderer get away with his gruesome crime. Can true love blossom? Co-writer and director Eloy de la Iglesia made this film directly after The Cannibal Man (also newly released on Blu-ray from Severin), and this film also features Vincente Parra in a starring role as an apparently murderous man. Parra's matinee idol good looks combined with a slightly menacing mien makes for a disturbing combo platter of sorts (one hopefully free of the "meat products" The Cannibal Man hinted might be included as ingredients in certain foodstuffs), and this is another interesting effort from de la Iglesia that has a certain Hitchcockian air at times, especially in one nicely structured scene where Miguel (Vincente Parra), who has evidently killed his wife, and Elisa (Carmen Sevilla), his neighbor who more or less catches him in the act, are confronted by police when they have a corpse in the trunk of their car.

While Dr. Andy Willis makes the case that Spanish gialli tended to try to make people think they actually stemmed from Italy, with de la Iglesias being a notable exception in that he was more than willing to actually feature Spain prominently, No One Heard the Scream actually starts off in London, of all places, as if de la Iglesias simply wanted a paid vacation there and arranged for a day or two of location filming. The entire prelude introduces Elisa as what amounts to a high paid call girl who has one particularly lucrative client in England's largest city, and who she is visiting on a business (?) trip. The film then kind of clumsily segues to Elisa back in Spain, though that might not initially be clear, as she decides not to return to London for her next assignation. Instead, she goes back to her largely abandoned apartment house, where only a deaf caretaker (Goyo Lebrero) seems to be around.

Soon enough Elisa discovers there actually are other residents there, basically right next to her (of course). Miguel seems a little, well, nervous, maybe because his evidently older wife Nuria (María Asquerino) doesn't seem to suffer fools, or at least Miguel, gladly. Later, after Elisa breaks it off with her London sugar daddy via a curt phone call, she hears something in the hallway and is shocked to see what looks like Miguel attempting to dispose of a body. That sets the main course of the plot in motion, and it requires the acceptance of the most patently preposterous plot conceit of the film: that Elisa, whether under duress or not, agrees to help Miguel dispose of the evidence.

If you can get past that potentially ridiculous seeming element, No One Heard the Scream delivers an unusual amount of angst, and it seems designed to expressly reference some of Hollywood's Golden Era thrillers, not just in the Hitchcock vein, but in one memorable sequence, another kind of combo platter combining aspects of Leave Her to Heaven and A Place in the Sun. The film may also be too clever by half, in that there is a rather nicely done twist toward the end, but one which has been aided and abetted by some really blatant misdirection.

No One Heard the Scream Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

No One Heard the Scream is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The back cover of this release announces that this Blu-ray release is "the American disc premiere" of the film, and it further discloses that the transfer was culled from "an HD scan from the original negative". The results are quite pleasing for the most part, with an appealingly natural accounting of the palette, which features some amazing primaries, especially blues, all of which tend to pop very well throughout the presentation. Fine detail is typically evident in abundance in close-ups and even in some midrange shots, especially those outside. There are a few passing rough moments where clarity can ebb, and in a couple of isolated outdoor shots, grain attains a slightly yellowish quality for some reason, but on the whole this is a pleasing and organic presentation that should satisfy fans.

No One Heard the Scream Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

No One Heard the Scream features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono track in the original Spanish (with a smattering of heavily accented English here and there). It's maybe a little ironic that Dr. Andy Willis states that de la Iglesias was an exception of sorts in the Spanish film industry in that he didn't fashion his gialli to look (and sound) overtly Italian, since this film seems to be a prime example of the dreaded "loose sync" that regularly accompanies Italian features (in any genre) due to their having been post-dubbed in their entirety. Therefore, there's a certain built in artificiality to this track at times, but fidelity is fine, supporting dialogue and the kind of cool, Bossa Nova inflected score by F. García Morcillo. Optional English subtitles translate the Spanish language dialogue, but provide no support for the spoken English moments.

No One Heard the Scream Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Truth 24 Times a Second: Eloy de la Iglesia and the Spanish Giallo (HD; 23:45) is a very interesting piece with Dr. Andy Willis (via a pretty low grade looking Skype or Zoom like interface) exploring the differences and similarities between Spanish and Italian gialli. Willis also gets into some general history of the Spanish film industry in this period, which Willis links to the technicians who were trained when Samuel Bronston was in the country producing films like El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire. This includes a number of well curated film clips, including an especially funny one (at least for those with un-PC senses of humor) from The Cannibal Man featuring air freshener being sprayed around a little snowglobe like statue of the Virgin Mary, which seems to sum of de la Iglesia's jaded attitude toward the Catholic church. Willis also addresses the frequent gay subtext (actually more like text in some cases) in de la Iglesia's films.

No One Heard the Scream Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If the underlying premise of No One Heard the Scream is silliness itself, de la Iglesias manages to craft a rather uniquely unsettling thriller that admittedly have one twist too many but which has at least a couple of standout sequences. Technical merits are solid and the sole supplement nicely done. Recommended.