Erich-13

When I rented this movie, I was pretty confident of two things beforehand: (1) Marlee Matlin would be excellent. (2) The movie wouldn't be. I was not surprised on either count.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the movie itself; it's just your standard run-of-the-mill thriller, with the usual plot twists (some more predictable than others) and double-crosses. However, Marlee Matlin is as magnetic a presence as ever; for example, in the "phone sex" scene, just watching her facial expressions is more erotic than any amount of nudity. (Not that the nudity in other scenes is unwelcome...)

One thing struck me as odd regarding the VHS release (I haven't seen the DVD version): Considering that the movie stars the screen's most prominent deaf actress and revolves around a telephone-relay service for the hearing-impaired...WHY is there no closed-captioning on the video? I know that this isn't a major label distributing the movie, but you'd think they'd spring for captioning on this one.

Just a note of warning: The Retromedia DVD of "Shriek of the Mutilated" is missing one of the highlights of the movie...the use of the '70s syntho-pop instrumental hit "Popcorn" during the party scene early in the movie. I assume Retromedia couldn't get the music rights, so they dubbed in some unremarkable new background music. There also appear to be some cuts in the dialogue (for instance, when the St. Claires arrive at the party, Retromedia has removed a student's sarcastic remark about their presence). In its original form, this movie is a hysterical classic of bizarre filmmaking...so track down the out-of-print Lightning Video VHS release if you can.