Blast of Silence | 1961 | Dir. Allen Baron

“Remembering out of the black silence, you were born in pain.”

Blast of Silence is an extraordinary low-budget film set in New York about a hitman returning home after many years, only for his childhood memories to awaken in him a need to end his solitary existence. Universal bought the distribution rights, although they clearly expected little return and opened Blast of Silence in a few cinemas before the film slipped into obscurity.

Beginning in darkness with the birth of ‘Baby-Boy’ Frankie Bono, the opening sequence of Blast of Silence briefly describes his troubled childhood courtesy of Lionel Stander’s narrator. If you’re over 30 years of age then Stander’s voice will be familiar from his work on Hart to Hart in which he played Max, the gravelly voiced friend of the Harts who would announce in the opening titles before every episode “when they got together, it was moirder.”

While star-director Allen Baron also wrote the screenplay, it was blacklisted screenwriter Waldo Salt who provided the words for the gloriously misanthropic voice-over. Stander’s delivery manages to evoke Frankie’s sub-conscious, while also sounding as if there is a poisonous guardian angel watching over him.

Frankie arrives at New York Central Station as carol singers sing ‘silent night.’ It’s a couple of days before Christmas; a time of the year the narrator says gives Frankie “the creeps.” Frankie hates everything, except solitude. Or so he thinks. Christmas brings back memories of other times spent here as a child waiting for something magical to happen.

Frankie is in town to take out a gangster who has been encroaching on his boss’s territory. While out drinking Frankie meets Pete, a childhood friend from the orphanage he grew up in, and his sister Laurie (Molly McCarthy). Despite the narrator warning him “Watch it! Danger signal,” Frankie allows himself to engage in social pleasantries even attending a party so he can be closer to Laurie.

Frankie has until New Years Eve to kill his man, or his bosses will send somebody after him. He needs to be a professional and concentrate on the job at hand, but for the first time in his life Frankie does not want to be alone and he is beginning to feel a yearning he hasn’t felt since childhood. The notion of a professional killer letting his guard down and opening himself up to the world has become something of a cliché over time, but back in the 60’s this was fresh and new.

Allen Baron went on to work mostly on television directing episodes of shows like The Night Stalker and Cagney and Lacey, until he stopped altogether in the 80’s. Blast of Silence has a growing cult reputation and an excellent Criterion DVD release available. It is a classic little B-movie, shot quickly on a limited budget, which like the best genre films rises above its station and reaches toward the poetic. In its own perverse way, Blast of Silence is also one of the great Christmas movies.

Kevin Sturton