Silent Rage

Silent Rage (1982) from Tuna

Silent Rage stars Chuck Norris movie, but it's not a typical Chuck Norris vehicle. Yes, he plays a kick-ass sheriff, but his foe is a super-powered zombie - a former mental patient that he has already killed once.

Huh?

Well, a medical research team illegally brings the psychotic murderer back to life. Variety summed it up as follows:

"Silent Rage seems as if it were made with a demographics sampler entitled '10 Sleazy Ways to Cash in on the Exploitation Market'. The result is a combination horror-kung fu-oater-woman in peril-mad scientist film with more unintentional laughs than possible in the space of 100 minutes."

Chuck's deputy is none other than Flounder, who seems to have ignored most of Dean Wormer's famous advice and ended up fat, lazy and stupid. (He might be sober.) It appears that "hiring skills" are not to be found among Sheriff Norris's many talents. We also get to see Ron Silver murdered painfully (always a cathartic thing), and we get to eyeball the charms of Norris's main squeeze, Mrs. Big Pussy, aka Toni Kalem, who is also known from Another World. To top it all off, IMDb's list of goofs is particularly long.

Yes, this is a Movie House sort of movie.

The film actually opens well, with the mental patient going nuts over a shrieking housewife, then murdering her and her husband. Norris and his crew show up and end up shooting the lunatic dozens of times. The wounded killer dies on the operating table, but is revived with a new serum not approved for human testing, and then becomes nearly invincible. Psychotic already, he interprets his situation as one where people are out to get him, so he starts eliminating enemies, including Silver and his wife, and most of the staff of the research facility. No surprise that the final showdown will be between him and Chuck Norris.

Also, in an unrelated sub-plot, Norris beats up an entire gang of bikers by himself. While holding his coffee in one hand and never spilling a drop. And bringing his girl to orgasm with the other hand.

Nothing so special about that, but I thought the blindfold was just showing off.

To be serious for a moment, I thought the movie had two strong acts, but got off the track in act three. First, the required scene where the madman chases Toni Kalem was way too static and way too slow. Second, the final showdown was not believable. The screenwriting problem, of course, was to devise a means to kill an indestructible self-healing bad guy. How handy that there just happened to be a bottomless well right where the final battle was fought! Also odd was the fact that the bottomless well wasn't more than ten feet from a lake. There's some unusual geology in Norristown, to be sure.

DVD INFO

Bare bones. Full screen. No features

NUDITY REPORT

Along the way, Toni Kalem shows breasts in a sex scene.

Biker mama Lillette Zoe Raley flashes her breasts in a bar.

The Critics Vote ...

Variety does have a brief review online.

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it 4.8/10

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics, or a C- from our system. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

Our own guideline:

A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.
B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. In order to rate at least a B-, a film should be both a critical and commercial success. Exceptions: (1) We will occasionally rate a film B- with good popular acceptance and bad reviews, if we believe the critics have severely underrated a film. (2) We may also assign a B- or better to a well-reviewed film which did not do well at the box office if we feel that the fault lay in the marketing of the film, and that the film might have been a hit if people had known about it. (Like, for example, The Waterdance.)
C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by people who enjoy this kind of movie. If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and an A are indistinguishable to you.
C means it is competent, but uninspired genre fare. People who like this kind of movie will think it satisfactory. Others probably will not.
C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie, but genre addicts find it watchable. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film, but films with this rating should be approached with caution by mainstream audiences, who may find them incompetent or repulsive or both. If this is NOT your kind of movie, a C- and an E are indistinguishable to you.
D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-. Films rated below C- generally have both bad reviews and poor popular acceptance.
E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre.
F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is a C. There are bare breasts and martial arts, which means that the minimal daily requirements for a good Chuck Norris film are met. The other cast members are known performers, and we get to see Ron Silver killed in a nasty way. Adding it all up, it must be at least a C in the Bizarro world of Occidental martial arts movies.