towering rage

"My dunderfunk, sir—as elegant a dish of dunderfunk as you ever see, sir—they stole it, sir!"

"Go forward, you rascal!" cried the Lieutenant, in a towering rage, "or else stop your whining. Tell me, what's the matter?"

"Why, sir, them 'ere two fellows, Dobs and Hodnose, stole my dunderfunk."
(White-Jacket)

“Can’t sell his head?—What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling me?” getting into a towering rage. “Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?”
(Moby-Dick, Chapter 3)

... that an innocent brother, (or sister,) being ruthlessly slain, and the baffled lady-mother left (unceremoniously) full of towering and demonstrative rage,— the imprisoned hero himself sank overwhelmed,—or in a well-acted counterfeit of death....
("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," March 1853)

In each instance the context is dramatic and comic, the rage lightly treated as part of the running joke.