Invasion USA (1985)

This is my review for the Chuck Norris Ate My Blog blogathon. Enjoy.

What is this? ANOTHER 1985 movie review? I better scramble into my panic room quick....

Just hold on, dear reader. I'm sure that many of you already know my seething, boiling hatred for just about everything to do with 1985. That's what one of my favorite series on here is about, after all!

But just so we're clear, it's not as if all of 1985 was a black, polluted wasteland of gruel, vomit and the shuddering corpses of the dying littering a post-apocalyptic landscape of desolation and despair.

...98% of it, maybe, but not all.

In spite of the fact that there was music from one-hit wonder groups like Ready For The World and Autograph, TV introducing then taking away "Misfits of Science" and "Sesame Street" introducing then KEEPING Elmo (!!), Phil Silvers dying and - in a cruel happenstance - Ashley Tisdale being born, there was a bright spot....

Chuck Norris.

Just saying his name makes a bad day better, gives you a feeling of relief.

Try it: Chuck Norris.

Ahh....

Anyway, Chuck was featured in three pretty darned good movies this year: Missing In Action 2: The Beginning (a sequel, yes, but a sequel to a Chuck Norris movie, so regular rules don't apply), Code of Silence (a movie way too good to be reviewed here) and, our subject for today, Invasion USA - a movie that was so sharp and hard and to-the-point that Russia has yet to dare invade our shores.

They may have WMD, but we have CN.

As it goes: Russia is hot to invade our shores by way of Florida, so they smuggle cocaine into Cuba by use of illegal immigrant boats and fund their invasion thus, which is headed by Rostov, a soldier so vile and vicious that he had to be played by Richard Lynch. And before you know it, the Russkies are subverting American culture by blowing up picturesque neighborhoods, shopping malls, south American block parties, school buses and other wholesome institutions.

Those Reds never figured, however, on the intervention of one Hunter (Chuck), an ex member of "The Agency" (What Agency? Don't ask.) who single-handedly takes out whole armies of Russkie soldiers and would-be saboteurs with his shoulder-mounted uzis, a rocket launcher, his fists and feet, and his truck. He works alone, of course, and all the better, since no partner would be able to keep up with him - besides which they'd end up getting killed before long anyway.

Rostov has a long-standing hate-hate relationship with Hunter, since he'd foiled one of Rostov's assassination attempts long ago and threatened that the next time he saw him, it would be "time to die". Hmm...nice tough-guy line. So what does Rostov do to make sure his destruction of America will succeed? Leads a platoon of rocket-launching Russkies into the Florida Everglades to rocket-launcher Hunter into oblivion. They get his shack real good, but naturally miss their intended target. This just makes Hunter more mad than he usually looked, and he is then off after everyone who dares tread his country and blow 'em up real good.

This was directed by Joseph Zito, whom many well-read individuals will recognize as a director of such classics as 1981 mad slasher sleeper The Prowler, almost definite later-on review topic Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and, coincidentally, 1984 Chuck masterpiece Missing in Action. As a watermark of Zito's movies, whenever something isn't getting bled to death or shredded, it gets blown up.

With Invasion USA, all three happen.

Writer James Bruner, a past master of Chuck Norris scripts, wrote along with Chuck himself and his little brother Aaron, all of whom infused the goings-on with about as much testosterone overload as possible without dressing everybody in loincloths and having them ride T-Rexes into battle. But an added benefit of having people write the script that are so familiar with the inner-workings of our boy is that the dialogue is so instantly quotable.

Who wouldn't love to get away with looking a jerk in the face and calmly grunting, "I'll hit you with so many rights you'll be begging for a left"?

...in Chuck's case, though, he could back it up.

And does he ever in Invasion USA: so many bad guys get punched, kicked, stabbed, threatened, thrown, shot, blown up, dropped down and disposed of that this is like a PSA for Anti-Communism:

Hey, if you embrace Communism, we're gonna tell Chuck Norris on you. Don't be a Communist. Thank you.

The thing is, the bad guys don't really stand a chance, and about 99.5% of anyone who watches a Chuck Norris movie already knows that going in. All the bad guys are, honestly, are targets being set up in an arcade, ready to be taken down.

Even Lynch, a veteran actor who has actually been in some decent movies like The Gene Hackman classic Scarecrow, Roy Scheider cop drama The Seven-Ups and William Peter Blatty mind-trip The Ninth Configuration, didn't have any casting agents look at him as creatively as they used to and ended up playing a bad guy in more films than anything else. Fortunately for Invasion USA, his Russian accent is as authentic as his cold, steely demeanor...even if every person watching knows in their heart of hearts that he doesn't stand a chance.

A word about the only female who dares anything resembling equal screen-time with the two male leads. Melissa Prophet got her start in Telly Savalas' directorial debut Beyond Reason and garnered small parts in b-movie movies like this (as well as Time Walker, which makes perfect sense), and here plays a photographer for a...well, they never really say if she's working for a magazine or newspaper or that she's a freelance or what. She's just a shutterbug, I guess. But she always manages to show up at the right time to take pictures of the violent goings-on. And she's pretty grumpy about the whole thing, too. Even when Chuck saves her life at one point, she doesn't seem very appreciative - even going so far as to yell at Chuck and throw a trash can lid at him. That's gratitude for you...maybe it's a feminism thing?

In the end, however, who watches a Chuck Norris movie for the acting? Especially a Golan-Globus production such as this, whose main purpose in existing is to make money. Which it did. Buckets. A $10 million budget brought back a lot more, thanks to the legions of fans that our boy has. Do they care whether or not he's taken any acting classes? Nope, not as long as he keeps the world safe for democracy.

So it is without hesitation or second-guessing that I submit to you, dear reader, the fact that Invasion USA is one of the - if not THE - best of 1985.

And if you can hear that coming from me, then you should listen.