Reviewing Jane: It Was A Foolish Precipitation Last Christmas

In which we review every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen: Christmas edition!

Year: 2019

Director: David Winning

Cast: Erin Krakow, Luke Macfarlane, Kimberley Sustad 

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

Merry Christmas, everyone! Its continues to be that very special time of year when Hallmark's endless shitty Jane Austen adaptations collide with Hallmark's even more endless shitty Christmas movies! And to cap off this special trilogy we have the pleasure of visiting a film directed by the man who previously brought us untold Austenian pleasures with Hallmark's dog show romance Unleashing Mr. Darcy. It's Sense, Sensibility, and Snowmen, the only one of the five Hallmark Austen movies not to be based on Pride and Prejudice! What a treat!

It's still brought to us by infinite white people, however.

OK, so it may not be based on Pride and Prejudice, but it's not based on any Sense and Sensibility I'VE ever read. Yes, we have the sisters Ella (Erin Krakow) and Marianne Dashwood (Kimberley Sustad) and their love interests Edward (Luke Macfarlane) and Brandon (Jason McKinnon). But in this one Ella is the flighty nymph ruled by her emotions, and Marianne is the one ruled by logic and sense, in an unmotivated switch that causes the novel's plot to crumble from underneath the film like the stone floor in an Indiana Jones adventure. Also Edward is not Ella's cousin (not complaining), but rather the cousin of Brandon, who is aged down by a good 15 years (maybe a little complaining on this one, because I'd love Hallmark to tackle a nontraditional couple and having gay people is obviously out of the question).

Also the story is now about party planning because of f**king course it is. Edward has taken over as CEO of his father's toy company, which is inexplicably called Ferris Wheel. He is being visited by French suppliers whose business will put the company in the black, but he needs to win them over with heart rather than statistics and numbers because apparently the French are terrible at business. Unfortunately, he is a cold corporate automaton, so he hires Ella (who is trying to prove to Marianne that she is capable of committing to their party planning business rather than run off to backpack across Europe or whatever for the millionth time) to plan a huge Christmas soiree for the company despite the fact that they've already had an awkward encounter where she mercilessly mocked him for having no Christmas spirit.

Will his business acumen allow her to grow into the sister Marianne needs to be? Will her free spirit allow him to loosen up, enjoy the holiday, and land the account? Will they fall in love along the way? Of course! This is a Hallmark movie!

And this is the moment where we must tragically recognize that this movie IS in fact also just a Pride and Prejudice riff, because the only thing these movies remember about that novel is that the couple doesn't get along at first, which is palpably NOT the case in Sense and Sensibility. And this movie doesn't even remember to have the sisters start off rich and then lose all their assets which is the one nugget that modern adaptations absolutely must remember to retain. P&P is the couple at odds, S&S is the poor sisters. You don't even need to read the books to get that! But Hallmark has clearly read neither, so perhaps we're better off not getting too upset here and avoiding having this caption become longer than the review.

Honestly, after watching three of these movies in a row, it's hard to even muster the strength to identify any unique attributes it has. It's simultaneously exactly like all the other Hallmark movies, and yet comes off more deeply generic and tedious than any of them. The brief thrill of recognizing Austenian names coming from the mouths of characters gives way instantly to a cookie cutter Christmas movie. And no, I don't mean the 2014 Hallmark movie literally called A Cookie Cutter Christmas that also stars Erin Krakow. They really just keep lobbing me these softballs, it's almost embarrassing.

Literally the one thing that's exciting in any way to someone who has seen more than their fair share of these (a number I have long since surpassed) is the fact that the narrative takes place entirely within The City. Specifically Chicago, as played by Vancouver. Rather than The City representing a skyscrapered purgatory of corporate greed and soulless automatons that must be overcome by the heart and humanity of Small Town Living, it's just the setting for the movie. 

How novel!

And I guess they try to get playful with the sheer lack of humanity that the character of Edward has (something that is constantly undercut by the goofy charisma of Luke Macfarlane, who is charming but wildly miscast). When he arrives at one of the many Christmas carnivals that are around every corner in the Hallmark Cinematic Universe, he can't understand why they're sipping hot chocolate and waiting for the Christmas Tree Lighting and asks "so, what's the objective?" He's not a fish out of water, he's a fish launched into the reaches of deep space. 

He understands absolutely nothing about human social behavior, and it's a shame because he doesn't seem to understand anything about running a business either, which is the one thing he's supposedly focused his life on, at the expense of learning literally anything about the world. Hallmark movies don't typically have a strong grasp on the details of office culture other than Business Meeting, Report On My Desk By Monday, Spreadsheet, etc. But the wild gaps in logic here (Ella's warm spirit inspires Edward to use children for the first time in the focus groups of his toy company) are gaping chasms that the characters can't possibly climb their way out of. Edward's a lost cause, obviously (he also announces the contract with the French company at the holiday party before they even have anything in writing), but even Ella is kind of a mess. Her plans for expanding the company include, and I quote, "more staff, expanded marketing, and loans." I'm no Business Boy myself, but you might think that the best business plans would avoid one having to owe money to people.

But beyond picking apart their business acumen, the characters have almost nothing to offer in terms of entertainment. Marianne exists only to provide easily clearable conflict hurdles, rather than participate in the romance other than a background flirtation with Brandon. And speaking of Brandon, he's stripped of absolutely every element of his character on the page. He's not even been given the gift of a different character from the novel's personality like Ella, so he phases through the movie like a ghost, making absolutely no mark.

It's not unpleasant to watch at any time, but Sense, Sensibility, and Snowmen is completely comatose. If you're home with the flu and don't have the capacity to focus while slipping in and out of a fever haze, then this might be the perfect fit for your needs, but beyond that I'd recommend literally any other Hallmark Austen movie, and that's not something I say lightly, because most of them are quite dreadful.

...Merry Christmas!

TL;DR: Sense, Sensibility, & Snowmen is as bland as Hallmark gets, throwing a hideously bad Austen adaptation on top of it.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1241
Other Films Based on Sense and Sensibility
Sense and Sensibility (Lee, 1995)
Kandukondain Kandukondain (Menon, 2000)
Material Girls (Coolidge, 2006)
From Prada to Nada (Gracia, 2011)
Scents and Sensibility (Brough, 2011)
Sense, Sensibility, & Snowmen (Winning, 2019)

Reviewing Jane: I Sincerely Hope Your Christmas May Abound In The Gaieties Which The Season Generally Brings…

In which we review every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen: Christmas edition!

Year: 2018

Director: Don McBrearty

Cast: Lacey Chabert, Brendan Penny, Sherry Miller 

Run Time: 1 hour 22 minutes

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone! Its continues to be that very special time of year when Hallmark's endless shitty Jane Austen adaptations collide with Hallmark's even more endless shitty Christmas movies! This one is also based on Pride and Prejudice because it's the only novel anybody at the network or in the audience has ever read, apparently. 

 Also, I hope you like this hat, because you're going to be seeing a lot more of it.

I sure hope you weren't using this movie as an excuse not to do your reading for senior year English, because this movie is about as based on Pride and Prejudice as a Three Musketeers bar. Essentially the only elements salvaged from the wreckage of Austen's masterpiece are the character names and... yeah, no, that's it. In a saucy twist, our lead is Darcy Fitzwilliam (Lacey Chabert, a girl!), a high stakes stock market person in New York. She has been so hardened by her big city lifestyle that when she offers to open an investment portfolio for the guy who runs the coffee cart on the sidewalk even though he only has like five cents that she insists she pay for the coffee he offers her for free. Cruel witch! Oh, and she has a big client named Mark Spencer (Paulino Nunes), which is not an Austen name, but it is a British department store so shoutout to screenwriter Nina Weinman having herself some fun.

Anyway, she returns to her hometown of Pemberley, Ohio the week before Christmas to help her mom (Sherry Miller) plan the annual Pemberly League Holiday Auction. It turns out that the caterer her mom just hired is none other than her high school debate rival Luke Bennett (Brendan Penny), and they're going to be working very closely together over the next couple days. They instantly ruffle each other's feathers (She is nice and he is kind! They're too different, it will never work!), but eventually they fall in love or whatever. Shocking. Also the only person of color with a major role is Darcy's work partner Austin (Robinne Fanfair, and what a terrific name that is), a conniving jerk who wants to shove her out in the cold while she's on vacation.

Little does she know, out in the cold is exactly where Darcy needs to be right about now.

Well, this movie certainly is a Hallmark movie. It opens jingle bells a-blazing over a city skyline, the lead must move from the city to a small town and never return, and all flat surfaces in the background have every square inch cross-hatched with Christmas lights and tinsel. There's literally a shot reverse-shot conversation in a single small office and there's a fully decked-out Christmas tree in the background of both shots. That's two discrete trees in two discrete corners of one office large enough to fit one person. God, I love Christmas movies.

Hallmark is so nervous about ruining your holiday cheer that they carefully avoid any conflict more potent than a light breeze. There's a love triangle so empty I literally didn't even include the second dude in my plot synopsis, and beyond that it's just about two overly nice people in a town full of sickeningly nice people slowly realizing they're meant to be together. 

For all the sweet this movie has to offer, there is a bit of tartness present that I'm highly pleased about. Sherry Miller swoops about this film like a grand dame, giving a "curt older woman" performance that Aunt Violet in Marrying Mr. Darcy could only aspire to in her wildest Xanax daydreams. There's a blissfully camp conversation she has with Darcy where she goes from informing her that the Christmas tree designer has cancelled to making grand accusations about her business acumen in three seconds flat. And whether it be that Luke's turkey pot pie (gross) is the "best meal she's ever had" or that she'll never stop by that store again, every choice she makes is final. her snappy one-liners are full of piss and vinegar and she is a true delight whenever she tromps onscreen.

There's my angel, second from the right. (This is the only promotional photo I could find that wasn't Lacey Chabert and Brendan Penny making moon eyes at each other.)

Beyond that, what more could there possibly be to say? This is a Hallmark movie! The script is full of delightful snippets of dialogue want to appeal to octogenarians (Luke compares the gossip in a small town to "the Information Superhighway"), Darcy is obsessed with roasted chestnuts with a force no human being has ever been able to muster in human history, and the ways they paper over the gaping plot holes are hilarious and sometimes even illegal (they force a children's choir to be the waitstaff at the event when the catering company falls through at the last minute).

It's like settling into a delightful warm bath of Christmas-flavored camp. You know exactly where every scene is going so there's no need to worry, and it's never going to descend to the level of true crap because you're in the capable hands of Lacey Chabert. She's not terrific, but the movie isn't asking her to be. She's just one cog in the giant Hallmark machine, but she makes it seem like she's having a great time doing it all. And that's no small feat considering she's already been in half a dozen of these Hallmark movies (and that's just counting the Christmas-themed ones). It's all surface and no substance, but think of it like a Christmas ornament. It's completely empty on the inside, but it sure makes it feel like the season.

TL;DR: Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe has less conflict than a gingerbread cookie, but it's pleasant to bask in.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1006
Other Films Based on Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice (Leonard, 1940)

Pride and Prejudice (miniseries - Langton, 1995)
Bridget Jones's Diary (Maguire, 2001)
Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (Black, 2003)
Bride & Prejudice (Chadha, 2004)
Pride and Prejudice (Wright, 2005)
Unleashing Mr. Darcy (Winning, 2016)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Steer, 2016)
Before the Fall (Geisler, 2016)
Marrying Mr. Darcy (Monroe, 2018)
Christmas at Pemberley Manor (McBrearty, 2018)
Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe (McBrearty, 2018)

Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta (Baraka, 2019)

Reviewing Jane: We Have Had A Very Dull Christmas

In which we review every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen: Christmas Edition!

Year: 2018

Director: Colin Theys

Cast: Jessica Lowndes, Michael Rady, Cole Gleason

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

Merry Christmas Eve Eve, everyone! It's that very special time of year when Hallmark's endless shitty Jane Austen adaptations collide with Hallmark's even more endless shitty Christmas movies! I don't actually have the Hallmark channel, because what person under the age of 45 does? Or even pays for TV in the first place? Anyway, that's why this review has come a year late, because the network has finally released their 2018 projects upon an unsuspecting public. 

And what a miserable wait it was! A whole year without white people standing in front of Christmas trees! Imagine!

In Christmas at Pemberley Manor, we find one Elizabeth Bennett (Jessica Lowndes) in that oh-so Austenian profession of being a Big Business Party Planner. She's a party planner because all Hallmark heroines are party planners, but her work also takes place in a New York high rise with a cruel corporate boss, Caroline Bingley (Elaine Hendrix), because she needs a reason to never want to go back to the city. 

She's been hired for her first solo party planning gig by college friend George (Cole Gleason), the mayor of the town of Lambton who is so desperately, transparently in love with her that the fact she doesn't notice leads me to question that she might be a full-tilt sociopath. When the town square where they're planning a festival literally collapses into a sinkhole (if you thought they would have the budget to show a sinkhole, you are sorely mistaken), they must relocate to the only other viable spot in town: Pemberley Manor. Unfortunately the owner, William Darcy (Michael Rady), is resistant to the idea because he's only in town to sell the property and doesn't want people tromping all over the yard.

Elizabeth uses her pride in her work to melt his prejudice against the Christmas spirit and buy a lot of decorations with his credit card. He falls in love with her anyway, and the literal actual Santa may or may not show up at some point.

Also it's illegal in the Hallmark Holiday Extended Universe not to make Christmas cookies at least once.

By far the most interesting thing about Christmas at Pemberley Manor is the fact that the leading man isn't clean shaven to within a centimeter of his life. They let Darcy be a little scruffy, which actually visually accents his character in a way that allows him to have a character to the slightest degree, which is all one can hope for in one of these movies. This actually goes a long way (only on the very long sliding scale by which we're forced to measure Hallmark movies) in making him "edgy," because their prickly relationship in the beginning has literally nothing else to stand on other than him being a little bit of a Grinch. He's clearly already in love with her from square one, and the reason she finds him a bit of a pill at first is based on an almost willful misunderstanding, because one of these movies wouldn't dare have a male lead actually be mean to anyone ever.

Hallmark's aversion to romantic conflict at least gives way to Hallmark's hatred of big business, so there's a tiny scrap of tension somewhere in the movie. Mind you, it makes less than no sense, but isn't that what we're here for? Eventually after the press takes a picture of Darcy and Elizabeth together and puts a headline about him donating money to the town festival on the front page, Caroline comes to town to take over the event because it's bad for her image that an employee is succeeding apparently. It's completely wild plotting, but it is at least plotting, and I've learned not to look down my nose at an actual narrative in one of these things.

And hey, this plot point is just one nestled in a garden of insipid blooms waiting to be plucked and mocked. Here's George, who must have had his spine removed at an early age because he literally never tells Elizabeth how he feels and contents himself to a life of solitude! There's the multiple shopping scenes where sometimes "full" bags get shoved in the trunk upside-down! Here's the moment where Darcy's assistant tells him he has an email and hands him a printout! If there's anything better than Hallmark's continued refusal to learn how modern technology works, it's... well, it's that the literal Santa Claus is in this movie, but I won't spoil how. 

Nor will I need to if you've seen even the first five seconds of the movie.

Christmas at Pemberley Manor can actually be a joy to hang out with sometimes. It has its humorous moments (they joke about hanging twinkle lights on the sinkhole and it's the funniest any Hallmark movie has ever been), its aesthetically pleasing moments (mainly just every coat worn by any character), and its irresistibly daffy ones ("It's Christmas! What better time for a Christmas miracle?"). However, there are some things that sink this film like a stone.

First, the leads have absolutely no chemistry. That kind of comes with the territory in these hellishly chaste romances where the leads kiss exactly once immediately before the credits roll, but it's especially difficult because Jessica Lowndes makes absolutely zero effort not to make her Elizabeth come off as an irritating mess. Then, there's the fact that throwing a bunch of Austen-y names ("The Mansfield Press is here to interview you!") doesn't automatically lend a story gravitas.

But I think the most telling thing about the movie is that it hangs its entire script on this one line, repeated over and over again by several different characters: "The things we love are never far away." Does that mean anything to you? It sure doesn't for me, and the movie seems to think it's very profound. The fact that this line is something the movie seems to be proud of is indicative of how rotten the very foundations of this film truly are. It's fun to poke fun at, but beyond that it offers absolutely nothing of substance. And the romantic interludes which form 75% of the entire running time are exhausting and tedious to watch. If you're looking for Christmas romance, look further than Christmas at Pemberley.

TL;DR: Christmas at Pemberley Manor is cheerily dumb, but not interesting enough to ever consider a rewatch.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1102

Other Films Based On Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice (Leonard, 1940)

Pride and Prejudice (miniseries - Langton, 1995)
Bridget Jones's Diary (Maguire, 2001)
Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (Black, 2003)
Bride & Prejudice (Chadha, 2004)
Pride and Prejudice (Wright, 2005)
Unleashing Mr. Darcy (Winning, 2016)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Steers, 2016)
Before the Fall (Geisler, 2016)
Marrying Mr. Darcy (Monroe, 2018)
Christmas at Pemberley Manor (Theys, 2018)
Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe (McBrearty, 2018)

Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta (Baraka, 2019)

Census Bloodbath: Keep It

Year:1982
Director: Jim Makichuk
Cast: Riva Spier, Murray Ord, Sheri McFadden
Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Holiday-themed movies are anything but uncommon in the 80's slasher genre. The only thing odd about encountering one set on New Year's Eve as we continue our journey through 1982 is the fact that the entire film isn't built around the holiday. In fact, I've never seen Ghostkeeper on any list of holiday slashers. Sure, it barely uses any tropes or signposts of the holiday beyond a couple mentions of the year to come, but that doesn't stop people from recognizing that same year's Humongous for taking place on Labor Day, something only mentioned in a title card. To find out why this movie isn't getting its name out there, let's dive in deeper, shall we?

Oops. Too deep! Too deep!

Ghostkeeper is not as lurid as the title might make it sound, but it's still a slasher that goes pretty damn far off model. For one thing, the potential body count is stymied by an incredibly small cast. Three city folk - Jenny (Riva Spier), whose only character trait is that her mother was institutionalized and she worries about her own mental health; Marty (Murray Ord), Jenny's boyfriend who is an unbelievably douchey prep; and Chrissy (Sheri McFadden), a sexed-up blonde who transparently wants to sleep with Marty - go off snowmobiling while bored on the morning of New Year's Eve. When the snow starts coming down hard, they hole up at Deer Lodge, an abandoned ski resort higher up in the mountains.

They think they're alone, but they soon meet an old woman credited only as Ghostkeeper (Georgie Collins), who spends a lot of time refusing to answer their questions in anything but gruff, elliptical vagaries. She also mentions she has a son hanging around her somewhere. Naturally, the young folks begin dying, but with such a small platter of meat, this takes a bit longer than usual. It begins to come to light (pretty much only because of a title card explaining it before the credits even roll) that this lodge is now the home of a windigo, described in this case as a "ghost who lives on human flesh." This doesn't really matter because the director ran out of money before being able to include pretty much anything actually with the windigo, who is depicted in the few shots he's in as a man with a bunch of dirt on his face.

Spoooooooky.

Ghostkeeper is an early 80's slasher hailing from Canada (which I could have told you even without looking it up, thanks to the copious "sore-y's," "eh's," and the presence of composer Paul Zaza), and that's usually a good sign. But there's a reason it ain't ending up on any Canadian slasher lists either: nobody wants to claim this movie for themselves.

The movie starts off by banking a whole bunch of goodwill. The chilly, snowbound atmosphere is a fun wintry blanket to wrap yourself up in, and the Deer Lodge is an excellent location. There's something deeply alluring about abandoned places, and the trio's exploration of empty restaurants and ballrooms is eerily enticing. If anything, this setting draws a straight line between the elegant chills of The Shining and the frigid slasher efficacy of Cold Prey.

Unfortunately, once the plot kicks in, Ghostkeeper almost immediately begins to squander all that goodwill. The slasher movie mainstay of having characters wander down dark hallways arrives in full force here, padding the time that should have been filled with more kills, then the time where there should have been a monster. Essentially, if there's a genre we can call "Hallway," Ghsotkeeper fits into that way more than it does "Horror."

Exhibit A.

It's a shame, because there are some solid elements floating around in the primordial ooze that could be creepy if they were implemented properly. For a film so cheap and so devoted to not actually killing anybody, there are some really decent gore effects. They don't push the envelope in any way, but they're rendered with more realism than one might reasonably expect from a C-picture like this. And I do want to commend the work of Georgie Collins, whose hoarse whisper and erratic physical performance craft a character who is uncanny and exhilarating to be around.

Unfortunately, her screen time is relatively small, and the other characters are wallpaper when they're not being exquisitely irritating. Jenny's constant monologuing about her vague sub-Hereditary backstory fail to crack onto any sort of pathos, Chrissy is shallow and vapid, and Marty is perhaps the most casually cruel individual to ever walk the earth. It's a curiosity why any woman would be interested in anything about him other than his jawline. He mercilessly mocks any living being he finds himself in close contact with, and has two moments alone with Jenny where he behaves almost like a mad dictator.

Ghostkeeper is a profoundly empty movie, a fact that's made even more painful by the way it squanders an excellent setting and a promising villain. It's far from the worst slasher I've watched for this project. It's not even the worst slasher of the summer of '82. But I can't think of any reason to recommend it to anybody at any time. Maybe if you're a completist of the smallish sub-subgenre of New Year's Horror, but I'm afraid if that's the case, you're even more far gone than Yours Truly.

Killer: Ghostkeeper (Georgie Collins), her son, and oddly not the Windigo
Final Girl: Jenny (Riva Spier)
Best Kill: Chrissy is drowned in the bathtub, but when the movie cuts back to her she's still alive for some reason so her throat is slashed, in a pretty solid effect.
Sign of the Times: The waist of Jenny's pants might literally be high enough to cover her nipples.
Scariest Moment: During a fireside hangout, Marty begins to sing a horribly racist parody of the Mexican song "Cielito Lindo," which is a pretty deep thing to know if you're gonna be a bigot.
Weirdest Moment: After Jenny kills the Ghostkeeper's son, Marty goes completely mad and rubs grease all over his face, babbling incoherently.
Champion Dialogue: "I should learn never to go places with geological engineers."
Body Count: 6; 2 by the son, 1 by the mother, 2 by Jenny, and 1 by an act of nature.

1. Man is speared in the gut.
2. Chrissy has her throat slashed.
3. Ghostkeeper's Son is impaled on a metal fence.
4. Hiker is stabbed.
5. Ghostkeeper is shot in the gut.
6. Marty freezes to death.

TL;DR: Ghostkeeper starts off strong, but deflates slowly across its tedious run time.
Rating: 3/10
Word Count: 1114

Census Bloodbath: She Kills Down By The Sea Shore

Year: 1982

Director: Karen Yang

Cast: Hsiao-Fen Lu, Alan Tam, Fu-Mei Chang

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

It's always fun when we get to travel overseas in our Census Bloodbath marathon, especially when it's a place we've never been before. Today's film, Exposed to Danger (titled Sha chu chong wei in the original Mandarin and Breakout from Oppression in the U.S. dubbed cut) is Taiwan's first entry in the 80's slasher cycle. Hopefully it's not its last, because we have a lot to talk about here. 

Not the least of which being that it stars a Taiwanese John Oates.

Exposed to Danger is a lot of things, but one thing that it kind of isn't, sadly, is a slasher. At least until the final 20 minutes, this is smack dab in the middle of the "women's melodrama" and "psycho stalker" subgenres. Until it begins to wildly lift scenes from Friday the 13th wholecloth, but we'll get to that.

The story begins when Tien-Chi (Hsiao-Fen Lu) arrives in a small seaside town to be the assistant editor at a newspaper. She has just been released from prison, where she served 8 years for a murder she didn't commit. She's looking for a fresh start and she hopes the letter she holds from the paper's President offering her a job can provide that for her. Unfortunately, bizarre happening quickly dash her hopes, beginning with the mysterious disappearance of the President shortly before she arrives. 

While she tries to process the trauma and abuse of her time in prison, someone is clearly breaking into her apartment and moving things around, watching her through her window, and putting her in the path of danger at every turn including cutting her bike's brakes and knocking over a ladder she's using to clean her ceiling. On top of all this, tensions at work are boiling over. Mrs. Chu (Hsiung-Kuo Li) is jealous that this pretty girl can waltz in and get a job in her department, and the President's young secretary Shih-Yun (Fu-Mei Chang) is seething with rage that she's receiving attention from the office cutie Hsiao-Tung (Alan Tam), who has - to her credit - instantly and obviously fallen madly in love with the new girl.

Anyway, it's not really a spoiler to say that the perpetrator is clearly Shih-Yun, because the movie does not keep its cards close to the chest and if you don't figure it out twenty minutes in, you must've fallen asleep. She does begin a murderous rampage eventually ending with a catfight on the beach, the villain shouting "Kill her!", a false ending involving a boat, a decapitation, and gee where have I seen that before?

I couldn't find many photos for this movie online, so pretend this is relevant.

That's the longest synopsis I've written in a while, but there are a lot of important factors that need discussion. Something I really want to drill down on is the prison element, because that isn't something you see in Census Bloodbath very often. It does speak to the way this movie is structured in no way like a slasher, but the way certain elements in her life trigger flashbacks to her harrowing abuse at the hands of the other prisoners are some of the most brutal, intense material I've seen doing this project.

I think part of why this film works so well in spite of its unclear focus on what genre it wants to be is that while everything is shifting and changing around her, Tien-Chi's character and psychology is always front and center, in perfect focus. I don't want to lay this all entirely on the fact that this film has a female director, but I don't not. It's a rare occasion that we get to dig in on an entry in this genre that has any sort of female touch behind the camera, and I love that it comes packaged with one of the most well-shaded female leads I've seen in quite a while.

I also don't want to diminish the contributions of actress Hsiao-Fen Lu, who works with the camera to let you into her character's head at every turn. There's a showstopping performance moment where she plays her younger self in flashback with such youthful venom and naïveté that it seems like she's a completely different actress, but that speaks to performance as a whole. It shows how well she knows her character and how she's been changed by what she's been through. 

When I put on a film called Exposed to Danger, I certainly wasn't expecting this. Maybe a Stripped to Kill prototype or a slasher set in a photography studio, but certainly not this.

Even though the whodunit side of this film is quite weak, and frankly the Friday the 13th Final Girl sequence is only interesting insofar as you can see an American film translated into a Taiwanese editing and cinematography style, there is plenty to chill the spine in Exposed to Danger. Menace lurks around every corner of this movie, and Karen Yang works hard to keep you as off-kilter as the protagonist. 

Even simple moments like Tien-Chi riding a bicycle are sprinkled with unease (this moment in particular involves a child doing tricks around her and threatening to knock her off her bike for no reason other than his own pure enjoyment), and a scene where investigating a murder-suicide puts her in the path of a knife-wielding banshee proves that even the people who don't want to specifically kill her are a constant source of danger.

Yang's style lights up the screen in these moments, as well. Take the simple flashback triggered by a bar of soap (in prison, she was slashed by a bar of soap with a razor blade embedded inside), which becomes an impressionistic nightmare involving the soap flying toward the camera in jarring insert shots. And then there's the matter of Shih-Yun. She might be an obvious antagonist, but letting us in on this quickly allows us to spend time in her twisted home life, which involves incessantly shrieking at her wheelchair-bound grandmother and chaining men up in the basement. It's all very What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and it's intense in a way that feels legitimately dangerous.

All told, it's not quite what we're looking for in Census Bloodbath, but it's something I recommend to cinema history thrill seekers who want to take a walk on the obscure side. I had a ball watching Exposed to Kill, and while it has its flaws, it's hard not to be sucked in by its unique style and characters. I think this movie struggles to carve a space for itself in film fandom by its lack of a firm genre. People who approach it as a slasher are inevitably going to be disappointed, as are the people who found it in the pack of kung fu films where it has mostly been available in this corner of the globe. But approaching it on its own terms, Exposed to Kill is a memorable slice of foreign genre cinema.

Killer: Shih-Yun (Fu-Mei Chang)

Final Girl: Tien-Chi (Hsiao-Fen Lu) 

Best Kill: Wu-Ten the photographer is murdered in a three-part kill that involves wild banshee shrieking while he's slashed up, plunging down two sets of stairs, and being stabbed repeatedly while he's down. It's wild.

Sign of the Times: Sometimes the score will just evolve into electric guitar squealing at unexpected interludes.

Scariest Moment: Shih-Yun sneaks glass into the spring rolls that Tien-Chi serves at an office party, which cuts open the mouth of Mrs. Chu's son.

Weirdest Moment: The moment where Tien-Chi is knocked off a ladder involves some wild physics about a bar of soap being slid beneath the ladder at the exact moment it wiggles. Also she's in the process of wiping down the chandelier in what has been described as a "small apartment."

Champion Dialogue: I think the somewhat dubious translation of the subtitles disqualifies this film from an entry in Champion Dialogue, sadly.

Body Count: 5; not including three people who are murdered offscreen, which Tien-Chi is sent to report on.

1. Ping-nan is stabbed in the back in flashback.
2. President Wang is bludgeoned with a flashlight.
3. Hsiao-Wai the Monkey is hanged offscreen.
4. Wu-Ten is slashed, falls down stairs, and is stabbed in the back.
5. Shih-Yun is decapitated.

TL;DR: Exposed to Danger is a bizarre mishmash of genres, but all of them are pretty good!

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1411

Census Bloodbath: Cry For Help

Year: 1982

Director: David Nelson

Cast: Susan Kiger, Martin Tucker, William T. Hicks 

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

For the first time in a very long time, I've just entered into a slasher movie about which I knew absolutely nothing beforehand. It was kind of an exciting prospect, to be honest. Usually I at least know a log line or an actor or a kill or something, but this time all I had was a title. That title in question is Death Screams, which is just lurid enough to pique the interest. It's certainly better than the film's alternate title, House of Death. And it's a good thing this is the angle from which I approached the movie, because the poster for House of Death writes checks that this film can't cash. 

Observe.

Death Screams has one pound of boring for every ounce of interesting in that poster. We open on the requisite prologue kill, where a couple - Angie (Penny Miller) and Ted (Larry Sprinkle of A Day of Judgment and Trick or Treat) - is making out by a river until a train passes and they... drown somehow? The next morning, their small town is gearing up for the annual carnival, so nobody can really be bothered by them going missing.

There are an infinite amount of characters wandering around the town for the next fifty minutes, but the ones we really need to key into are Bob (Curt Rector) and Kathy (Andrea Savio), a pair of college students who have been assisting the baseball coach Neil Marshall (Martin Tucker); Diddle (John Kohler), who takes the worst traits of every slasher movie prankster character and rolls them all into one obnoxious snowball; Lily Carpenter (Susan Kiger), who is marked as the Final Girl by the fact that she has a last name and that we spend way too much time with her for her not to end up being important, rather than anything actually interesting in her character; and Sheriff Avery (William T. Hicks, also of A Day of Judgment), who wanders around town savagely insulting any citizen he comes across.

After the fair, the infinite teen population of the town gathers at the river for a bonfire, where the killer waits another 25 minutes or so to actually start mowing them down. There are a huge number of red herrings that just kind of sit there doing nothing, including Edna (Helene Tryon, also of A Day of Judgment), Lily's salty grandmother who thinks no man is good enough for her; Casey (Hanns Manship also also of A Day of Judgment - all in all these two movies share four actors and one cameraperson hilariously named Gene Poole), the mentally challenged son of Edna's friend Agnes who loves Coach Marshall so much he wants to defend him from all harm; and Sheriff Avery who, have I mentioned, fucking hates everyone who lives in his town. Oh, and his son died in a car crash four years ago, as we find out in a random soap opera scene shoehorned in at about the hour mark.

To be fair, we do get ONE kill between the opening and closing ten minutes, but I literally don't even know who this is.

I don't want to confuse you into thinking the beginning and ending of the movie are substantially better than the middle. They're not. You're slogging through a whole bunch of nothing to arrive at... a whole bunch of nothing. There are a handful of kills that are fun enough in concept, but for the most part, they're either offscreen jabs with a machete or so underlit and choppily edited that you might be watching a chef prepare sushi for all you can tell. 

I'll admit it: This review has the worst body count I've ever prepared, because I'm entirely unclear as to how many people died in Death Screams, when they died, and what method affected their shuffling off this mortal coil. There's definitely someone who gets shot in the head at one point, but I didn't include it because I'm pretty sure it's someone who already died elsewhere on the list. And the dummy used to achieve this particular effect is so shoddy that it didn't occur to me that it was ever meant to be a person. I literally thought that, within the reality of this movie, the Sheriff was shooting a dummy.

So no, the kills don't work. And there's hardly any attempts at horror, but of the ones made, not much of it really works. There's a full five minute scene where Lily tells a campfire story, which I can only assume was kept in to pad the run time, and thern we get a botched cat scare where the poor creature struggles to wriggle out of its hidey hole so what's supposed to be a shock moment lasts a good twenty seconds. The one solid element is that killer has this trademark shriek that is pretty Llorona-esque and chilling, even if it doesn't make one lick of sense with the eventual reveal (hilariously, the killer's backstory is that their mom was a stripper so they hate sex - one of the most wrongheaded reveals in a subgenre with a history of front and center misogyny). 

If it helps, I'm pretty sure this movie passes the Bechdel test at least.

So if this film isn't full of kills, what is it full of? Well, other than shit I mean. Well, more than anything, Death Screams is about the ensemble of people that populates a small town, and it honestly does a pretty good job at achieving this atmosphere. Of course, capturing the rhythm and reality of small town life comes with an inherent sense of doldrums, but at least it's authentic!

There are moments that unspool infinitely forth of interactions between a numberless combination of characters pulled from the massive ensemble. Any time this involves the character of Diddle, one of those vexatious class clowns who is Always On (two standard slasher tropes he indulges in with gusto are the Unsolicited Impression and the Outhouse Scene), I want to rip this movie in half and throw it in the river. But otherwise it's vaguely pleasant, even if every cheerful scene is caked in ubiquitous, manic electronic music that sounds like the loading screen of an Atari game.

However, if the only thing you're coming to this for is that small town atmosphere, you'd do much better with My Bloody Valentine or Strange Behavior, which have actual good movies on top of that. Truly the only interesting things about Death Screams are that alt poster, maybe a couple kills, and the fact that the director is the brother of 50's teen idol Ricky Nelson. And to be honest, I had a small amount of fun at the expense of some of the sillier moments, but they're not in an abundance that would make this flick worth anybody's time whatsoever.

Killer: [Coach Neil Marshall (Martin Tucker)]

Final Girl: Lily Carpenter (Susan Kiger)

Sign of the Times: Every man who doesn't show interest in Ramona is called a "queer."

Best Kill: There's a throat slash with a piece of glass that's actually pretty gnarly.

Scariest Moment: Ted and Angie's corpses float up to a girl who's skinny dipping, and she starts to thrash around in fear in the mist.

Weirdest Moment: We've been watching Angie and Ted's corpses float downriver for hours, and yet they're discovered in the exact same place they were killed, so I suppose they must have circumnavigated the globe.

Champion Dialogue: "Shut your mouth before your brains fall out."

Body Count: 11; though the final number is unclear, as are most of the deaths themselves.

1. Ted and
2. Angie are drowned by a train passing?
3. Water Fountain Girl is shot with an arrow and smothered with a plastic bag.
4. Ladder Boy is macheted.
5. Sandy is killed in the neck.
6. Diddle is slashed offscreen and strung up upside down.
7. Walker is decapitated offscreen.
8. Walker's Girlfriend is decapitated offscreen.
9. Party Boy is macheted in the hand to death.
10. Ramona falls through the stairs and becomes in half.
11. Neil Marshall is slashed in the throat with a piece of glass.

TL;DR: Death Screams is passable at creating small town atmosphere and almost nothing else.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1389

Census Bloodbath: You're It

Year: 1982

Director: Nick Castle

Cast: Robert Carradine, Linda Hamilton, Bruce Abbott

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Tag: The Assassination Game wasn't always on the list of 1982 movies I was planning to cover for Census Bloodbath. I came across it in my initial research, but it just didn't seem like it had enough elements to count as a slasher. Plus, take a look at that poster. This movie was heavily sold as an Animal House-style sex comedy, to the point that even I was almost fooled. However, when I finally took a look at it, it proved to me that it deserved a spot on this list. It's not a good one, but it's a slasher movie alright.

At the very least, I didn't waste my time watching a movie I wasn't even going to review.

OK, as much as it does count by my parameters, Tag still isn't particularly faithful to the tropes of the slasher, which had already been set in stone by this point. The plot revolves around a game of tag where a bunch of college run around shooting each other with dart guns. One night, student reporter Alex Marsh (Robert Carradine of Revenge of the Nerds) is hanging out in his dorm when committed player Susan Swayze (Linda Hamilton of... Linda Hamilton) slips through the door to use it as a hideout. He is instantly smitten and tags along with her under the pretense of writing a human interest story about the game.

What he doesn't realize is that the most interesting human in this game is Loren Gersh (introducing Bruce Abbott of Re-Animator and Bad Dreams), a five time champion who is so committed to winning that he has started using bullets instead of rubber darts. So about halfway through, this finally becomes a serial killer movie. Unfortunately he's using a gun because 1) slasher movies are always more interesting with a variety of edged weapons and 2) yikes, gun on campus stories have not aged well. Anyway, while Susan and Alex live out a noir-tinged flirtation, the missing persons reports are stacking up on the desk at campus administration.

A story Alex's editor urges him to track down, which he absolutely refuses to do until it's almost too late.

Tag is a production stacked top to bottom with recognizable names. We've already seen three of them in the synopsis above, but some of the smaller roles are filled out by Xander Berkeley, Michael Winslow, and even Forest F**king Whitaker. Plus, it was written and directed by Nick Castle, who played The Shape in Halloween. It's slasher royalty directing a cadre of 80's royalty, and it goes horribly, horribly wrong almost immediately.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly where Tag goes wrong, but I'll do my darnedest. I guess a good place to start is the opening credits, a bizarre, poorly executed James Bond parody that promises a movie more in line with what those misleading posters are trying to sell. This wacky, cartoonish quality peeps from behind the curtain from time to time, but never enough that the movie actually commits to being a quirky comedy. There are some genuinely funny moments, like a scene of Gersh disposing of a body, where a woman is in the background talking to her dad about a dude getting her pregnant, or the flock of people rushing the gym when Alex announces there's a free Grateful Dead concert while trying to get somebody off Susan's tail. Or not funny moments that are clearly at least trying to be, like the list of Tag players that includes entries like "E. Presley" and "A. Neuman."

This tone completely fails to gel with the horror elements which are already silly and malnourished, but take themselves quite seriously. Bruce Abbott is solid as a man so obsessed with winning that he's completely relaxed his grip on sanity or morality (I especially love the phone calls he makes to the game master after each kill, where the man encourages him to keep going, not realize he's actually been ending these people's lives), but the game is so ridiculous and complicated in its execution that it's hard to follow what his goals even are in any given scene. And the fact that there is a real game going on makes the first act an exhausting slog through endless fakeout assassination scenes.

At least it afforded Linda Hamilton a chance to prep her Sarah Conner routine.

One interesting thing about the film is that it's very much inspired by the narrative and aesthetic elements of film noir. This is the third tone that completely fails to match the others, so much so that I literally couldn't find an appropriate place to mention it until now. The absolute best way this concept is executed is in Susan's introduction to Alex, where she is lit up by a flashing light outside his blinds, sending harsh rectangles of light slanting across her form in the only shot in the movie that comes even close to being exquisite.

The worst is probably the fact they thought they could get away with including the whole "you know how to whistle, don't you?" scene from To Have and Have Not verbatim. As a whole, this element is the most thoroughly achieved, with enough high key lighting and over-the-top production design to keep the feeling going throughout. But try as Nick Castle might, he's still making a movie where not every scene manages to avoid having the boom mic poke down from the top of the screen. It's a valiant effort, but it needs a little more delicacy to balance everything it wants to be.

It's not a total waste of time. Some of the shots that aren't too enshrouded in shadow to see anything are actually quite pretty. And obviously it's kind of a blast being surrounded by so many familiar faces slumming it with such a ludicrous concept. But being a fan of Terminator movies doesn't entirely carry over to watching Linda Hamilton play with a dart gun for 90 minutes. Maybe 20, at best. 

Side Note I Didn't Have Room for Elsewhere in the Review: A hippie character has a pet rat perched on his shoulder, which he names Ratatouille, inventing Pixar in the process.

Killer: Loren Gersh (Bruce Abbott)

Final Girl: Susan Swayze (Linda Hamilton)

Best Kill: Gersh times his shooting of Nancy with the gunshot beginning a track race. He then pulls her crumpled body through the bleachers and it is disturbing.

Sign of the Times: A bunch of college students are very excited to attend a Grateful Dead concert.

Scariest Moment: Loren chases Susan through the music department, surrounded by the sound of clicking metronomes.

Weirdest Moment: The bodyguards of a particularly intense player (one of whom is Forest Whitaker) have a moment alone, and they mime getting into a car and driving down the hallway.

Champion Dialogue: "I haven't seen you this high since last June when you were hanging out with a communist."

Body Count: 5

1. Dwayne is shot in the shower.
2. Nancy is shot in the butt.
3. Wallace is shot.
4. Security Guard is shot.
5. Gersh is shot and falls off a building.

TL;DR: Tag: The Assassination Game is a weird tonal mishmash that sometimes works but mostly doesn't.
Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 1225

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