Black Belt Horror, by Reed Lackey

“Chuck Norris vs Michael Myers”

It sounds at first like a fan film: the ultimate exercise in absurd alternate universes imaginings. But the difference here is that this film exists. It was made more than 30 years ago.

Directed by Michael Miller, Silent Rage could have housed exactly the tag line above. Because essentially the film combines the elements of schlocky 80s Chuck Norris action films with the horror stylistics perfected by John Carpenter in the first Halloween film.

The premise is that a man under very specific psychiatric care for homicidal urges is killed after one of his insane rages by none other than the local sheriff. However, when his body is brought to the morgue, it falls into the hands of two doctors developing a new regeneration drug which will allow the body to heal itself. They decide – of course – to test the drug on their newly deceased cadaver, not only bringing him back to life in the process, but making it nearly impossible to kill him since his wounds regenerate almost instantly.

Thankfully, the sheriff is none other than Chuck Norris, who – after dispatching a band of thugs from the local bar and wooing the affections of an old flame – must stop the murderous menace before the entire town becomes a graveyard.

If the premise excites you in the slightest, then you’re in for a treat. If you’ve already rolled your eyes in the back of your head, then don’t bother even trying this one. This is the kind of film that is praiseworthy for its B-grade cheesiness and indictable for all of the exact same reasons. Where the film really tests the patience of its audience is with the set up. The characters are two-dimensional and flatly acted with two exceptions: Ron Silver as Dr. Tom Halman, who was originally responsible for the patient-turned-nightmare, and Stephen Furst, who plays the cartoonish and buffoonish but oddly endearing deputy to Norris’s sheriff. Silver is performing well above the demands of either the script or the production and Furst is almost playing as if he’s in a three stooges short. Both of them, in short, feel like they belong in different films. Norris is his usual stoic self (he acts with his fists, not with his face), but we haven’t shown up to see him provide any range other than his roundhouse.

The villain is intimidating enough, played to icy depths by Brian Libby. The character has literally only one line in the entire film (after all, it is called Silent Rage) making the comparisons to Michael Myers all the more substantiated. The film’s most successful elements are surrounding his rampage specifically. The film actually does suspense and terror quite well (likely because it is practically lifting Halloween’s moments shot for shot), but the surrounding elements of character and story development nearly all fall squarely in either the boring or the ridiculous bucket.

The last third of the film, where the killer has claimed nearly every victim he can claim and is pursuing Norris and his girl to finish the job, is exactly the kind of thing you’d want to see from a film like this. The only possible disappointment is if the viewer wanted more of Norris’s trademark martial artistry. It’s not absent from the film, just a bit slim. This is most likely due to the fact that he’s not squaring off against another martial artist. He’s fighting Michael Myers without the mask and jumpsuit. There’s only so many times you can roundhouse kick someone that just keeps getting up and coming after you.

If it sounds like I’m trashing the film, that couldn’t be further from the truth. But the fact is, you have to maintain a certain healthy expectation if you’re going to sit through 90 minutes of this. And the fact is that when the film tries to be funny or dramatic, it mostly fails. When it tries to be scary, it almost always succeeds. And when it asks Chuck Norris to be Chuck Norris, it lands the perfect roundhouse right to the face.

So if you’ve always wanted to see what it might be like to pit your favorite unstoppable killing machine against your favorite 80s action star, look no further than 1982’s Silent Rage. It’s not a great film, but at times it’s pretty great fun.