Barbara Mandrell struggles to save a small town from mine fires (and itself) in Burning Rage.

The most depressing thing about Burning Rage, Barbara Mandrell’s dramatic debut, is how contemporary it feels. In this 1984 telefilm, stubborn Americans would rather jeopardize their own safety, and that of their families, than listen to government scientists. There’s even a scene in which menacing goons try to prevent a scientist from conducting important research. They slink off when told, “Now if you have any problems with that you best take it up with the federal government!” These days, such an invitation might elicit a very different response.

Rage opens with Kate Bishop (Mandrell), a federal geologist, hosting a town hall meeting in Vashti, Tennessee. Tasked with educating residents on the coal fires raging underground, she faces a hostile, unreceptive crowd. “Until it burns itself out, the south side of your town is a very dangerous place to be,” she explains, offering to relocate at-risk families to government trailers. “You’ll be safe there,” she pledges.

Tom Wopat, Duke of Hazzard and the stuntman ex-husband on Cybill, is Barbara Mandrell’s leading man in Burning Rage.

The response is mildly reminiscent of Parks & Recreation, absent cries of “Ham and mayonnaise!” “Horse pucky,” spits Nettie McFadden (Mary Grace Canfield), a belligerent grandma. She’d rather argue about coal than aknowledge the more urgent threat posed by the fires. Disputing the government’s assertion that there’s no good coal left to mine, she exclaims, “There wouldn’t be no fire if there weren’t no coal!”

Outspoken gas station owner J.D. Moses (Bert Remsen) yells “I may be ignorant, but I ain’t stupid!” He warns of a conspiracy. When the crowd demands water to be pumped underground to fight the fire, Bishop patiently explains why that wouldn’t work. Carol Kane, of all people, she of Hester Street and The Mafu Cage, expresses her outrage: “Bottom line is, she wants us to move. Well, my place is all I’ve got and I ain’t budgin’, you just go tell that to your big shots in Washington!”

Carol Kane and Mary Grace Canfield don’t trust the government in Burning Rage.

That’s when Tom Silver (Tom Wopat), who works for Vashti’s conservation department, gallantly reminds the crowd, “She’s not the enemy, the coal fire is!” Afterward, he offers to show her the ropes as she goes door-to-door, refining her relocation pitch to those who live in the most dangerous areas. He’s lived in the insular community for eight years and still feels like an outsider there himself.

Aware of the reverence townspeople have for wealthy energy scion Will Larson (Eddie Albert), owner of Vashti’s closed mines, Kate visits him for a chat. She asks if he could try to convince those in danger to move. His expression is not quite reassuring. “Oh, well people in Vashti are used to mining dangers,” he explains. “To them it’s less intimidating than government interference.”

Eddie Albert’s a scheming businessman, and Bert Remsen a longtime foe, in Burning Rage.

“Even if it means their lives?” Bishop asks, confused. “Well, that’s what they’re trying to preserve,” he continues. “Life as they know it.” When the local newspaper sides with anti-government interests, she rages to Tom, “You know what’s wrong with this town? The priorities. Mining somehow seems more important than human lives.” Resistance to Kate’s efforts weakens only after some holdouts experience disaster themselves.

She and Tom find an ally in J.D., whose landowning family has long feuded with Larson’s. To the sheriff’s deputies who eagerly do his rival’s bidding, J.D. fumes, “Keepin’ people workin’ down in holes! And then fire under our feet. And then no jobs at all. Now listen, you dim hillbillies, wise up. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it sure as hell ain’t no giraffe.”

Barbara Mandrell’s hair and Tom Wopat’s rugged masculinity may have started the fire.

There’s more to Burning Rage, of course, than spats about capitalism, identity politics and mineral rights. Take, for example, explosions aplenty, some maudlin cat content on par with Thin Ice, and a bit of minor Eddie Albert nudity. (Albert vigorously sinks his teeth, and nipples, into his role as a scheming businessman.) There’s an unintentionally funny effort to rescue a family that was gassed as they slept; and a memorably moralizing, claustrophobic ending.

And the fire’s not just ranging underground (oh, the tasteless Hazel Dickens jokes I could make!)—Kate and Tom quickly find they share a special connection. She even nudges his truck while parallel parking, in a sort of Hallmark mating ritual. (Mandrell looks uncomfortable during their love scenes but gives an otherwise passable performance.) Alone at his cabin, Tom admits he’s a son of a privilege, a “student activist turned realist.”

“Sad, isn’t it? Our lost innocence,” Kate laments. “Not really,” Tom offers, in my favorite moment of Karol Ann Hoeffner’s teleplay. “The system doesn’t work, at least not as well as I’d like it to. You gotta consider the alternative.” You can count that as another thing people haven’t learned in the intervening decades.

Streaming and DVD availability

Burning Rage is out-of-print on DVD and absent from major streaming platforms, but there’s a serviceable VHS transfer on YouTube. Check out the promo that airs before the feature presentation—Barbara Mandrell was about as hapless at miming violence as Kenny Rogers in Six Pack.

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… But wait, there’s more!

As you may remember from my enchantment with Jaclyn Smith’s Epris advertisement that played during the original broadcast of No Place to Hide, glossy old commercials crack me up. This time around the most notable was Lynda Carter’s very subtle, demure shilling for Maybelline’s Moisture Whip lipstick.