The Scare Salon

The film is a British/German/Russian co-production, directed by Lebanese-born Englishman Anthony Waller (who would later go on to helm 1997’s An American Werewolf in Paris, among other things). Though initially slated to be shot in Chicago as in the original screenplay, the lure of cheap sets and low labor costs drew the production to Moscow, and the story goes that the producers even had to pay off some Russian mobsters to let them shoot the film there. It’s a cool story, even if untrue, and almost gives the movie a layer of meta credibility, as the Russian mob plays a significant part in the plot.

Mute Witness is also significant for being the final film appearance of Sir Alec Guinness, who plays a mobster called The Reaper and is billed in the credits only as “Mystery Guest Star.” I knew it was him right away, though, just from the voice alone. It’s barely a cameo and the scene was actually shot by the director as a lark a decade before, but his brief presence lends the movie a definite air of class.

Russian actress Marina Zudina plays Billie Hughes (Wikipedia and the closed captioning spell it “Billy,” but the credits spell it “Billie,” so that’s what I’m going with). She’s a makeup artist who’s working on a schlocky slasher film in Moscow. The movie they’re working on (which I don’t think is ever named) is directed by Andy Clarke (Evan Richards), who is the boyfriend of Billie’s loyal older sister Karen (Fay Ripley). Other than Billie, Andy, Karen, and a couple other people, the movie’s crew and actors are all Russians, and very few of them speak English. In fact, none of the Russian spoken in Mute Witness (which is quite a lot) is ever translated, an interesting choice that puts the audience in the same boat as its American main characters, none of whom speak Russian.

Anyway, Billie is mute (not deaf, just mute), but seems to be good at her job and well-liked by the crew. One of the Russian guys, Lyosha (Sergei Karlenkov) even seems to have something of a crush on her, which Karen playfully encourages.

So after shooting one particularly ridiculous murder scene, the crew breaks after a long day, and Karen invites Billie over to her and Andy’s place for dinner. As they’re all leaving, though, Billie realizes that she forgot something in the studio, running back in to fetch it and telling Karen and Andy to just go on home and she’d be at their apartment in her own car in a jiffy.

Well, the thing Billie forgot is evidently harder to find than she anticipated, and she ends up getting locked in the building. She calls her sister and tries to communicate with her via Morse code (as I’m assuming they do when Billie doesn’t have access to the digital voice phone setup she has at home), but because Karen’s useless idiot boyfriend is making a racket trying to cook dinner and various other things, Karen can’t really hear what’s going on and eventually just thinks Billie will be on her way shortly.

A frustrated Billie is attempting to find a way out of the labyrinthine warehouse they’re shooting the movie in when she stumbles across a somewhat shocking scene: Lyosha and one of the Russian actors, Arkadi (Igor Volkov) appear to be filming an after-hours porno. There’s a naked blonde woman on the bed that a masked Arkadi is pumping away at, and Lyosha is capturing the magic with the production’s main camera.

At first, Billie is sort of amused and watches from the sidelines; the woman on the bed sees her, but neither Lyosha nor Arkadi do. After a few minutes, though, things take a horrifying turn as Arkadi begins stabbing the woman viciously; blood is flying everywhere, and the terrified woman is screaming and staring wide-eyed at the hidden Billie. As you might have guessed, these two chucklefucks were in fact not filming a porno, but a snuff film.

Billie freaks out and runs, accidentally knocking over a coat rack and making a noise that alerts Lyosha and Arkadi to her presence. Afterward, there’s a long and terrifically tense sequence where the two men pursue her through the maze of a building while she desperately tries to get out or call for help. At one point, the men appear to dispose of the dismembered murder victim’s body down a disused elevator shaft, a shaft in which Billie also happens to be hiding.

Eventually, the two men find her, but she manages to locate an exit, only to have Lyosha knock her a couple of stories down the fire escape into a dumpster, injuring her. He jumps on top of her and attempts to finish her off, but is stopped at the last minute by Karen, who became worried when Billie didn’t show up and drove with Andy back to the studio to see what was wrong.

Lyosha, of course, acts as though Billie has just had a dreadful accident, and he tries to get Karen to leave and go get an ambulance. Karen initially believes him, and Lyosha is holding Billie’s hands down so she can’t communicate using sign language, but a suspicious Karen is then able to read the terrified expression on her sister’s face and instead tells her dipshit boyfriend Andy to go get an ambulance AND the police while she stays with Billie.

Here’s the thing, though: when the police arrive and Billie tells them what she saw (with her sister interpreting), Lyosha and Arkadi insist they were just shooting a scene from a horror movie. And man, they didn’t miss a trick: the so-called victim’s body is nowhere to be found, the only blood the police discover is made of corn syrup, and the knife supposedly used in the crime was the spring-loaded fake one from Billie’s makeup box. As a matter of fact, Arkadi demonstrates this pretty clearly by sneaking up on Andy and stabbing the absolute shit out of him, covering him with blood, before revealing that it wasn’t real.

Billie low-key begins to doubt herself, but is still pretty adamant that what she saw was a genuine murder, insisting that the sheer terror she saw on the victim’s face could not have been simply really good acting (a plot point that will make a couple more appearances throughout the story). The police are losing interest and even Karen is beginning to think maybe her sister was mistaken, but just in case, Karen decides to take the film that the two men were shooting and send it for analysis; if they watch it, she says, they’ll be able to tell if it’s real or not. Note, though, that Lyosha and Arkadi saw that coming too, and switched the film they made with the footage from the slasher movie that had been shot earlier in the day.

Now, you know and I know that Lyosha and Arkadi were making a bonafide snuff film, and this suspicion is confirmed when a security guard finds a fresh skull burning in the building’s furnace and is subsequently murdered (along with his poor doggie) by Arkadi. There’s also the matter of a sinister gangster called The Reaper (the previously mentioned Alec Guinness) arriving at the scene and asking Lyosha if everything went “smoothly.” Lyosha sheepishly admits that they were seen, but that no one believed the witness. The Reaper doesn’t give two fucks about that, though, and says the girl must be eliminated.

From this point, the movie becomes a cat-and-mouse game between the shady Russian mobsters behind the snuff film business and poor, frightened Billie, who despite her muteness and seeming vulnerability is fiercely intelligent and resourceful. She actually ends up getting help from an undercover cop named Aleksander Larsen (Oleg Yankovsky), who believes her story when the rest of the police force don’t; it’s initially not clear, however, where Larsen’s loyalties lie, leading to more great suspense.

Although made in the 1990s, Mute Witness has something almost like a throwback, 70s giallo vibe, only with drab Russian scenery standing in for glamorous Italian vistas. It’s sort of lurid and over the top, but that’s actually part of its charm, and the fantastic lead performance by Marina Zudina helps hold the whole thing together. Her completely voiceless role means she has to rely solely on her facial expressions and body language, and she’s pretty amazing.

I could have done without the handful of silly comedic touches (mostly centered around how useless and cowardly Andy is), but overall, this is an entertaining, riveting, underrated thriller with some decent gore and a plot full of twists and turns that aren’t all that surprising, but still keep the story interesting.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.