A FORCE OF ONE (1979)

  Chuck Norris and the police vs. a drug-dealing, kung fu fighting killer of cops(and other martial artists). Just what you would expect from a Norris flick of this era. The pace is a bit slow which might lead to some drowsy viewing. The payoff end fight is decent though. 

 The big baddie here, Bill "Superfoot" Wallace was John Belushi's bodyguard. The #2 baddie, Ron O'Neal was, of course, SUPER FLY.

 

                                           Known in Germany as THE BULLDOZER:

and in Portugal as FIGHT OF GIANTS:

SLAUGHTER IN SAN FRANCISCO (1974)

  Chuck Norris started out his film career making kung fu flicks in Hong Kong, including most famously with Bruce Lee in 1972's WAY OF THE DRAGON. This is an example of one of those early badly-dubbed movies and just like the Lee movie Norris plays a bad guy here. In fact he's the main, very hairy, bad guy who happens to be named Chuck Slaughter, which is pretty disappointing  if you were expecting any type of actual slaughtering going on the movie. Fairly mediocre stuff here with Don Wong as our hero cop who is sadly not anything close to Bruce Lee in the charisma department. AKA YELLOW FACED TIGER, KARATE COP and CHUCK NORRIS VS. THE KARATE COP 

 The original language version of this is something like 18 minutes longer. Not sure how much that could possibly improve things though. 

THE HITMAN (1991)

 I'm way more familiar with Chuck Norris' 70s and 80s output and I always figured the 90s was a good time to tap out of his action flicks. This one wasn't terrible though even if it is about as simplistic as they come. They do manage to throw quite a bit of blood into a few scenes(mostly the one where Norris himself almost gets offed!) which I was a bit surprised by. The story itself deals with Norris being double-crossed and left for dead and then returning undercover as a Mafia hitman. It's kind of cool to see Norris at least being a pretend bad guy in a few scenes and makes me think of how refreshing it would have been if he went all the way and played a villainous role. Sadly I don't believe that ever happened outside of his appearance in RETURN OF THE DRAGON and his great fight with Bruce Lee but I'll keep on fantasizing. You get the typical good guy Norris here though including Chuck beating up a racist, befriending a black kid and blowing up the bad guys into little bitty pieces. Not terrible for something made in the 90s.

MISSING IN ACTION (1984)

 Chuck Norris makes America great again way before that was even a thing. Also before Rambo went back to Vietnam, Norris (as James Braddock) was already there to rescue all the M.I.A.'s left behind by our shitty government. As an action film there's the one iconic image of Norris ascending out of the water, like Jesus or something, and mowing down some Vietnamese bad guys that will stick with you and then a bunch of patriotic wish-fulfillment stuff to make Americans feel better about having lost a war. It does all get a bit monotonous by the end with all the exploding huts and dumb story but it was popular enough at the time to spew out 2 sequels(though technically MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING is a prequel that was originally supposed to be the first movie but after seeing how crappy it was the producers decided to release the original Part 2(which was filmed immediately after Part 1) first).




                         Known in Italy under the amazing title of THUNDER RUMBLE!!:

THE OCTAGON (1980)

 My favorite Chuck Norris movie is that one where he fights the Michael Meyers-esque killer. Compared to that, this here(where he just fights a bunch of ninjas) is a bit on the generic side. You do get Lee Van Cleef, who plays a good guy but shoots a lot of people anyway, but he's not really in it enough. Also Ernie Hudson(aka the black guy from GHOSTBUSTERS) shows up briefly if you don't blink. I've been working my way through a few Norris titles lately but his films never really thrill me as much as the Bronson stuff from the same era. The fight scenes just seem flatter even though Norris is obviously an actual martial artist and the runtime here gets to feeling a bit long by the time it's all over. This one is clearly for hardcore Chuck completists only.



            This is kind of a weird poster since it doesn't have Norris' mug anywhere on it!:

Known in France as THE RAGE OF THE RIGHTEOUS!:

                                                          Chuck Norris Fest!!:

BREAKER! BREAKER! (1977)

 Truckersploitation with Chuck Norris as a trucker who ends up karate-ing his way through a whole town full of rednecks and retards after they kidnap his little brother brother, who's also a trucker and steal his truck. There's also a big climax where a whole convoy of 18-wheelers go apeshit and totally demolish a town and a helicopter. Pretty decent time-waster that gives you exactly what you would think with that truck-driving twist that was so popular in the late 70s. Hard to imagine any sort of mainstream movie today glorifying the working class but the 70s were pretty big on that concept and that's another reason they were a much better decade. The big end fight with Mr. Norris is shot very much to look and sound like a spaghetti-western with fists and kicks substituting for bullets which was a little unexpected. The big bad guy here is the guy(George Murdock) who was great as the fat Mafioso fellow in THE MACK. Coulda maybe used a little nudity and maybe some bloodshed but I guess Chuck was a little too classy for that even back in the good ol' days.

SILENT RAGE (1982)

 Since I'm such a big fan of the 'Charles Bronson vs. a psycho-killer' flick 10 TO MIDNIGHT I figured I had to check out this 'Chuck Norris in a slasher movie' extravaganza. While I do generally love Bronson more than Norris I'm glad I gave this a chance since it's super-slasher movie-like basically answering the question of what would happen if we threw Norris into the middle of  a HALLOWEEN film. There's even a sci-fi element which grants the killer super fast recovery powers which explains things a lot more than any of the FRIDAY THE 13TH movies ever did about Jason's unstoppable ass. They even leave things open for a sequel at the end which sadly never happened. Biker barroom brawls, tattooed boobs, kung fu and Flounder from ANIMAL HOUSE as Norris' bumbling sidekick deputy. This might be my new favorite Norris flick!