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The Silencer, a little known C-movie from 1992 with a little known cast, director and probably made with about the same budget as the average porn movie. You might wonder how I stumble upon these kinds of movies and in this case it’s simple. Sometime way back in 1999 I stumbled upon the last 10 minutes of this movie while switching channels late at night. Here was this hot chick disguised as a nun killing a guy. I looked her up afterwards, but other than this movie she hadn’t done much and aside from some nude screenshots from this movie there was nothing really about her. Time passed and every once in a while I would see if this movie was available somewhere for free. Last week this movie somehow sprung to mind and decided to look it up and surprisingly found it on YouTube. So after more than 15 years I have finally watched “The Silencer”. Was it worth the wait?
No, not really. Sure, the chick who was dressed up as the nun is hot and the star of the show but other than that this is one bad and weird movie. It’s surprising how weird this movie considering the following simple synopsis I’ve taken from the DVD cover: Lynette Walden and Chris Mulkey star in this action-packed ride through the sexy and dangerous world of flesh for sale and murder for hire…
I’m not expecting any award winning stuff here, and I’m well aware that creating an entertaining action movie requires some skill. All those crappy Seagal DTV-movies released the last decade taught me that, but still, I expected something better than this. The Silencer should be a film school subject in lessons about avoiding the pitfalls of no-budget movie making.
The DVD cover already tells you enough about this movie. Instead of some photoshopped collage with explosions and such it it’s picture of the movie’s star dressed in one of the central outfits she’s wearing in the movie. I’m not sure why an assassin would wear this, but she does throughout the majority of the movie. Let’s face it, this could just as well be the cover for a porn film.
The Silencer is about a woman named Angelica. She’s a retired hit-woman, but drawn out of it in the beginning when she’s handed an assignment to kill five people who are members of a sex trafficking gang which specializes in underage girls. Not that we’re shown any of this, we just have to assume that what Angelica is told is the truth. So she takes the assignment and is constantly followed by some guy named George (Chris Mulkey) whose relation to Angelica is never made quite clear. He seems to be a colleague but could very well also be an ex-lover or even a ghost (I’ll get to this later). So it’s pretty straight forward other than the ghost thing, but somehow the movie has all of these really weird stylistic choices and small detours that serve no purpose at all.
The movie opens with George talking to the screen asking us if we’re ready to play the game, and then cuts to an animated title/credit sequence of several minutes which is supposed to represent some 16-bit side-scrolling arcade game like Final Fight or Double Dragon. This arcade game will be a recurring element throughout the movies as Angelica goes back to the arcade after every hit to receive info on the next target. She does this by putting a special coin into the slot of an arcade game named “The Silencer”. The arcade game then states the next target complete with a voice-over which the whole arcade should be able to hear but nobody ever does.
Next we see her being briefed by an unknown woman while George is delivering a voice-over as if he’s talking to Angelica. He’s constantly calling her angel and narrating or delivering commentary on her actions. He seems to be some paranormal presence who is always there. Only halfway through does he actually interact with Angelica and is it made clear that he’s real. Until that he could have just as well been a ghost.
After the briefing, while George continues to monologue, we cut to a factory of some sort where Angelica has just performed a hit which we don’t witness. She exchanges a white dress for a slutty black outfit and walks from the factory which is surrounded by cops to her motorcycle. George is there also, still monologuing. Some guy is trying to steal her motorcycle and she strong-arms him away, but then a police officer walks up to them so she starts making out with him. They leave the scene together and even though they just met and he was trying to steal her motorcycle she invites him in and has sex with him in the bathtub. This is the moment I though that this was going to be one of those movies, but sadly this was the only actual sex scene in the movie.
After the steamy bath tub sex we cut to George standing behind “The Silencer” arcade game. He blows some smoke at the machine and is apparently watching Angel and motorcycle thief having sex on the arcade screen while monologuing stuff like “It’s OK Angel, I know you needed that. I can deal with it, it’s just a physical thing”. Now that Angelica has had sex she’s ready for the assignments. After taking out the next name on the list she goes out jogging only to come across a young black woman named Didi about to get raped in the middle of the day. She saves Didi from her assailant but comes across her again later on when two chicks are trying to steal Didi’s shoes. She saves her again after which they go to a clothing store and try out various outfits, most of them showing lots of skin. I was expecting some steamy lesbian sex scene between the two but that just never happened. Didi doesn’t matter to the plot at all and just ends up working in some old guy’s garage. But hey, Angelica saved a woman from the street here, so I guess it’s all to show that she’s got her heart in the right place.
There’s also this guy who works in a bar who she tries to have sex with right after meeting him, but stops because they can’t get their hands on a condom. They do a dating ritual after and he stays around acting as her boyfriend for the remainder of the movie. It didn’t make a lot of sense, especially the scene where she enters her apartment all suspicious sensing something is wrong and finds him pretending to be dead. One of the more goofier scenes in the movie since George is delivering his voice-over commentary during this scene: “I’m sorry Angel, he’s dead… NOT!”
Moments like these are so bad, they become good.
As you can tell by now it doesn’t all make any sense, but if I were to analyze the choices made here my best guess would be that they tried to create a live-action video-game. George would be the guy playing the game and Angelica would some sort of Lara Croft like character. The movie is also structured on a level basis with the targeted people being the end-bosses. Angelica has no real depth to her and her outfits are similar to all those scantily clad video game babes. Scenes where she rescues Didi would be bonus levels and the sex and shopping scenes would be interludes. Makes perfect sense considering the actual Arcade Game featured in the movie.
The look is the movie is very cheap, and the fact that they have some real actors in here surprises me as the movie looks like it was shot on video for a couple of bucks. It might be because the version a was watching which was clearly a 4:3 VHS rip, but still, there’s hardly any interesting cinematography on display here.
Bottom line: The Silencer is a pretty terrible movie with only one redeeming factor: Lynette Walden. She gives a bland performance but is truly a stunning woman to see on screen. It’s her and her alone that makes this movie at least somewhat watchable. The only disappointment is that the movie, with its sex scene early on, promises to be more spicy. While she runs around in exposing clothing for the remainder of the movie, the movie becomes all tease from then on. With its strange stylistic choices this is clearly a movie that should be watched out of curiosity with no expectation of either quality or entertainment.
