SILENT RAGE (1982)

Mad Scientists. Mad Slashers. Kung Fu fury. Chubby Comic Relief.

"Silent Rage" has it all. It also boasts all 4 of what I feel are the 4 integral ingredients of a great "B" movie.

1."What the Hell?" dialogue: "Look at that cell structure!!!"
2.Martial Arts mayhem: Chuck Norris takes apart a bar full of bikers and the antagonist at the end of the film with his high kicking antics.
3. Hey, It's that guy!!!!: Steven Keats, Stephen Furst (Flounder from "Animal House"), and Ron Silver (!), who sadly recently passed away, to boot.
4.Overacting alert!!! Steven Keats in his mad scientist rage of cellular and biological superiority spews venomous f-bombs at former Oscar winner Ron Silver (in an early role for him)

Ron Silver's patient is on the edge and medicated at the beginning of this classic.
His landlady's noisy children drive him over the edge and he murders two people with an axe before Mr. Norris and Silver show up. After much violent struggling and a temporary handcuffing with a brief police car incarceration, our soon to be slasher, John Kirby, is gunned down.

Shortly thereafter in a texas hospital, biological scientist Keats, for reasons unknown to the audience, works as a surgeon with psychiatrist Silver. They try unsuccessfully to save the life of Kirby, played well nearly worldessly by Brian Libby. Keats then tries to play God by injecting an experimental chemical into Kirby, who is an excellent choice for such a thing by the way, (to the film's credit, Silver's character DOES make that point), turning him into an indestructable version of the psycho he already was.

The rest of the film is a generic slasher movie, although skillfully executed to some degree with the use of some tension, and an eerie synthesizer created soundtrack. The odd addition of Norris as the hero (this was post indy-"A Force of One", "Octagon" Norris, but pre-Cannon--"Missing in Action" Norris.) is weird and Furst as Norris' silly sidekick doesn't really work for the most part. Chuck doesn't act here as much as "exist" while the pros around him Silver, Keats, Furst and Toni Kalem, as his love interest, do the heavy lifting if you can call it that. Give them credit they do well with what material they have.

"Silent Rage" obviously is a mess, but an entertaining one with a decent genre climax. Norris was obviously an excellent cinema martial artist, and it shows here.

But overall, it is what it is (I hate that phrase). A good "B" grade horror/sci-fi/karate move.

KILL OR BE KILLED

By the late 1970's Hollywood wanted to hop in on the success train of the Asian Martial arts film, Norris was already releasing independent fare like "Breaker Breaker", "The Octagon", and "A Force of One". James Ryan was another great white hope for American Kung Fu Cinema. By the late 80's he was appearing in MST3K targets like "Space Mutiny". "Kill or be Killed" did well enough to spawn a sequel, "Kill and Kill Again", which apparently pulled off "The Matrix" special "bullet time" effect IN CAMERA!!!


Of the two, the sequel is the only one available on DVD.

CHUCK NORRIS EXTRAVAGANZA

The review of this 1982 masterpiece with gigantic nostalgic and sentimental value to myself is upcoming, in the meantime, as the french say, enjoi:


There's a You Tube creation called "awful film fights" where bad movie fight sequences have inappropriate music added. Here's one from "Silent Rage":


Long before "Walker, Texas Ranger", Mr. Norris did some booty-whipping in mucho B-grade fare like "Breaker, Breaker!!!"


Moustache or not, the effect is the same. Stay tuned for the "Silent Rage" review.

WHITE LIGHTNING

Bogan County, Arkansas is a terrible place. It's hot, it's sticky, and it's run by a murderous sherriff. The locals spend a lot of time transporting illegal alcohol, or as they put it, "runnin' licka". So much of this lawless liquor manufacture and transport takes place apparently, that Bobby "Gator" McCluskey has made himself an arrangement with the feds. A deal to get out of prison a year early to avenge the murder of his baby brother Donny at the hands of the affore-mentioned crooked sherriff, JC Connors.

Can I get an amen?

This movie represents a high water mark in the career of Burt Reynolds, who plays the lead, Gator, with verve. "White Lightning" is just after "Deliverance" and right before "The Longest Yard", and well before "Smokey & the Bandit" and the derail that followed shortly after. In Burt's canon, his career at this point was artistically at least, at it's absolute peak, in my opionion. Reynolds is subtle here, pefectly selling his grief over the loss of his brother, but growing a dull cold behind his eyes when it comes to dealing with the sherriff. He is surprisingly effective in just using facial expressions in this film. For example, in the nice moment when shortly after his prison release, he gradually unwinds as he discards his tie and suitcoat while simultaneously pressing ever so much harder on the accelerator of his hyper-tuned 1971 Ford Ltd. You can see the stress lift as the pedal goes down. There are other points in the movie as solid as that have you wondering at times, What's Gator thinking?

Director Joseph Sargent keeps things brisk, yet tense, with the help of a solid score by Charles Bernstein. The soundtrack veers between schticky banjo jams augmented with jew's harp during the extended car chase scenes, to a downright diabolical sounding blues slide guitar in the movie's heavier moments. As a kid, I would play these tunes in my head while recreating the car chases using matchbox cars. Ah, the whimsy of childhood. All kidding aside, the score is great, pulling off being jolly and at the right moments, damned ominous.

Sargent also surrounds Reynolds with a fine supporting cast of character actors such as Matt Clark, Bo Hopkins, and the legendary RG Armstrong. Burt is reunited with his "Deliverance" co-star Ned Beatty as the crooked sherriff, JC Connors. (In one scene, Gator references "Deliverance". When he's asked by a young woman what happened to him to cause the bandages covering half of his face, he replies "I was hurt trying to save two of my buddies from being knocked up by a homosexual." He is of course lampooning that obviously nightmarish sequence from John Boorman's classic thriller.)
Beatty manages to pull off the difficult combination of sinister, intelligent, and good ol boy sarcastic all at once. The heated tension in the scenes involving both Beatty and Reynolds is palpable. So palpable, you'd almost believe there was a personal grievance between the two in real life.

The only true weakness to me is Jennifer Billingsley in the female lead role, as she's not a particularly strong actress here, and comes off as more annoying and painfully dumb than anything else.

"White Lightning" has a definite southern feel, as it was shot on location in Arkansas. It comes across like a piece of rebel Americana as everybody appears to be coated in a layer of perspiration and living in a haze of humidity. It looks every bit like the deep south it was shot in.

This is little more than a cult film now, (one of Quentin Tarantino's faves, he even lifted one of Gators lines, "I'm only afraid of two things: women and the police", to which he gave no credit, in an interview with Jay Leno) but it was cause for celebration on those late 70's summer nightson TV 18 WVTV in Milwaukee, or WFLD 32 out of Chicago. My Dad would pop a quarter ton of popcorn, bust the Sparco soda bottles out and it was "White Lightning" time.

BILLY JACK (1971)

This one is a pure classic in almost every sense of the "MISULF" word. In the later 70's and early 80's this one was constantly being aired on UHF, VHF, monthly pay, and some sporadic signals being picked up from other solar systems. I saw it many times, one because I was so heavily exposed to it, between repeat broadcasts, and two because my siblings dug it so much.

But why did I love it so much in my pre-adolescent mind? It wasn't the political messaging, which was hamfisted, because I wasn't ready for that yet. It wasn't the special effects, because there were none. It wasn't completely the martial arts scenes, though that helped.

It was the bullying.

As a kid I attended several elementary schools, one parochial, and it seemed like someone was always geared up to knock me off whatever good mood I may have been fortunate enough to wake up with that day. It got to the point of ridiculousness, and made me not want to go to school some days. Now I know being bullied is nothing new to many, but maybe that's why "Billy Jack" was so big with a lot of folks, not just the political views subscribed to by "dirty hippies" that were so much of the film's focus.

Billy Jack was the voice of pent up outrage at those who feel they are in control, and have to force that fact down the throats of everybody else. Tom Laughlin played Billy as a half-breed green beret Vietnam vet who wanders his Arizona locales becoming one with various natures, and protected the put-upon refugees from everyday life that comprise the student body of the "Freedom School", which is operated by Billy's friend, Jean. A local land baron, Posner, rapes the natural resources of the countryside for profit, while his spoiled rich son rapes, or tries to rape, the women of "Freedom School". It's a recipe for disaster.

It's Billy as vigilante that was the selling point for me. For a character that has the ultimate goal of peace for all mankind however, he does spend more than enough time whipping ass. As a bullied kid, that appealed to me. I was sold the moment Billy lands that vicious reverse crescent kick (terminology gleaned myself from two years of Tae Kwon Do study) to the smirking jowl of Mr. Posner, and leaves him laying in the grass of the town square, an embarassed and beaten soul.


The film however lingers far too much on the school and it's inhabitants, and those sequences can seem to drag on forever. It doesn't help the story. "Billy Jack" himself as a character wasn't what it could have been, either. I'm not saying Laughlin had to engage in a kung fu battle every 8 minutes, but the run time overall could have been trimmed to streamline the film into a more flowing narrative, giving it a brisker pace. The characterizations are there, but it seems like experimentation at times.

Nevertheless, a legend was born with the unexpected box office success and public endearment for the character, and there is a heavy nostalgia factor in it for me, as it is a leader in the MISULF (Movies I Stayed Up Late For) lexicon. It makes the MISULF Hall of fame. It's many flaws aside, I still have warm feelings for "Billy Jack".

SPECTRUM: LATE NIGHT VIEWING GETS A BOOST

In the early 80's we lived in rural Kenosha county in Southeastern Wisconsin. No HBO, no cable, satellite was in it's infancy. We had no VCR save for the gigantic Quasar Boat Anchor model we borrowed from a friend periodically. The answer: Spectrum, a monthly pay affair, that broadcast uncut first run movies using air time purchased from a VHF Channel 60 in Chicago.

Needless to say, this greatly enhanced my late night viewing. I'll be doing periodic posts about the great and not so great of Spectrum TV.

ZORRO (1974) One Don Diego, minus the Banderas, please

"Zorro" was a 1974 multi-country production starring Alain Delon, who made his biggest American splash as a pilot in the cumbersome "Concorde:Airport 79". My put-upon sister took me to see "Zorro" theatrically during a late 70's rerelease. I remember some serious swashbuckling, fantastic stunt work involving equine action, a lot of Alain Delon smooching, and the song "Zorro's Back", which was used to great effect a couple years back in the Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson collaboration, "Bottle Rocket".

This enjoyed some great late night runs on our pre-cable television sets back in the day, and I'm hoping to track it back down on DVD sometime in the near future. It would be nice if it would not fall into that category of movies & shows from back then that either I enjoyed or frightened me, which turn out to be not so great upon later-life viewings. This is an every growing phenomenon that I call BTARS.

It's an affliction that you lapse into when you collect the popcorn, soda, and snacks and pop in a days-long-gone-by movie that you're geeked up about seeing again only to realize BOY THAT ACTUALLY REALLY SUCKED. BTARS. There is no cure.