Chuck Norris Horror Movies: serial killers and Satan’s emissary

I really enjoy watching the movies of our old-school action stars – and since horror is my favorite genre, I’ve always found it especially entertaining when action movies would pit a hero against a villain that felt like they were straight out of a horror movie. This is why Cobra is my most-watched Sylvester Stallone movie and why I’ve always been fascinated by Predator.

This is also how it turned out that, while we have two “Best Chuck Norris Movies” lists (one by Emilie Black and one by Chris Bumbray), my favorite movie starring the late, great martial artist didn’t make it onto either one. Sure, I love Lone Wolf McQuade, but my favorite Chuck Norris movie has always been the 1982 sci-fi action horror film Silent Rage. And that wasn’t the only horror-minded movie Norris made. So while many of us are marathoning his filmography in the wake of his passing, I wanted to shine a light on the often overlooked Chuck Norris Horror Movies.

SILENT RAGE (1982)

Silent Rage really has everything you’d want to see in the average Norris vehicle, with the action star playing a Texas lawman who uses his martial arts skills on rowdy criminals, but it’s also a slasher movie with elements of a mad scientist film. Some fans refer to this movie as “Chuck Norris vs. Michael Myers,” and it’s a fitting description, even if the killer in the film is no Michael Myers at the end of the day.

Directed by Michael Miller from a screenplay by Joseph Fraley, the movie starts off with a man named John Kirby (Brian Libby) having a mental breakdown and going on an axing spree. His breakdown also, somehow, gives him superhuman strength, which he demonstrates by breaking handcuffs and kicking the door off a squad car. The murder spree is cut short when Kirby is gunned down and rushed to the hospital, where his psychiatrist, Tom Halman (Ron Silver), also a surgeon, works to save his life. The hospital specializes in genetic engineering, and a couple of the doctors (Steven Keats and William Finley) propose giving their patient an experimental formula to help him recover faster. Halman strongly objects, but the others go ahead with their experiment, giving Kirby a healing factor almost as good as Wolverine’s.

Norris plays local sheriff Dan Stevens. Thinking Kirby is dead, he focuses on engaging in some relationship drama, getting back together with his former flame Alison (Toni Kalem), who happens to be Halman’s sister. When he and Alison aren’t busy having sex all over his awesome house with its beautiful view, he also finds some time to do some run-of-the-mill police work with his bumbling, dim-witted deputy Charlie (Stephen Furst), like knocking the hell out of some disagreeable bikers. It’s a good thing he did, because the sex scenes in this movie were so poorly received that Norris chose not to do such scenes in his future movies. This one takes its time in the middle stretch, but you know where it’s going. Before Stevens and Alison can head off to his cabin in the mountains (being the sheriff in this town must pay very well!), Kirby has regained consciousness and resumed his killing spree – now fully evolved into a silent slasher wearing a silver jumpsuit. Skulls are crushed, necks are broken, and Stevens has to put a stop to it.

I’ve always found Silent Rage to be very entertaining. It’s a lot of fun to watch Chuck Norris take on a Michael Myers knock-off. There could have been more action and mayhem and less relationship stuff, but the balance still works well enough that this is my number one go-to Chuck Norris movie.

HERO AND THE TERROR (1988)

Directed by William Tannen from a script Michael Blodgett wrote with Dennis Shryack (based on Blodgett’s novel), Hero and the Terror sees Norris take on the role of LAPD Detective Danny O’Brien, who is plagued by nightmares of his confrontation with serial killer Simon Moon, a.k.a. the Terror (Jack O’Halloran), a maniac who liked to murder women and store their bodies in an abandoned amusement park. Since their confrontation ended with the Terror being apprehended, the media has dubbed Danny a hero… but he doesn’t feel like one.

While Danny is focused on dealing with L.A. crime and co-habitating with his pregnant girlfriend Kay (Brynn Thayer) – who he met because she was his therapist during this ordeal – the Terror manages to escape from prison and take up residence in a hidden room inside a movie theatre. He starts killing people again, storing the corpses in his secret lair… and, of course, Danny is the cop who is able to deduce where the Terror is hiding these days, setting the stage for a climactic rematch.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Hero and the Terror because this type of subject matter is right up my alley, but the movie doesn’t have quite as much horror edge to it as Silent Rage did (although the scenes of Terror attacking people and snapping their necks are pure horror scenes), and it has worse pacing issues. While there are a couple of typical ‘80s cop movie action moments, the majority of the 96 minute running time is taken up by dialogue scenes. Terror isn’t claiming enough victims and Danny isn’t kicking enough asses, but there’s plenty of talking going on.

The best thing about Hero and the Terror is the cast. One of Danny’s friends/co-workers is played by Cannon Films regular Steve James, the Mayor is played by Ron O’Neal, Jeffrey Kramer from Jaws is around, Branscombe Richmond shows up as a random criminal, and Billy Drago shows up as the Terror’s doctor.

HELLBOUND (1994)

Directed by Aaron Norris from a script crafted by Ian Rabin, Anthony Ridio, Brent V. Friedman, and Galen Thompson, the supernatural horror action movie Hellbound comes off like it doesn’t want to get started. First, there’s a Star Wars-style text crawl warning us about Satan’s emissary, Prosatanos. Then we get an interminably long opening sequence that’s set in the 1100s and shows us that King Richard the Lionheart (David Robb) and his knights stopped Prosatanos (Christopher Neame) before he could make a child sacrifice, imprisoning him in a tomb and smashing his scepter. The pieces are put in the care of rabbis across the globe… but after Prosatanos is awakened by tomb raiders in the 1950s, he sets out to reassemble his scepter and set evil loose upon the world.

We’re nearly 15 minutes into the movie before we catch up with Chuck Norris in 1990s Chicago, where he plays Sergeant Frank Shatter. After Prosatanos tears out a rabbi’s heart and tosses a prostitute played by Zoe Trilling of Night of the Demons 2 through a window (she lands on Shatter’s car), Shatter and his annoying comic relief partner Calvin Jackson (Calvin Levels) set out to bring this guy to justice – an endeavor that brings them into contact with an antiquities expert named Leslie (Norris’s Walker, Texas Ranger co-star Sheree J. Wilson), who could have simply given us the Prosatanos legend exposition in a couple of lines of dialogue, and then sees the pair of Chicago cops heading off to conduct their investigation in Israel.

There are moments when the film tries to build up the danger of Prosatanos and it occasionally shows off horrific moments like the heart-rip and the prostitute-toss, but the dark moments are greatly overshadowed by goofy scenes with cringe-inducing humor. There’s Shatter and Jackson getting chewed out by their extremely pissed-off captain, dealing with a speedy taxi driver, interacting with a child pickpocket Bezi (Erez Atar), etc. It never really works and it’s often pretty bad.

Before revisiting Hellbound for this write-up, I had only watched it one time, rented on VHS when it was first released to home video. For thirty years, it stuck in my mind as one of the most laughably bad movies I had ever seen… and for me, “laughably bad” can often be a compliment, because I love watching bad B-movies. This one is just a bit too painful to sit through for my taste.

Norris made a really cool serial killer movie with Silent Rage and a decent one with Hero and the Terror, but his visit to the world of supernatural horror is a disappointment. It’s worth checking out if you’re in the mood for something bad, though. Maybe you’ll get more entertainment out of it than I do.

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