My second "undead" item is a peculiar offering of countrified kung-fu and Frankensteinian ambitions: the Chuck Norris vehicle SILENT RAGE. Norris had made five previous starring vehicles, all aimed at lovers of chopsocky cinema, vigilante action, or both. RAGE is devoted to one simple idea: how good is all that kung-fu skill against an opponent who can't be permanently injured?
Mental patient John Kirby (Brian Libby) goes berserk one day and murders the people he's staying with. Sheriff Dan Stevens (Norris), after some effort, apprehends the lunatic. Shortly afterward Kirby tries to escape and is shot dead by law-officials. However, because he was the patient of local doctor Halman (Ron Silver), and because Halman's boss wants a corpse on which to experiment, Kirby gets a new lease on life. Halman and his cohorts work wonders on the dead man's status, and he arises, a mindless killing machine.
Aside from the creepy scenes as Kirby stalks about Frankenstein-style, most of RAGE is pretty formulaic. Stevens rekindles an old romance with a girlfriend, but it doesn't add much interest, and he gets to kick the asses of several scruffy bikers. Surprisingly, Norris actually takes some hits in this mundane battle, as opposed to many of his films, where he's virtually untouchable. Stevens also has a comedy-relief deputy (Stephen Furst), who isn't particularly funny, but has a strong death-scene after he courageously tries to stop the undead killer.
I term this a "cosmological" film simply because the main thrust of the story is to show the evil of the scientists' meddlings with the proper order of nature. The end fight between Stevens and Kirby is decent, and probably delivered the goods to the audience that came for it, but it's mediocre Norris-action in comparison to his best stunt-work. Michael Miller's camerawork is on occasion surprisingly fluid for a guy who ended up doing mostly TV melodramas.
No comments:
Post a Comment