Census Bloodbath: Stalker, Texas Ranger

Year: 1982

Director: Michael Miller

Cast: Chuck Norris, Ron Silver, Steven Keats

Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

One fun thing about this project is nailing down what exactly qualifies a film as a "slasher." I know certain people will (and certain people have) disagree with some of the films I've covered being included in the project. But there's hardly a corner of 80's cinema that wasn't touched by the slasher genre's tropes. I've already made my argument for The Terminator (which won't be included here, but totally would fit right in), but during the decade we saw haunted house movies picking people off one by one, Hitchcockian thrillers shoving in body count kills, and plenty of action pictures shoving their burly stars into standoffs with knife-wielding psychos.

Today we're exploring the latter, with a deeply weird Chuck Norris picture called Silent Rage. It was directed by the man who made the execrable National Lampoon's Class Reunion, which filled me with dread. But it's also the first time I've ever seen a Chuck Norris project, so I wasn't not excited.

I know that's a weird admission for somebody as mired in 80's pop culture as me, but what can I say? He never made the effort to reach out.

As if you need a plot summary beyond that super wordy tagline on the poster, here's a quick rundown. Dan Stevens (Chuck Norris, and I wonder if the actor Dan Stevens' parents were huge fans) is the sheriff of a small town. So small there's only about four locations in it! When he and his bumbling, alleged comic relief partner Charlie (Stephen Furst, also of Class Reunion) are called to the scene of a double homicide, they end up in a shootout with the perpetrator John Kirby (Brian Libby). His corpse is taken to The Institute, the local experimental hospital where he has been watched over by psychologist Dr. Tom Halman (Ron Silver). In the process Dan is reunited with his ex, Dr. Halman's sister Alison (Toni Kalem). She is incredibly angry at him over their breakup five years ago so she immediately gets back into bed with him, because she's a woman in an 80's action movie.

Meanwhile Halman's boss/mad scientist Dr. Philip Spires (Steven Keats) is testing a serum that makes people like, super strong, and able to regenerate dead tissue. Of course he wants to use it on the unstable Kirby, because a braindead corpse doesn't just land in your lap every day. So Kirby of course embarks upon a killing rampage in the four aforementioned locations and Chuck Norris must stop him. Badda bing badda boom, this movie is 104 minutes for some reason.

We needed to give him room to sweat in as many scenes as possible.

Where The Terminator is an action film that puts on slasher movie drag, Silent Rage is a slasher movie that desperately wants to retrofit itself to work Chuck Norris and his whole deal into the plot. This is clumsily accomplished, but in the same way that most B-action movies of the 80's are clumsily accomplished, so it's kind of charming in spite of itself.

Not since the opening scenes of Commando (where Arnold Schwarzennger has ice cream with Alyssa Milano) have I seen a more unsettling, supposedly sweet montage that looks like the man could snap the other person's neck at any moment. Chuck Norris has a "rekindled love" sequence with Toni Kalem that's creepy beyond the massive ten year age difference, involving them swinging wildly back and forth on a hammock, him rescuing her from a tree, and generally just shirtlessly glowering at her like a blonde boulder. Incidentally, it's scored to a cheesy pop song performed by Married with Children's Katey Sagal, so this is a skeleton in the closet of even more people than you thought!

Also, consider the fact that Norris racks up a higher body count than the actual killer, when he single-handedly takes on an entire biker gang in a bizarre interlude that eats up fifteen minutes of the film across two scenes and has literally zero bearing on the plot. It does, however, provide some pretty delightful fight choreography. Heads are cracked, chairs are smashed, and a motorcycle goes flying through a goddamn window! It's a shot of adrenaline directly into the cornea.

Also, from the way the gang talks and behaves, I'm pretty sure up until the moment of shooting, the script read "pirates" before it was hastily crossed out and replaced with "bikers."

This scene feels spliced in from a different film, and not just because it's an absolute footnote in the plot. It's because it's the only sequence that actually features good fight choreography. Every other time Chuck Norris is called into action, every character is clearly waiting their turn to softly strike the other, completely unaccompanied by any sort of music. It's like watching rehearsal footage. 

As for the slasher elements, they're not in top shape, but definitely not the worst I've seen in these here parts recently. The main kills (as in, the ones involving named characters rather than unnamed extras mowed down in the third act rampage) are more action-centric, focusing on the chase and the process of the killer wearing his victims out and outsmarting them, rather than delivering great gore gags. Which is a good move, because Silent Rage doesn't have many of those to offer.

What it does have, however, is surprisingly solid camerawork. Michael Miller really got his money's worth out of his Steadicam, because we're constantly swooping and gliding through our environment, slinking around the action with an eerie grace. This is at its best in the terrific opening scene, which is mostly delivered in one shot. We see a pre-serum John Kirby struggling not to let his inner demons become axe-wielding outer demons, all while three children scream and play in the lobby of his living space. The combined noises of their toy guns, their shrill cries, and their mother screeching at them to shut up reach Babadookian levels of unbearable, and really draw you in to his inevitable mental collapse. It's thrilling, frightening, and leaves you in suspense as to who exactly will receive their violent end at his hands. It's honestly nearly perfect, until the film shows its hand with an over-delicate swing of a prop axe that elicits the softest whisper of a "goosh" from the man it becomes embedded in.

Unfortunately, beyond that scene, when Brian Libby is asked to fill the role of "wordless pyscho killer," he loses any sense of personality and completely relaxes his grip on the character, becoming a complete blank.

"Here's nobody!"

It's maybe telling that the best the movie has to offer is already out of the way before Chuck Norris even shows up. He's saddled with a boring, stoic character that doesn't even learn about his antagonist's regenerative capabilities until about ten minutes before the film ends. His empty masculine posturing fails to fill a film that is more focused on pumping you full of dread rather than testosterone. Whereas I started to be rather fond of Dr. Halman and his wife Nancy, who share probably ninety seconds of screen time together, I never got a bead on Dan Stevens or what he wanted after an entire film of being shackled to his perspective.

I'd say that overall, in spite of its flaws, the movie is at least amusing enough as a time capsule of the bizarre, contradictory impulses of cinema in 1982. So perhaps it succeeds only in spite of itself, but it's still a success in my book!

Killer: John Kirby (Brian Libby)
Final Girl: I guess Allison (Toni Kalem), but you know it's actually Chuck Norris
Best Kill: The sheer drama that fails to successfully play out while Charlie is being bear hugged until his spine snaps is pretty hilarious.
Sign of the Times: Chuck Norris!
Scariest Moment: Allison discovers her brother's grey, bloodless body hanging on the back of a door.

Weirdest Moment: In a random interlude, Charlie tells a story about when he was six years old and tried to dry off his wet dog in the freezer, with horrifying results.
Champion Dialogue: "Whatever happened between us six years ago is water under the dam or over the bridge."
Body Count: 9; not including a man we see running down a hallway chased by the killer, who is presumably long dead by the time the credits roll.

1. Tenant is axed in the face.
2. Mother is axed.
3. Tom is strangled.
4. Nancy has her head smashed against a wall.
5. Paul is stabbed in the neck with a hypodermic needle.
6. Phillip has his neck snapped.
7. Doctor is smashed into a wall.
8. Charlie is bear hugged to death.
9. Elevator Cop is killed in the head offscreen.

TL;DR: Silent Rage is a very silly 80's action-horror hybrid, which does put me on its good side.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1494

Census Bloodbath: Y Is For Yay! Almost Done!

This Blogging From A to Z Challenge post returns us to our regularly programmed Census Bloodbath, as I attempt to remember the fact that I originally intended to do this chronologically but was thwarted by my Nightmare marathon.

Year: 1980

Director: Danny Steinmann

Cast: Barbara Bach, Sydney Lassick, Karen Lamm

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Let us begin by saying that old slasher films had the absolute best marketing people in the business. That poster up there is dagummit fantastic and it's equally as good as the alternate poster. So much so that I almost just included both of them at the top of this page.

If posters and videocassette box designs were an adequate judge of a film's quality, this entire series of slasher reviews would unearth masterpiece after masterpiece. Needless to say, the publicity is misleading. Although The Unseen is certainly a unique entry in the slasher genre, it would take an Olympian stretch of the imagination to be able to call it "good."

The Unseen is one of those slasher films that was released in the twilight period during the few months after Friday the 13th came out, unable to rip off that film because they were already shot before it became popular. These films largely ripped off Halloween or Psycho and had a tendency to break the rules largely because they hadn't been invented yet.

The Unseen with its low body count, utter lack of gore, and sympathetic killer is one of them. Now, remember this does not make it good. Slashers tend to be graded on a curve and part of that curve is assessing what new or interesting things the film does within the confines of the genre. If it can't even follow the paradigm (through no fault of its own, considering that the paradigm didn't exist yet), it becomes something else entirely and that something else is usually just no darn good.

Think of this man as an early slasher: Dressed up real nice but untrustworthy.

The Unseen follows a trio of female reporters as they cover a Danish festival in the California town of Solvang (it's great to see a slasher set in a real life location that I've actually been to - it feels like they knew I was coming). The lead anchor, Jennifer Fast (Barbara Bach, the Bond girl from The Spy Who Loved Me), has just gotten out of an unfulfilling long term relationship with a pro footballer (Doug Barr, who would appear in Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing just one year later) who was benched permanently due to a knee injury. 

Her sister Karen (Karen Lamm) and their coworker Vicki (Lois Young) are interchangeable blondes so you know they're not going to live to see the closing credits. In fact, Vicki doesn't even get a name until after she dies, in the grand tradition of oh so many expendable Friday the 13th teens (several hundred of which were slaughtered in director Danny Steinmann's universally despised Friday the 13th: A New Beginning).

When their hotel reservations in Solvang fall through, the trio makes their way out of town until they stop at a secluded hotel. This hotel turns out to be out of service as it has been converted into a museum, which makes it the perfect location for a slasher film. Unfortunately the proprietor, Ernest Keller (Sydney Lassick) does not understand the opportunity that is being wasted and instead invites them to stay at the stately home he shares with his wife Virginia (Lelia Goldoni). 

Luckily for us, this home is well furnished with polished oak furniture, a full service restroom, and mysterious grates in the floor that lead to a cellar from which mysterious clanking noises emanate. When the sick Vicki is left alone to relax and take a bath, she learns all too well what those grates lead to as an unseen (geddit?) assailant drags her underneath, leaving behind her head. Because this is an 80's horror film after all, we get a glimpse of some full frontal before everything goes down.

And we're not the only ones.

As the girls begin to recognize the danger in the house and succumb to it, it is slowly revealed that the Kellers aren't all that they seem to be. I mean, obviously. They have a crazed killer in their basement. It turns out that Virginia is Ernest's sister, whom he has been abusing sexually and physically for years. The creature in the basement is their illegitimate child, a large mutated man who is essentially a giant baby who doesn't understand that his strength is hurting people.

In an interesting twist, it becomes clear that Ernest is the true villain despite never murdering a single person as has been tormenting Virginia and their son for decades. This storyline as well as several side plots about attempted castration, abortion, and shattered career dreams make The Unseen an unusually dark member of the proto-slasher family. Although the film that holds their story is tremendously boring at times, it's hard not to connect with the victimized Kellers and their plight.

Although watching the cycle of abuse being carried out is harrowing, much of the movie is spent on Jennifer and her dull exploits as she traipses around being the single least effective horror movie heroine of all time. In fact, her entire Final Girl sequence could have been wrapped up in a solid minute if she was smart enough to realize that the kindhearted but scaryfaced Junior didn't want to hurt her.

Honestly, the best performance of the film. He's surprisingly adorable.

Or if she thought to grab the axe that's just sitting there in the chicken coop she hides out in. Or if she understood the fact that a couple bags of chicken feed aren't going to kill a man. Or if she could crawl at more than .01 miles per hour. Jennifer is the worst. But luckily her lack of prowess allows Virginia to empower herself in an attempt to save herself, her baby, and his potential victims.

It's satisfying in an unusually resonant way for a film of this pedigree, although it's still not enough to lift the film up from being a muted slog. The best I can say is that it's halfway decent. For every good element like the slinky jazz score that actually sounds like its own entity and not just a John Carpenter riff like all other 1980 horror, there's an equal and opposite negative element like the roar of white noise that fills in the space between every line of dialogue, making it sound like the house has an unusually persistent janitor using a Dyson.

It's endlessly frustrating and the film stops and starts too many times to get any real momentum going, all of which is killed during the final twenty minutes where the entire plot gets stuck in the mud for all but two or three shimmering moments. All in all, I don't regret having watched The Unseen because the story it told was interesting, even if it was mega depressing. But I would never ever ever watch it again.

Killer: Junior Keller (Stephen Furst)
Final Girl: Jennifer Fast (Barbara Bach)
Best Kill: Karen is killed when her scarf dangles above the grate and is pulled through, slamming her face against the metal.
Sign of the Times: The very first scene opens with this guy.

Scariest Moment: The way Ernest treats Virginia when they're alone together is a disarmingly blunt look at incest and domestic abuse.
Weirdest Moment: Ernest has an angry conversation with Virginia while he attaches an increasingly absurd number of clothespins to his face.
Champion Dialogue: "Blow your nose, my sweet little honey bunch."
Body Count: 4; including the killer but not including the decapitated chicken.

1. Vicki is pulled into the grate and is crushed in the process.
2. Karen's scarf is yanked into the grate and her face is smashed into the metal.
3. Junior is hit in the head with a nail stuck through a board.
4. Ernest is shot through the chest by his sister/wife. 

TL;DR: The Unseen is an interesting and dark early entry in the slasher genre, but it's not good enough to merit a rewatch.
Rating: 5/10
Word Count: 1376