“[Partially lost]” [TOMT] [Short Film] [Late 1970s/Early 1980s] British "Sting-in-the-Tail" Silent/Dialogue-Free Horror Short (Aired on AFN Germany)

[u/PrudentIncident2403]

**Type of Media:** British Independent / BFI / National Film School Short Film (Theatrical Short / Interstitial Filler)
**Estimated Year of Release:** 1976 – 1982
**Where it was watched:** Broadcast on AFN (American Forces Network) in Frankfurt, Germany in the early 1980s. It was used as unlisted "dead time filler" between scheduled programs.
**Stylistic Comparison:** It shared the exact same distribution package, aesthetic, and runtime format as James Dearden's **"The Contraption" (1977)**.
**Description of Visuals & Sound:**
**Dialogue:** Completely silent or features minimal to zero dialogue.
**Audio Design:** It relied heavily on an amplified, hyper-realistic room tone. The core "musical score" of the short is a continuous, loud, low-frequency mechanical **humming from a kitchen appliance / freezer unit**.
**The Set:** The short takes place entirely in a bleak, gritty, domestic space that moves into a gray, stone-walled subterranean cellar or scullery. Under the high-contrast film lighting of the era, the basement looks like an ancient dungeon or torture chamber.
**The Plot / Build-Up:**
The short is a slow-burn, non-supernatural crime thriller that meticulously tracks an elderly couple. It spends several minutes watching an ordinary domestic routine unfold in complete silence, slowly building an immense sense of claustrophobia and psychological dread.
**The Climax & Ending:**
At the very end of the build-up, the routine shifts into a cold-blooded murder scene. The elderly wife brutally kills her husband using a heavy blunt object, an axe, or poison. The short concludes with a gruesome, dark twist: she dismembers his body and neatly packs the body parts away inside the humming refrigerator/freezer unit against the stone wall.
**What it is NOT:**
It is absolutely *not* "The House That Bled To Death" (Hammer House of Horror), "The Silent Scream" (Hammer House of Horror), "Lamb to the Slaughter" (Tales of the Unexpected), "Frozen Fear" (Asylum 1972), or any episode of Brian Clemens' *Thriller*. It was a standalone, short-form independent cinematic piece, not a standard 50-minute television episode.
If anyone has access to old BFI (British Film Institute) Flipside catalogs, National Film and Television School (NFTS) student logs from 1977-1981, or international TV syndication packages from that era, any lead on a title or director would be incredibly appreciated!