SILENT RAGE

US, 1982, 95 minutes, Colour.
Chuck Norris, Ron Silver, Steven Keats.
Directed by Michael Miller.

Silent Rage is a vehicle for martial arts world champion Chuck Norris, who has appeared in a number of entertaining action thrillers: The Octagon, An Eye For An Eye. This film has much less martial arts material and focuses on horror and the various horror genres popular at the end of the '70s. early '80s. It is competent enough in this area - but a disappointment for Norris fans. He is a somewhat stolid actor and so the films do not quite come to life and the supporting cast seem to overact. Director Michael Moore made the excellent Jackson County Jail and its sequel

1. Popularity of martial arts films, action thrillers? Chuck Norris vehicle? The combination of martial arts with the horror conventions?

2. The film as an exercise in genres? How successful a blend? The quality of the acting? Credibility?

3. The opening with the horror and the mad killings? The noise, the children, murders of the landlady, the policeman? The echoes of Halloween? The introduction to the unscrupulous and mad scientists? Their experiments - with modern jargon and laboratories but with the overtones of Frankenstein? Kirby becoming the Frankenstein monster and unkillable? His going berserk. the deaths and terrorising in the hospital? Crazy immortality? The final attempts to kill him? The echoes of other horror films?

4. Norris as Dan Stevens: his skill as sheriff, investigations, action sequences? The new encounter with Allison, memories of the past. the tensions of the taking up of the affair? His rescuing her?

5. The crises: Kirby and his dying, his escaping from the hospital, the killing of Tom Halman and his wife and the horror techniques used? Alison finding their bodies and confronting Kirby?

6. Kirby amok in the hospital? The killing of the doctors? The elaborate attempts to kill him and failure?

7. Chuck Norris in action especially with the bikies and the exercise of martial arts?

8. The film as a film buff's handbook? How much human feeling, values? The quality of the entertainment?