Undiscovered Tomb (2002)

Undiscovered Tomb (2002)

 

Starring: Marsha Yuan, Miyuki Koinuma, Yoko Shimada, Max Zhang, Sik Siu-Lung, Ken Wong
Director: Douglas Kung
Action Director: Kwok Nga-Cheung

 

Indiana Jones rip-offs have been a fairly big thing in Hong Kong (and by extension, the PRC) for quite some time. With thousands of years of recorded history; literature that speaks of numerous dynasties that predate the first archaeological-proven dynasty; a religious tradition that involves to varying degrees Taoism, Buddhism and a large pantheon of gods, demons and heroes; and numerous dynasties with their own distinct cultural quirks, China is just ripe for this kind of movie.

Interestingly enough, not all rip-offs produced in China have actually been set there. Armour of God and its sequel were set in Eastern Europe and North Africa, respectively. The Seventh Curse and Crystal Hunt took their antics to Southeast Asia. Stone Age Warriors, while not quite an Indiana Jones rip-off, does have the same sort of atmosphere and was set and filmed in New Guinea. Bury Me High went to a fictitious country—Viet-non, if you will—for its feng shui fantasy hijinks.

But then again, some movies did take their daring-do to China (or at least close-up to be considered Chinese). The Myth with Jackie Chan alternates between China and India. Michelle Yeoh’s The Magnificent Warriors is set in a fictional desert nation located probably somewhere on the border of China and Russia (or Kazakhstan). The 2015 Mainland film Chronicles of Ghostly Tribe is set ostensibly in China. At least three of Ching Siu-Tung’s 90s adventures—The Raid; Dr. Wai and the Scripture with No Words; and A Terra-Cotta Warrior—are located in China, two of which feature scenes in famous archaeological sites.

The big Indiana Jones rip-off of 2002 was Michelle Yeoh’s The Touch, the first-fruits of her production company that she founded with the bank she made from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. With high production values and a couple of (possibly?) recognizable names from Hollywood, the movie promised spectacle! Action! Romance! What it gave us was one or two okay fight scenes and some dodgy CGI at the end.

Undiscovered Tomb is the low-budget sister to The Touch, coming out the same year and having the same sort of vibe. It is probably a better movie all things considered…or at least in the action department. It has more fights. Better fights. And a climax that doesn’t involve extensive CGI that looked out of date even in 2002—there are some CGI critters that menace our heroes, but they’re not the film’s raison d’être.

The movie revolves around a pair of treasure hunters: Georgia (Marsha Yuan, best known for being Cheng Pei-Pei’s daughter) and Mandy (Miyuki Koinuma). They were orphans who were adopted and raised by Professor Ivy Chan (The Hunted’s Yoko Shimada), an archaeologist who instilled in them a love for all things adventure…and presumably paid for them to have extensive martial arts training, too. After an opening set piece involving the girls stealing an artifact from a museum while an auction is being held on its roof, the Professor gives her adopted daughters their first “real” mission.

Near the China-India border is the titular tomb, which was supposedly built for one of the incarnations of Buddha who had quite possibly discovered the secret to eternal life. The map to the place is apparently found on a pair of tablets. The Professor says she has one tablet, and sends the girls into the forests of Northwestern Yunnan (or Southeastern Tibet) to find the other tablet. The girls hire a guide named Kid (former child actor Sik Siu-Lung, best known for the Shaolin Popey movies) and meet up with another adventurer named Steve (Max Zhang, of Invincible Dragon and The Brink) whom Georgia grudgingly allows to accompany them on the mission. They eventually find the tablet in possession of some stone age tribe, but as they draw closer to the tomb, they will have to contend with an even more dangerous tribe, snakes, creepy crawlers, and a band of mercenaries known as The Wild Wolves.

So, how does the fare on the Indiana Jones rip-off checklist? Let’s see: Adventurers in search of an artifact with vaguely supernatural powers? Check. Rival team of explorers on their tail? Check, although the Wild Wolves don’t really become a problem until the final act. A few traitors along the way? Check. Chinese kid who helps the adventurers? Yes, although Sik Siu-Lung was already a lot older than Short Round was in Temple of Doom. A room full of creatures guaranteed to make one’s skin crawl? Yes. Deadly tribes? Sort of, yes. Deadly traps? Not as much as you’d think. A supernatural finale? Yes, although it’s an impetus to a fight scene instead of an FX (and gore) show. What it’s missing is mainly a set of scenes where the characters have to study maps, books, old pictures, photographs, etc. and solve a puzzle or two to find out where to go. The solution to the mystery is easy enough in the context of the film that you wonder how the tomb lay undiscovered for so long.

This was the first film for lead actress Marsha Yuan, daughter of Shaw Brothers wuxia diva Cheng Pei Pei. Both Marsha and her sister, Eugenia, were getting into films at this point—Eugenia had an important supporting role in Flying Dragon, Leaping Tiger, which came out the same year. Marsha’s career never quite took off: she starred in a few films for My Way Film Company and Girls n’ Guns veteran Sharon Yeung Pan Pan’s production company, but none of them were very notable save the second Shaolin vs. the Evil Dead movie. She also had a bit role as one of the 10 Tigers of Kwangtung in Jackie Chan’s Around the World in 80 Days. It’s sad that she came of age when HK cinema was on the decline and only a few veterans—Donnie Yen, Wu Jing—could really establish themselves as action stars. She has the moves, but she didn’t really seem to have the chance.

Joining her is Yoko Shimada, the award-winning actress best known for playing Mariko in the Emmy Award-winning mini-series Shogun. Shimada was pushing 50 at this point and her career was in a sharp decline in her native Japan, quite possibly due to her (public?) gambling and drinking issues. Less than a decade later, she would appear in a pair of AV films at the age of 57—which on one hand might be flattering, but was also indicative that she really had nowhere to go, dramatically, at that point. And while Shimada was on the skids, co-star Max Zhang (credited as John Zhang) was, like Marsha, starting off his career. It took him about a decade, but he eventually got the recognition he deserved for his fighting skills and became one of the few active action actors in Hong Kong cinema.

The action was brought to you by Kwok Nga-Cheung, a member of the Singapore Creative Stunt Team. Although he worked as a stuntman in a number of high-profile Hong Kong movies—God of Gamblers; Full Contact; Once Upon a Time in China IV—his outings as an action director have been more low-key, with his only notable films being King Boxer and Chinese Heroes. That said, I think he did better here with the action than he did with those movies. While those two outings had their moments, the action here has that grounded kickboxing feel of an 80s action film (or early 90s Girls n’ Guns flick). The wires are mainly reserved for the opening set piece at the museum, but that’s because Marsha Yuan’s character is already suspended from wires in the context of the scene. That is probably the least interesting fight in the movie, mainly thanks to the dark lighting of the museum setting.

Things pick up with a pair of two lengthy duels between Marsha and Max, with the best and most intense one being saved for the pre-climatic scuffle between the two. Max gets to show off more of his awesome footwork sans wires—SPL 2, I’m looking at you. In addition to the 80s-esque fight choreography, the two go at it with weapons. Marsha Yuan gets an antique sword while Max steals a dagger-axe (an ancient pole-arm that was essentially a long pole, or spear, with a dagger-like blade popping out perpendicular to the shaft). The choreography here was quite good. Earlier, there are some brief tussles with some tribesmen and Wild Wolf mercenaries.

The finale is a fight with a re-animated Terra Cotta warrior that brings to mind 70s films like Shaolin Wooden Men and Shaolin Temple. This is an interesting fight, because the statue fights with a limited flexibility, but is naturally assisted by its innate hardness and weight, which makes its simple blows stronger than they would be coming from a human opponent. Our heroes perform all sorts of kicks and jump kicks on it, but they can’t make it budge. And within the context of the film, that’s how it should be. This may not be the most interesting fight in the film, but it is certainly the hardest one, so the movie fulfills its climax obligations handily. If more attention had been given to the adventure in question and the lore behind what our heroines were looking for, this might reach the heights of…the Armour of God movies. As it stands, it’s probably better than The Touch…and Dial of Time.

DragonBlade

DragonBlade (2005)
Chinese Title: 龍刀奇緣
Translation: Dragon Blade Romance

 

Starring: (English version) Daniel Wu, Karen Mok, Doug Baker, Simon Broad, Reuben M.
Director: Antony Szeto
Action Director: Antony Szeto, Douglas Kung, Ji Chunhua, Wu Bin, Xu Xiangdong

 

DragonBlade is an interesting failure. On one hand, it is the first 3D CGI animated film to come out of Hong Kong (and China and Taiwan). Moreover, it is the first martial arts-centric CGI animated film as well, predating Kung Fu Panda by several years. There was an honest attempt to get the martial arts right for the most part, but the film flounders in enough areas that it’s little more than a curio.

We open with our main character, Lang (voiced by House of Fury’s Daniel Wu), training in kung fu under the tutelage of an absurdly buck-toothed old master. Know what they say about beating one’s own children? In any case, we do get some Drunken Master callbacks in this scene, but we really don’t learn anything about our main character other than he knows kung fu.

Jump ahead (some time) to a small house inhabited by a pretty young lady, Yingying (Black Mask's Karen Mok, acting in English), and her good-for-nothing younger brother, Ari. Ari spends his days skateboarding around on a converted sawhorse and doing nothing of interest. Meanwhile, Lang is at school studying under Master Wu (Mike Szuc), an old scholar whose pet bird (voiced by Grant Thatcher) is a mystical fairy creature from the mythical land of Arcadia. According to legend, there is a temple in Arcadia that houses a legendary Dragon Sword, guaranteed to make anyone the strongest warrior in China.

A few days later, the town is attacked by a giant humanoid boar monster, who terrorizes the popular and is more than a match for Sheriff Masu (Reuben M.) and his claymore-class weapon. At the same time, a mysterious turquoise-haired thief is stealing money from the rich to give to the poor. The local magistrate, Lord Ko, is upset that Masu can stop neither the thief nor the monster, so he organizes a martial arts tournament to find a new Sheriff. The winner ends up being Lang, who takes it upon himself to find the thief first. He does find her and duels with her, but she is ultimately rescued by the Boar King. This is when Master Wu’s bird, Bali-Ba, informs him that only the Dragon Sword can defeat the monster.

Much like the kung fu movies of old, the story, written by Sze Yeung-Ping (Tai Chi II and Born to Defence) and Karen Mok’s brother, Trevor, has an odd structure that really pushes the plot into the second half of the movie, while the first half feels more like the story is just spinning its wheels. While that is forgivable in some of those earlier films, a modern fantasy adventure should not have that sort of approach to storytelling.

The story itself could be interesting, but it lacks internal cohesion. If Arcadia is a mythical realm, how does nobody know how to get there when Yingying and Ari can access that place simply by falling down a local cliff? Moreover, how does Lang find is way there so quickly and easily? This particular story hiccup is extremely detrimental to the story, since it robs the film of any sense of wonder or whimsy that it needed to be a good adventure. In A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), there’s a scene in the final act when Joey Wong’s character is abducted and taken to hell. Wu Ma’s swordsman character declares, “We have to storm hell,” and they do so. Immediately. DragonBlade does something similar, where they tell Lang to get the sword from Arcadia and in the very next scene, he’s standing in front of the ominous temple-structure-thingie where the sword is kept. It was forgivable in A Chinese Ghost Story because that detail was a) introduced late in the film and b) it wasn’t an integral part of the story on the whole. Here, the characters have been talking about Arcadia—a strange name for a place in Fantasy China—since the beginning and the character’s arrival there is…casual. It’s like making a Lord of the Rings adaptation where Frodo is told to take the ring to Mordor, and then in the next scene, he’s already halfway up Mount Doom.

The story has pacing and logical issues, and is further underserved by the animation. Well, I won’t diss the animation too much. It’s on the level of a late 90s Playstation 1 cut scene, sort of like a Chinese version of the game Brave Fencer Musashi. There are worse and more infamous animated films out there, like the notorious Rapsittie Street Kids Believe in Santa. The animation isn’t very expressive, but it does the job. That said, the technical issue that really sinks this film is the awful sound mixing. The English dubbing is played too loudly, the sound effects are probably a few decibels lower, and the background music—not very dynamic to begin with—is played so quietly you can barely hear it. Godzilla fans used to moan and complain about that being done in Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla, but this one takes the cake.

Stuntman-turned-director Antony Szeto (who also directed WuShu - The Young Generation) did do his best to make the martial arts sequences believable. He is given credit for “staging” the film’s fight sequences, although Douglas Kung (Chinese Heroes and King Boxer) also lent a hand. Moreover, three Mainland Chinese wushu stylists with film experience themselves—Ji Chunwa (Fong Sai Yuk II and New Legend of Shaolin); Wu Bin (Revengence Superlady and Cutthroat Struggle for Invaluable Treasure) and Xu Xiangdong (Holy Robe of Shaolin Temple and The White-Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom)—were hired as consultants, probably to make sure that the styles being performed looked authentic. The Night Thief character fights using Baguazhang, which looks neat. Master Wu reveals himself to be a master of Taiqiquan. The tournament sequence has a bunch of styles and weapons on display, including one guy who uses the elusive Emei Piercers and another fighter who sports Wolverine-esque claws. I liked those details. All of the fights look nice, the mediocre animation notwithstanding, and they are generally played straight. But really, all things considered, if you need animated martial arts so badly, just watch the Kung Fu Panda movies, or the Street Fighter anime, or Fatal Fury II, or The Jackie Chan Adventures, or some incarnation of the Ninja Turtles series.

 

Cinema Yakuza Vol. 1

 Cinema Yakuza Vol. 1

Here in Brazil, there is a niche DVD distributor called Versátil Home Video. It specializes in all sorts of films, from arthouse to classic programmers to notable directors to horror and genre films. Much of their catalog is divided into collections of four or six movies, based around a genre (Western, Noir, War, New Hollywood, etc.), a director (Akira Kurosawa, Robert Bresson, Federico Fellini, etc.), or even a theme within a genre (Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, etc.).  As Brazil has long had a sizable and strong Japanese population, there has always been a sizable influx of Japanese media into Brazil, from classic cinema to the more pop culture-y stuff, like anime and Tokusatsu. This means that Versátil Home Video has released dozens and dozens of Japanese films in numerous collections, ranging from the works of directors (like Naruse, Ozu, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa) to Samurai films. 

I own a number of these collections and will periodically watch them and post my thoughts about the movies contained therein for your reading pleasure.

Pale Flower (Japan, 1964: Masahiro Shinoda) - A classic Japanese Yakuza film that fits snugly into the "noir style" as defined by my movie critic friend El Santo:

1. Striking black-and-white photography? Check.

2. Set in the criminal underbelly of urban landscapes? Check.

3. Populated by characters who live on the periphery of both society and traditional morality? Check.

4. Cynical attitude toward human nature? Check.

5. Cynical attitude toward the fallibility of man-made institutions? It's located a bit deep in the subtext of the film, but check.

There's not so much of a plot, as the film is something of a character study of an ex-con Yakuza enforcer (Ryô Ikebe) who gets out of prison and falls for a mysterious compulsive gambler (the beautiful Mariko Kaga) during a routine visit to a clandestine gambling house. He becomes obsessed with her, as both find illegal and illicit activites to be only escape from the tedium of modernity.

The film suggests that the rat race of working yourself into a early grave in order to make ends meet--something that countries like Japan and S. Korea excel at--basically kills you on the inside, rendering most of its adherents lifeless husks who can only go about the motions of actually living. While killing, reckless driving and high-stakes gambling are frowned upon by society, it is the only way that some of these people can feel like they're alive. And the film doesn't shy away from reminding us that these things come with a cost.

The last scene is intentionally infuriating, because we learn little about who Saeko (the gambler) is. Just as one character is about to tell another her story, he gets interrupted and the film ends. It has little bearing on the story (or the theme), but the director wetted our appetites before snatching the tray from us at the last moment.

Brutal Tales of Chivalry (Japan, 1965: Kiyoshi Saeki) - Yakuza film from the 1960s, first in a series of nine movies. This one is set in 1947 during the post-War period and is about a Yakuza enforcer (played by Ken Takakura, of Black Rain) returning from military service, only to have the chief position of his clan thrust upon him following the assassination of the former boss.

He wants to follow his predecessor's final wishes to not get involved in violent conflict, just trying to run the local open air market in peace. But the rival gang who runs the neighboring market wants to expand their territory and modernize their racket, for which they want the "good" gang's territory. Our hero is ultimately pushed to the brink by repeated acts of violence committed against members of his gang and finally whips out the katana for some Yakuza revenge.

The film co-stars Japanese heartthrob Ryo Ikebe, whom kaiju fans will recognize from Battle in Outer Space. He plays a Yakuza from another clan in another city who shows up on the good gang's doorstep looking for a place to stay while he searches for his lost sister. That subplot ends in tragedy, leading Ryo to pick up a gun and assist Takakura in the climax. The film ends on a surprisingly hopeful note, all things considered.

 Branded to Kill (Japan, 1967: Seijun Suzuki) - My first Seijun Suzuki film, this is an interesting mix of Yakuza, noir, Surrealist and Absurdist sensibilities. The movie's financial failure got Suzuki fired from Nikkatsu Studios, which he sued for wrongful termination. Although he won the lawsuit, it got him blacklisted from other studios for a good 10 years. It did find a following among film students and other assorted youngsters in the ensuing years and once it reached the West in the early 1980s, it inspired filmmakers ranging from Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch to John Woo and Wong Kar-Wai.

The film opens with a semi-retired hitman (Joe "Cheeks" Shishida--not his actual nickname) arriving in Tokyo with his young Trophy bride. The guy who picks him up is a washed up assassin who wants to find his way back into the good graces of his former clan, and has Shishida, who needs the money, help him on a bodyguard/escort job. They are ambushed by some killers, led by the Number 2 and 3 assassins in the game--Shishido has fallen to number 4 by this point.

After returning home, he gets a job to take out four people, but ends up botching the last one. He falls for the femme fatale who was supposed to help him on this last job, but at the same time, finds himself the target of the Number 1 assassin. From there on out, the movie gets weird...

Like Onimusha and Pale Flower, the black-and-white photography is simply gorgeous. My wife walked in at one point, watched a few minutes of it, and was impressed with the camerawork. The violence is rather strong for a film of this vintage and there are a few memorable kills. If you like potent cinematic imagery that ISN'T accomplished via CGI, this is really something you should watch.

Sympathy for the Underdog (Japan, 1971: Kinji Fukasaku) - Really good Yakuza film from acclaimed director Kinji Fukasaku about an ex-con Yakuza enforcer (Koji Tsuruta, in a too-coo'-fo'-schoo' performance) who gets out of prison and finds the urban crime landscape dominated by what one may call "Big Capital Organized Crime." He's old school, the sort that would walk around with his flunkies shaking down bars, brothels and clandestine casinos for protection money, so he takes his loyal followers to Okinawa, the final frontier for old time Yakuza activities.

Koji Tsuruta is great a Yakuza boss who yearns for the old days of post-war organized crime, as opposed to the Big Corporation model that it was morphing into as Japan grew in economic prominence. He genuinely cares for his subordinates--and the outlier from a former rival gang--and they respond to that with life-on-the-line devotion.

Tomisaburo Wakayama, best known for the Lone Wolf and Cub films, shows up as Yakuza gang leader operating out of Koza (a city on Okinawa), whose trigger-happy brother makes trouble for Tsuruta. There is much ado made about the natural animosity between the Japanese and the native Okinawans: the latter do NOT like the idea of the former coming onto their turf.

A lot of background Americans show up as soldiers and small-time gangsters who help smuggle alcohol into Okinawa in order to make a quick buck with local buyers. I'm guessing that is just part of the dark side of having a military base on Okinawa for all these years.

The Wolves (Japan, 1971: Hideo Gosha) - Long-ish Yakuza melodrama set in the early days of the Showa Era (1926-1989). There are two Yakuza factions negotiating the construction of a railroad by one group (the Enoshi-ya) through the territory of the other (the Kan'non clan). However, negotiations break down after the latter is accused of sabotaging the former, resulting in a blood bath.

Several years later, the Showa Emperor releases hundreds of prisoners in the early part of his reign, which includes two enforcers from the Enoshi-ya (including lead actor Tatsuya Nakadai), one enforcer from the Kan'non, and a mysterious female tattoo artist. A businessman for the Nationalist Party (cameo by Tatsuro Tamba) is negotiating a sort of truce and merger of the two clans under his direction, with the merger meant to be solidified by marrying the daughter of the recently-deceased Enoshi-ya leader to the current head of the Kan'non group. Meanwhile, a pair of women in black kimonos are walking around killing some of the Yakuza with umbrella knives...

This movie is pretty good, if a bit too long for its own good. It also is a bit hard to follow in the beginning, although it does come together in the last act, so you know who's behind what and why, plus the meaning of some of the early scenes. You do have to be patient, though. There are a lot of characters you have to remember and subplots to wade through, however. There's a little bit of Yakuza knife stabbing and a prolonged knife/katana duel at the end, but it's more drama than anything else.

Sonatine (Japan, 1993: Takeshi Kitano) - My first "Beat" Takeshi Kitano film, which I rented in the late 90s expecting the Japanese equivalent of a John Woo film. That's certainly what the trailer promised--Hollywood trailers assume Americans collectively have the attention span of a gnat, so slow and contemplative movies from Asia often have their limited action sequences played up in trailers in order to bamboozle the audience.

Takeshi plays Murakawa, an aging Triad enforcer who's beginning to have second thoughts about entering his Golden Years in the business. He's awfully good at what he does, but the violence has begun to wear down on him, especially after some unexplained job in Hokkaido (Japan's northern-most island) that cost him three of his men. In any case, his boss sends him to Okinawa to settle a feud between two local gangs. Once he arrives, it becomes clear that *someone* wants him out of the game...permanently.

The middle portion of the film is set in the Okinawan countryside/coast, away from the capital city of Naha. It's mainly about Murakawa and his men--those who are still alive--finding ways to amuse themselves while waiting to receive word from Tokyo. This is where the movie becomes more contemplative, comic and even a bit surreal, such as the characters doing a physical reenactment of a paper Sumo wrestler game (sort of a Japanese rock'em-sock'em robots). It's certainly at odds with what you see in the trailer.

Silent Rage (1982)

Silent Rage (1982)

 

Starring: Chuck Norris, Ron Silver, Steven Keats, Toni Kalem, William Finley, Brian Libby, Stephen Furst, Stephanie Dunnam, Joyce Ingle, Jay De Plano, Lillette Zoe Raley
Director: Michael Miller
Action Director: Aaron Norris

 

Silent Rage is a bit of an odd-duck in Chuck Norris’s filmography. It is more horror flick than chopsockey movie, with Chuck Norris playing his typical cowboy hat-wearin’ Texas lawman whose quarry just happens to be a dime store rip-off of Michael Meyers. There are some fights, to be sure, but the film on the whole is more of a “thriller” than “action flick.” Sadly, exploitation director Michael Miller (Street Girls and Jackson County Jail) can’t really commit to a specific genre or tone and the film stands out more as a curio within Chuck Norris’s filmography than a highlight of the same.

It really sucks to be John Kirby (Brian Libby, who had roles in Air Force One and Heat). He obviously has some anxiety disorder bordering on complete psychosis. Living as a boarder in a house run by an obnoxious woman (Joyce Ingle) with equally-obnoxious children is obviously exacerbating the problem. As much as his doctor, Tom Halman (Timecop’s Ron Silver), wants to help, the brain meds he’s been prescribing to Kirby have reached the limit of their usefulness. One day, a particularly nervous Kirby drops spills the pills and simply snaps. He takes an axe to his landlady and her husband while the kids are out. When Sheriff Dan Stevens (Chuck Norris) come to investigate, Kirby tries to cut him down, too. Although Stevens ultimately subdues and arrests the wacko, Kirby breaks free and attacks the deputies before they finally fill him full of lead and bring him down.

The hospital that Kirby is brought to doubles as a research institute, of which Halman is a part. Although Kirby is still “alive” after the doctors extract the bullets from him, there is no registered brain activity from the poor sucker. That’s when Halman’s superior, Dr. Philip Spires (Steven Keats, of Death Wish and The Friends of Eddie Coyle), has an idea: why not try some of their research medicines on him? If they restore brain activity to a vegetable, it may be one of the greatest medical breakthroughs of all time. If not, then they can brush off their failure as Kirby having succumbed to multiple gunshot wounds and Sheriff Stevens would be none the wiser. Dr. Halman is against this sort of unethical approach to experimentation, but Spires goes behind his back and does it anyway. Lo and behold, the drug they administer to Kirby not only restores his brain activity, but gives him a Wolverine-esque healing factor, too!

So, while Dr. Spires and his colleague, Dr. Vaughn (William Finley, of Sisters and The Phantom of Paradise), are playing God, Dan Stevens it out ridding the town of unruly bikers and trying to win back an old flame, Allison Halman (Toni Kalem, who did most of her work on television). Halman is Tom’s younger sister and a receptionist at the hospital her brother works at, although there is never any conflict of interests there. Eventually, Kirby regains full consciousness and picks up his killing spree where he left off. Unfortunately for Sheriff Stevens, he’s now practically invincible.

The problem with Silent Rage is that after an exciting opening scene—two axe murders and prolonged scuffle between Brian Libby and Chuck Norris—the film flounders around for the next forty minutes until it finally finds its focus again. The subplot involving the biker gang and their turning the local bar into an orgy of female toplessness—I still get wowed by seeing nudity in a Chuck Norris film, considering his later conversion to born-again Christianity—exists mainly to throw in some sexploitation and a fight scene so the audience doesn’t get bored. The same can be said about the subplot involving Sheriff Dan and Allison, which also gives us some R-rated sex and helps pad out the running time until THINGS GET REAL in the second half. We don’t even get any tension between Dan and Dr. Halman; it’s just Chuck Norris and his super-hairy chest in a topless sex montage. I suppose that gave audiences of 1982 their money’s worth at the time, but it does rob the movie of much of its forward momentum.

Things do pick up once Tom Kirby sneaks out of the hospital and starts killing once again. Those scenes are genuinely suspenseful, although they often lack the exploitively violent edge that actual slashers possessed. Kirby is an ersatz Michael Meyers (much of the third act takes place in a hospital, like Halloween 2), to be sure, and he does kill quite a few people, but you almost wish that director Miller would have gone the full nine yards in making it as brutal as it could be. He had already met the horror movie standard for bare boobies on display, why not own up to what he’s doing and make it a gorefest, too? Silent Rage is no more violent than your typical martial arts potboiler of that time, and for one that veers into slasher territory for much of its running time, you’d think they’d could have gone further.

The martial arts action is limited, as might be expected for a film like this. The first encounter between Dan Stevens and John Kirby is less tang soo do showcase and more brawl. The showstopper is the bar fight with the biker gang, which is one of Chuck’s best group fights, period. He does some great kicking in this scene, including a number of double kicks. During his final showdown with Kirby—who has come back to life multiple times by this point—the two have a fight scene in a forest, with Chuck unleashing his skills while Libby just takes it. Chuck’s moves are fine, although some viewers may lament the lack of an equally-talented adversary. That rather sums up the film the whole: some individual moments are fine, but the lack of a talented director keeps this from being either a slang-bang action movie or brutal, scary horror film. It doesn’t commit to one, so it ends up not being much of anything.