Tweet
Released by: Severin Films
Released on: August 24th, 2021.
Director: Eloy de la Iglesia
Cast: Vicente Parra, Carmen Sevilla, Antonio Casas, María Asquerino
Year: 1973
Purchase From Amazon
No One Heard The Scream - Movie Review:
A beautiful woman named Elisa (Carmen Sevilla) is driven around by her chauffeur as she shops in London. She comes back to her posh apartment where she meets her lover, an older man. From here, she flies back to her home in Madrid and decides not to use the return ticket he gave her. Instead, she winds up back at her apartment where she spots her neighbor, Miguel (Vincente Parra), dumping the corpse of his wife, Nuria (María Asquerino), down an elevator shaft. When he realizes that he's been spotted, he decides that rather than kill her off and eliminate the only witness to his crime that he'll instead force her to help him dispose of the body, thus making her an accomplice and ensuring her silence.
As their story evolves, she quickly takes to the task, proving more willing to engage in covering up his crime than he ever suspected she would be. When it comes time to dump the corpse in a lake, however, she attempts to kill him. It doesn't go quite as either of them planned, and soon enough Miguel has met her younger lover, Tony (Tony Isbert), who starts to suspect that something strange is going on.
Directed a year after the success of Cannibal Man, Eloy de la Iglesia's 1973 film No One Heard The Scream (Nadie oyí³ gritar en Espaí±ola) is a slick and suspenseful mystery that features some gorgeous cinematography by Francisco Fraile and a fantastic score from Fernando García Morcillo. The production values here are strong, the movie has a slick and polished look to it that nicely suits Elisa's affluent lifestyle and that comes into play in the middle stretch of the film as we get to know more about Miguel's motivations and how they contrast and compare to Elisa's own. While there are a few scenes that go on maybe a little too long, the boat scene and a bathtub scene both come to mind, for the most part de la Iglesia has good control over the film's pacing, throwing in a solid and interesting, if predictable, twist later in the film just as you start to wonder if it's going to go off the edge and wind up playing out as a strangely romantic melodrama.
Carmen Sevilla, who appeared in Charlton Heston's Antony And Cleopatra a year before and who would have been forty-two when she appeared in this picture, is very well cast in the film. She's got no shortage of sex appeal, and it's easy to understand why her older lover in London would spoil her as well as why the substantially younger Tony would be interested in her as well. She plays her character with plenty of believable smarts and it's interesting to see how she plays Elisa as increasingly manipulative as the story evolves. Vincente Parra, who also starred in de la Iglesia's Cannibal Man, is very well cast as the man who is initially her foil. They have excellent chemistry together, the tension they create on screen is really strong. Tony Isbert is also good as Elisa's plaything and look for Antonio Casas, of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly in a small role here as well.
No One Heard The Scream - Blu-ray Review:
No One Heard The Scream comes to region free Blu-ray “featuring an HD scan from the original negative†courtesy of Severin Films who present the picture in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition presentation framed at 1.85.1 widescreen. The feature gets 21.6GBs of space on a 25GB disc. It's a nice transfer with good detail and very nice color reproduction. Despite the presence of some minor compression artifacts here and there, black levels are also nice and there's almost no noticeable print damage here at all, the elements used were clearly in very nice shape.
The only audio option on the disc is a 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono option in the film's native Spanish language with optional subtitles offered in English only. No problems here, the audio quality is nice and the film's interesting score has some impressively strong range at times.
The only extra on the disc, aside from menus and chapter selection options, is Eloy de la Iglesia And The Spanish Giallo: An Interview with Film Scholar Dr. Andy Willis that clocks in at twenty-four minutes. In this piece, Willis goes over the connection between the Spanish and Italian film industries, the effect of politics on Spanish pictures, the influence of the Italian gillo period on Spanish genre pictures, thoughts on some of the more popular Spanish giallo films made in this era and what makes Spanish genre pictures unique. From there, he digs deeper into Eloy de la Iglesia's work, discussing some of the themes that they cover, the influence of the Franco regime, what sets his work apart from other Spanish filmmakers, his use of eroticism and of violence in his films and quite a bit more. It's a solid overview of the director and the scene in which he was a key player.
No One Heard The Scream - The Final Word:
No One Heard The Scream is more of a dramatic thriller than a giallo but that shouldn't diminish its appeal with anyone interested in Spanish genre films. The acting is really strong here and the direction equally so. Severin Films' Blu-ray release is light on extras but the featurette is very good and the presentation of the feature itself quite nice. Recommended!
Click on the images below for full sized No One Heard The Scream Blu-ray screen caps!
[img]http://www.rockshockpop.com/screencaps/No-One-Heard-The-Scream-Blu-ray-Review/No-One-Heard-The-Scream-Blu-ray-Review-15-2.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.rockshockpop.com/screencaps/No-One-Heard-The-Scream-Blu-ray-Review/No-One-Heard-The-Scream-Blu-ray-Review-15-2.jpg[/img]
