The Comeback (also known as The Day the Screaming Stopped or Encore) is a 1978 British psychological horror slasher film[1] directed and produced by Pete Walker and starring Jack Jones, Pamela Stephenson, and David Doyle.

[2] Its plot follows a successful but dormant American singer who retreats to a remote manor in Surrey to record an album; there, he is followed by a psychopath—donning a hag mask—who murdered his ex-wife.

Just as Gail is about to leave, she is attacked by a killer wearing a hag mask and a lace shawl, who hacks her to death with a sickle.

One night Nick decides to investigate some of the strange noises he's heard and ends up finding Gail's severed, decomposing head.

The two go outside and as the police cart away Mr. B, Nick sees the ghost of Gail waving at him from one of the manor's windows, showing that some of the phenomena he'd experienced had been at least partially real.

The film was first released in the United Kingdom on 16 June 1978 and was subsequently given a theatrical showing at the Barbican Centre in London as part of a Pete Walker retrospective in November 2014.

[4] Time Out panned the film, writing "Not even its brace of transvestite red herrings can help the story stand on its own feet.