No One Heard the Scream (1973)
"Nadie oyó gritar" (original title)

Director:

Eloy de la Iglesia

Writers:

Antonio Fos, Eloy de la Iglesia,

Stars:

Carmen Sevilla, Vicente Parra, María Asquerino

Cast

Cast overview:
Carmen Sevilla	...	Elisa
Vicente Parra	...	Miguel
María Asquerino	...	Nuria
Antonio Casas	...	Óscar
Goyo Lebrero	...	Portero
Felipe Solano	...	Agente
Ramón Lillo	...	Agente
Antonio del Real	...	Ayudante del juez
Tony Isbert	...	Tony

Storyline

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Plot Keywords:

evil man | murder

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Genres:

Horror

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Details

Country:

Spain

Language:

Spanish

Release Date:

27 August 1973 (Spain)

Also Known As:

No One Heard the Scream

Box Office

Gross:

ESP 10,820,846 (Spain)

Company Credits

Production Co:

P.I.C.A.S.A., Producciones Benito Perojo

Technical Specs

Runtime:

90 min

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

User Reviews

Perhaps Eloy Inglesias' weakest film, but it's certainly not bad

This is another film by interesting Spanish director Eloy Inglesias. It might be the least interesting of the four films of his I've seen, but it has the same themes that seem to run through all his work--apartment living, voyeurism, domestic murder, and repressed homosexuality. It also features two of his regular actors Vincent Parra ("Cannibal Man) and Carmen Sevilla ("The Glass Ceiling"). Sevilla plays a high-priced call girl who herself is keeping a younger male lover. She comes out the door of her luxury high-rise apartment one day and witnesses her neighbor (Parra) dropping a body,apparently his wife, down the elevator shaft. This may seem like another knock-off of Hitchcock's "Rear Window" (which Inglesias had already "knocked off" in his film "The Glass Ceiling"). But it goes in a different direction when the man kidnaps her at gunpoint and forces her to help him get rid of the body. A strange relationship develops between them.

This movie is pretty illogical as Sevilla's character passes up several opportunities to turn her neighbor in, even before she develops a Stockholm-syndrome-type relationship with him. There's a twist at the end which is pretty ridiculous, but certainly unexpected. It's really this absurdity though that marks this as a kind of Spanish giallo (an "amarillo"?) since it lacks the over-top delerium of most Italian-Spanish gialli, and is a little more of a subdued character study. If it were more logical, it would be much more in the realm of Hitchcock or Claude Chabrol than in the realm of the gialli.

Inglesias also dials back the homoeroticism a little here. Unlike in "Cannibal Man" there is no intimation that his male characters are closeted homosexuals. Sevilla in some ways may perhaps be a kind of female stand-in for the gay director, and he certainly fetishes the two male actors, who frequently appear shirtless while the beautiful Sevilla (to the disappointment of heterosexual males everywhere) does not. This is probably the weakest of Inglesias' films that I've seen, but it's certainly not bad.