No One Heard the Scream (1973) User Reviews

Good quality thriller from Eloy de la Iglesia

[Red-Barracuda · 7/10 · 23 August 2014]

Before seeing this I was aware of its director, Eloy de la Iglesia, from his more famous film Cannibal Man. I was very impressed with that movie and it is easily one of the best from the infamous video nasty list. No One Heard the Scream was made in the same year as that one and it shares the same lead actor, Vincente Parra. And while this film was not as good as Cannibal Man, it still shows quite clearly that Iglesia is one of the most unheralded Spanish directors. Both films are genre pics with unusually strong acting and underlying themes. They both also share the basic idea of their horrors occurring within apartments, closed off to the rest of the world. No One Heard the Scream goes along a Hitchcockian path, in that we have a woman, Elisa, witnessing a man, Miguel, murdering his wife. The killer catches her and insists that she becomes his accomplice so that she cannot go to the police. The problem is that this innocent starts to develop an attraction for this scheme and soon becomes all too happy to go along with it.

The way that the two central characters interact with one and other is quite interesting. The complex nature of their motivations leads to some unusual scenes, such as the part where Elisa shoves Miguel in a lake and runs him over a couple of times in a speedboat. He is completely at her mercy, yet she neither kills him nor runs away and simply lets him back in the boat. It's a bizarre moment but somehow rings true and tells us more about Elisa than anything else in the movie. In her private life she depends on an older man for money in exchange for sexual favours, while she supports a young stud in an opposite arrangement; Miguel fits in uneasily somewhere in between. There are a few suspenseful moments in the first half, while it's the dynamics between the two central characters that makes up the bulk of the second half. Events finalise in a very surprising, yet very acceptable, twist in the tail ending that neatly ties everything together. All-in-all, another quality product from Eloy de la Iglesia.

Intriguing and suspense movie by Eloy de la Iglesia with a lot of twists and turns

[ma-cortes · 6/10 · 25 August 2019]

No heard a scream or Nadie oyo' gritar is a suspenseful and thrilling Spanish movie. After leaving his lover Oscar : Antonio Casas in the metropolis London, Elisa :Carmen Sevilla goes to her lonely urbanization, a solitary building with a few neighbours and a deaf porter : Goyo Lebrero. One day, Elisa sees how her next man door Miguel, Vicente Parra, throws down a murdered woman into the elevator. Then, Miguel threatens and coerces her to disappear the corpse. Along the way Elisa falls in love for him .Things go awry when there shows up her nephew and lover, Tony Isbert.

This thrilling picture has a twisted plot plenty of turns and surprises. Harshly paced in fits and starts and taking parts here and there of other suspense movies. The picture displays an interesting intrigue in Hitchcockian style with tension, suspense, thrills and an unexpected denouement. It belongs to a quartet of Eloy de la Iglesia films characterized by enhancing the erotic and suspenseful aspects such as El Techo de Cristal, La semana del asesino, and Una gota de sangre para vivir amando.

It contains an evocative and adequate cinematography by Francisco Fraile. As well as an anticlimatic musical score by Fernando Garcia Morcillo. The motion picture was professionally direted by Eloy de La Iglesia, but it has failures, flaws and gaps. Eloy de la Iglesia was a talented Spanish movies director , he began working in cinema in 1966 , at his 22 years old , he debuted in a kiddies production , ¨Fantasy 3¨(66) . Following a sordid melodrama ¨Algo Amargo En La Boca¨ (67) and a boxing story , ¨Cuadrilatero¨(69) . De La Iglesia realizes a lot of thrilling pictures with erotic background as ¨Techo Cristal¨(70) , ¨Nadie Oyó Gritar¨ (72) , ¨Gota Sangre Para Seguir Amando¨ (73) , and scabrous tales as ¨Juegos Amor Prohibido¨(75) , ¨Otra Alcoba¨ (76) . And concerning youthful gay : ¨Placeres Ocultos¨(76) , ¨El Sacerdote¨(78) and politicians : ¨The Deputy ¨, ¨Mujer Del Ministro¨ . Although he became notorious in the years of the Spanish transition to democracy with shocking and polemic films as ¨El Pico 1¨ and 2¨ , ¨Cólegas¨ , ¨Navajeros¨, ¨La Estanquera De Vallecas¨ (87) . All of them dealt with druggies , dope sellers , delinquency , terrorism , underworld suburban and generational problems are the habitual subjects in his films , and specially dedicated to the underworld of heroin ; as well as the gay world . Passing of time hasn't had mercy with most of those movies , but they represented a time and a way of life in the history of Spain ; and now they may seem a little bit naive . His last films were an academic rendition based on Henry James' novel : ¨The turn of the screw¨ and ¨Los Novios Búlgaros¨.

Worth it for the ending.

[Hey_Sweden · 7/10 · 16 October 2022]

Elisa (Carmen Sevilla) is a high-class escort who witnesses new neighbor Miguel (Vicente Parra) disposing of the corpse of his wife, whom he's just murdered. Then he figures that she's better off being his accomplice rather than another victim, so he deeply involves her in the crime.

Much more of a drama / thriller than a horror film (although it can get pretty gory), "No One Heard the Scream" is ultimately an interesting look at two flawed but compelling characters, and their evolving relationship. Elisa, in particular, initially reacts to the crime as a normal, decent human would, but then reveals layers to her character: she's not exactly an innocent. And he's not the total creep you might expect him to be.

Full of philosophical musings toward the end as Elisa & Miguel ponder their relationship and their lives, "No One Heard the Scream" doesn't really dish out a lot of thrills, per se, but it can get pretty tense, and features some dark humor that could have made Hitchcock proud: at one point, Elisa & Miguel are traveling, arrive at the scene of an accident, and are asked to transport some victims to the hospital; naturally, they're very nervous when the police ask them to open the trunk!

The gorgeous Ms. Sevilla, and Mr. Parra (star of director Eloy de la Iglesias' breakthrough film, "Cannibal Man"), share good chemistry, and deliver thoroughly engaging performances. They are nicely supported by Antonio Casas, as one of Elisas' primary clients, Maria Asquerino, as Nuria, and Tony Isbert, as Elisas' hunky young "nephew" Toni.

What really sells the film, however, is the brilliant twist ending that the viewer may actually not see coming. It's just the icing on this particular cake, making this a solid Euro cult feature worth seeking out.

Seven out of 10.

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

[lazarillo · 13 September 2010]

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.

Interesting but ultra contrived

[jameselliot-1 · 6/10 · 11 December 2021]

Why Savilla didn't immediately call the police is the big flaw in the screenplay. The dialogue is stilted as is often the case with translated conversations. I only made it to the end because of Carmen Sevilla. The music selections were awful. I have to add that the twist ending was a huge surprise and creative.

MURDEROUS RECRUIT

[kirbylee70-599-526179 · 7/10 · 23 November 2021]

Severin has released several films by director Eloy de la Iglesia, the largest set if which is a three film set of his quinqui films. But these weren't the only films Iglesia made. Two other titles that fell under the genre of horror films but might more have been suited as giallo films are also being released. One of those is NO ONE HEARD THE SCREAM.

Elisa (Carmen Sevilla) is a woman living in Spain who makes her way through life as the mistress of a wealthy man in London. Her wealthy benefactor wants her to come up and when she refuses gets angry with her. She breaks off the affair and stays home that weekend.

The apartment building she lives in is nearly empty for the weekend with only the nearly deaf concierge and her next door neighbor home. After taking a shower she hears noises next door and when she opens her door to investigate discover her neighbor Miquel (Vincente Parra) about to drop the dead body of his wife Nuria (Maria Asquerino) down the elevator shaft.

Elisa runs into her apartment locking the door behind her intent on calling the police. Before she can do so, Miquel cuts her phone line and then crawls across from his balcony to hers, holding her at gunpoint. Rather than shoot her, he forces her to become his accomplice and help him dispose of the body.

They gather the body from the base of the elevator shaft and wrap it in Elisa's shower curtain. Stuffing the body in the trunk of her car, they head for the vacation home heard Elisa talking about at nearby San Juan Lake. On the way they are stopped by police but Miquel keeps his gun on Elisa. There's been an accident and the police force them to take one of the wounded to a nearby hospital.

Waiting for the police to provide information to them, Miquel is frightened when he hears them talking about a dead woman in their car. Fortunately for him it wasn't his wife's body they're speaking of but the woman they brought to the hospital. As their journey moves forward a distinct bond between the two starts to build, one that might lead to romance.

Several plot turns better left unsaid take place in the remainder of the film making it one that keeps you guessing as to where it will lead. Fans of the genre may determine what happens by the end of the film but my guess is not completely.

The production values of the film are solid here and offer a nice backdrop for the story. The story itself seems a little strange in that Elisa begins to become attracted to a man who just killed his wife, but it attempts to make that as plausible as possible. The acting by both leads works through translation making them believable in their roles.

Severin has done a wonderful job with this release beginning with an HD scan from the original film negative. The only extra included here is "Eloy de la Iglesia and the Spanish Giallo" and interview with film scholar Dr. Andy Willis.

Fans of Spanish films and giallo films in particular will want to make sure and add this one to their collection.

Drags a bit, but good twists toward the end.

[parry_na · 6/10 · 13 October 2018]

Lovely blond haired Carmen Sevilla plays poor Elisa, a high class call girl who is simply going about her business when, in the isolated apartment where she lives, she witness a neighbour Miguel (Vincente Parra) disposing of his wife's body down a lift shaft. Not the greatest way to make their acquaintance, which Elisa tries to ensure is confined to that moment. Miguel has other ideas, of course, and coerces her into helping him dispose of the body.

Although we are treated to Elisa's reactions to the repulsive nature of the situation, we never really see the state of the corpse. At one point, Miguel is seen replacing a missing shoe to the foot, which is sticking out of the lift door. The often improbably scrapes these two get into whilst trying to dispose of the body demonstrates a very dark comedy, with Elisa seemingly beginning to enjoy Miguel's growing frustration and uncertainty. As the mis-matched couple continue their gruesome exploits, its impossible to deny how enjoyable this all is. Director and co-writer Eloy de la Iglesia makes the most of wonderful locations and the two leads invest their roles with a certain appeal, which is surprising considering what they are doing. Also, F. García Morcillo's soundtrack as by turns light and breezy and foreboding when the situation requires it.

The arrival of young Adonis Tony (Tony Isbert) stirs things up a little, but not enough to stop the mid-section of the film dragging somewhat. Elisa is happy to support him and his lifestyle, but there is a suggestion of a relationship between him and Miguel, who is also beginning to become romantically involved with Elisa. The twists don't stop there of course, and luckily the final act contains a number of genuine shocks that remind us we are watching a giallo/thriller and not a character study. Suffice it to say, the flawed characters are mostly very interesting, as are the ever-changing situations poor Elisa finds herself in.

Intelligent, suspenseful film from the director of CANNIBAL MAN.

[capkronos · 8/10 · 24 January 2009]

For starters, I have to say that the current 4.3 rating on IMDb is an absolute joke. This is a very good, drama/thriller with interesting characterizations, strong performances, suspense, good plot twists and a few well-time shocks. Middle-aged, still very attractive Elisa (Carmen Sevilla) has gotten by in life on her looks. We first meet her as she's bidding farewell with her wealthy older lover Óscar (Antonio Casas), who from all indications has been supporting her financially (apartment, car, money, plane tickets) in exchange for one weekend a month of her time. Elisa's growing tired of it, though, and decides to skip her flight to London so she can call off the arrangement. That night, her relief at being free and able to possibly start anew turns to horror as she exits her apartment and finds her next-door neighbor Miguel (Vicente Parra) dropping the freshly-killed body of his wife Nuria (María Asquerino) down an elevator shaft. Elisa runs back into her apartment and locks the door, but Miguel manages to get in through the window, brandishing a gun. Instead of killing her, Miguel decides to flip things around and turn her into an accomplice; making her accompany him across town so they can properly dispose of the corpse. As the two head toward their destination (a secluded beach house) there are a lot of suspenseful close calls with the police as well as a strange bond that starts growing between the two. After awhile, Elisa seem all too willing to cooperate with her abductor. After they sink the corpse in a lake, she even decides to carry on the relationship with Miguel when they return home to their respective apartments.

Director Eloy de la Iglesia is best known here in America for his 1972 shocker CANNIBAL MAN; which was good enough to encourage me to seek out more of his work. This is the first one I've been able to locate (his films are very hard to find here) and thankfully it's every bit as good as I was hoping it would be. Despite being listed as strictly horror on IMDb, this really defies genre and mixes drama, black comedy, suspense, road movie, character study, psychological thriller and horror, with a few jolts and bloody scenes. In that regard it reminded me a bit of Claude Chabrol's LE BOUCHER; which is horror not in the traditional sense of jump scares, supernatural beings, gore, etc., but one more grounded in the everyday; in reality. It's the lows "normal" people can hit to fulfill themselves and find a sense of belonging in this world.

There are some very Hitchcockian scenes here, such as when Elisa and Miguel end up having to transport people injured in a car accident to a hospital and police ask him to put a suitcase in the trunk... where the body of his wife already is. However, the attention paid to the lead characters and how they were fleshed out is what made the movie stand out to me. We learn a bit more about each person as the film progresses and what makes both tick and what makes them eventually click with one another. Miguel is a man whose dreams of becoming a successful writer never came to fruition and who settled for marriage to a wealthy woman he didn't love instead. Elisa, though supported by a man (or possible several men), in turn has her own younger lover (Tony Isbert), who SHE supports. She seems to thrive on feeling needed, by someone, anyone, for any reason. At one point she even manages to turn the tables on her abductor and can easily kill him, but decides not to. Events like these may come off as silly in some hands, but they are completely plausible here because of strong dialogue, character detail and the performances. There's also a big twist at the end that I didn't see coming and an ending that is unexpected, ironic and tragic.

If you can find a copy of this anywhere, I highly recommend watching this. And if you need help finding a copy with English subtitles, feel free to PM me and I can point you in the right direction.

Spanish giallo

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 4 January 2023]

Elisa (Carmen Sevilla) may be in her thirties yet she lives a life filled with the type of comforts younger women could never have, her entire life paid for in exchange for one weekend a month with her elderly lover Óscar (Antonio Casas). Yet she's sick of him and decides to break things off, despite the fact that she could lose everything. Trying to relax before her luxury is gone, she is interrupted by her next door neighbor Miguel (Vicente Parra) who is waving around a gun and demanding that she help him get his dead wife Nuria (María Asquerino) out of the elevator shaft and disposed of.

Somehow, as they evade the police and deal with all sorts of twists in their pathway, these two fall in love. Miguel had dreams of being a writer once and settled for being a husband. Perhaps Elisa feels something of the same. She nearly drowns him at her estate at the lake as they throw his dead wife into the water and then decides to save him. The sexual tension is too much, eclipsed only by the longing that it sems like Miguel has for her nephew Tony (Tony Isbert) who isn't just her nephew - or maybe he isn't, this is a Spanish giallo - but also her lover.

Nonetheless, the two decide to finally become lovers and make love, then follow that up with plenty of pills and champagne. And then Elisa wakes up to a dead body sleeping next to her.

Director Eloy de la Iglesia, who wrote this with Antonio Fos and Gabriel Moreno Burgos, uses the voyeurism and murder within the giallo form to really get into his favorite subjects: socialism, the caste system and hot naked men. As you can imagine, this made the conservative film censors of Francisco Franco lose their minds.

Not One of My Favorite Giallos

[thalassafischer · 5/10 · 5 January 2024]

This giallo is pretty but not beautiful, it fits the traditional format but it's Spanish not Italian (Italian gialli are generally better with a few exceptions) and I hate the plot. Think of it as a Natural Born Killers for the Silent Generation, as the two main characters are an anti-social and self-pitying couple; consisting of a "misunderstood" struggling writer with a wife he claims beats him down (though he's guilty of cheating since the very first year of matrimony) and an aging high-class call girl who is disenchanted with her wealthy lovers wanting to continually keep things as they are. I just absolutely hated the subplot of the call girl falling in love with this narcissistic, abusive toad and even defending him as someone who "needed" her "help" *dramatic eye roll* in burying his wife's body. There is an interesting twist at the end, and there's always enchanting wallpaper.

"I wanna sing,I wanna shout,I wanna scream till the words dry out."

[morrison-dylan-fan · 10/10 · 1 March 2014]

Despite having read a lot of praise for the title over the years,I've found myself constantly having to push Eloy de la Iglesia'a The Cannibal Man to the back of my 'must buy' list.With a poll coming up soon on IMDb's Classic Film board for the best titles of 1973,I was delighted to discover,that I had unknowingly recently picked up a 1973 film directed by Iglesia,which led to me excitingly getting ready to hear the scream become unleashed.

The plot:

With there only being a few days to go before she is to take her monthly plane trip to London,so as to spend a weekend with her 'sugar daddy',Elisa finds herself suddenly not wanting to make the 'traditional' trip to London,which leads to Elisa phoning up her piece of 'sugar' and telling him that its all over.

Being keen to get away from any familiar faces,Elisa decides to leave her holiday villa behind,and to instead move into a low-rent flat,whose tower block only contains a janitor and a loving husband and wife called Miguel and Nuria.After having exchanged pleasantries with Miguel and Nuria,Elisa lays down in bed,and gets set for a quiet weekend.Beginning to fall asleep,Elisa suddenly hears a strange noise which sounds like an object being dragged across the floor just outside her door.Opening the door,Elisa is met with the rather surprising sight of Miguel dropping a dead body down the tower block's lift shaft.

Rushing back to her flat and slamming the door shut,Elisa is given the good news by Miguel,that due to it being the weekend,that they are the only 2 residence in the building.Telling him to go away,Miguel decides to reveal to Elisa that he has a gun,and that he will use it unless she lets him in.Carefully opening the door,Elisa is confronted by Miguel holding the gun and telling her to calm down. Realizing that he has all the power in his hand,Miguel tells Elisa that she will be safe,as long as Elisa becomes an accomplice and helps him to properly remove the body.Realizing that she has nowhere else to go,Elisa agrees to Miguel's blood-soaked hands liaison.

View on the film:

Smartly using the near empty block of flats as a method to physically display the closed off, isolated relationship that Elisa and Miguel place themselves in,the screenplay by co-writer/ (along with Antonio Fos and Gabriel Moreno Burgos)director Eloy de La Iglesia keeps the number of supporting character's to a bare minimum so that the tense relationship between Elisa and Miguel becomes tightly coiled,as Elisa finds herself increasingly becoming an accomplice to the body removal,whilst Miguel finds Elisa's determination to keep her head up high in front of him,to be something that oddly begins to charm Miguel.

Giving the title a Giallo-slated shot of Film Noir,the writer's precisely inject supporting characters at crossing points in Elisa and Miguel's relationship,where the murky shadows of their morals get a firmer grip every time one of them leaves the opportunity to separate from the ruthless plans of the other.Making the misconceptions of Elisa's and Miguel's personalities a central themes,the writers deliver a delicately handled,breath taking ending which gradually wraps its venom around Elisa and Miguel,and also cleverly changers the viewer's perceptions on Elisa and Miguel's motives.

Teaming up after both of them had worked with La Iglesia on separate occasions,Carmen Sevilla and Vicente Parra each give excellent performances,with Parra showing Miguel's devilishly charming smile to be a cover for his harsh,decisive personality,as Parra shows how far Miguel is willing to go in order to get rid of the body.Joining Parra,the very pretty Carmen Sevilla gives a stunning performance as Elisa,thanks to Sevilla keeping Elisa away from being a two dimensional goody by revealing Elisa to be a Femme Fatale who has a lust for money,whilst also showing,that despite being sickened by his actions,Elisa finds something thrilling in Miguel's body burying games.

Made at a time when homosexuality was illegal in Spain,director Eloy de La Iglesia bravely gives the movie strong homo-erotic undertones,by having the camera speed by during Elisa's display of flesh,whilst allowing the camera to stay noticeably paused for moments when the male character's show their skin.Closely working with cinematography Francisco Fraile,auteur La Iglesia reveals a tremendously stylised eye,as La Iglesia and Fraile use jagged,complex tracking shots to show the tightening of Elisa and Miguel's relationship,as La Iglesia superbly uses short,sharp 'dry' shots to guarantee that this scream will be heard.

An unusual drama

[Groverdox · 7/10 · 3 January 2018]

"No One Heard the Scream" has many of the tropes of a mystery, or even giallo, film. However it largely eschews these genres for most of the run-time, creating less a genre film than a twisted drama about two people pushed to the edge of experience.

The protagonist is an expensive mistress for rich men who witnesses her neighbour disposing of his wife's body. The neighbour takes her hostage and the duo go on a trip to the ocean to dump the body in the sea.

Along the way, the movie loses its original thriller-aspect and becomes a drama about two people in a strange situation. The actress, particularly, is a problem, so cold and inert. When the movie makes its predictable, if belated, detour into homoeroticism with the introduction of an unnecessary nephew of hers, it's almost a relief to see something on screen other than hardened, impassive faces.

There is a romance that feels unlikely and forced, and you are forced to make the conclusion that the openly gay Eloy de la Iglesia just wasn't comfortable shooting romance, love or eroticism between men and women.

Perhaps this extended to his casting of the female lead. She looks like someone who was probably a knockout about five years ago. Would men who can afford to keep an expensive mistress use someone her age?

Then there is a conclusion, which is also a little hard to swallow, and smacks of the tawdry plot developments we got from the giallo genre. It seems like the movie is doubling back on itself, forgetting the progress it made as an interesting drama, and saying "See! This was a thriller, after all!"

I don't know if de la Iglesia ever really made genre pictures; even "The Cannibal Man", notorious Video Nasty though it may be, was perhaps equal parts drama. It also featured an unnecessary young male character as a source of homoeroticism.

Perhaps de la Iglesia, who was a superb filmmaker, needed to be encouraged to make dramas and leave behind genre tropes. For the rest of his career, that's what he seemed to do, thankfully.