Monday, August 30, 2010

The Hellbound Fart

You all know Stacie Ponder from Final Girl, don't you? Her Film Club is the cat's pajamas. The lady has an unerring sense of taste, an uncanny nose for schlock, and a unique gift for picking just the right horror flicks month after month.

So I'm giving her a pass on this one, and instead blaming the disgustingly apocalyptic heat.

Because this:


WAS AWFUL!

Hellbound ( 1984 )(1994) is a Chuck Norris movie. It's a movie where Chuck Norris out-woodens the clapboard sets with his acting, where the less-than-unknown supporting cast makes you wonder if they weren't hired purely out of charity, and where any redeeming cheese factor is blighted by the fair-to-middling competence of the direction and cinematography.

This thing is just tedious. But since this is supposed to be a review instead of a heatstroke-fueled grouse, here's the rundown: Chuck portrays a Chicago detective nonsensically named Sgt. Frank Shatter. Presumably Frank Shatter is a moniker designed to confer an acuity for shattering bones, but in my estimation it's what you call a guy who quite frankly shits his pants in the past tense.


Voluminously beshatted and stratospherically waisted PANTS!

To digress just a bit - I just fucking don't get Chuck Norris, I never have. Ok, he's believable as a diminutive bearded fellow with a penchant for flailing about with his lower limbs, but hell, SO WAS MICHAEL FLATLEY back in the day. The guy's head is 30% larger than it ought to be, his shoulders seem scarcely broad enough to support even a normal-sized noggin, and his trunk and musculature befit an octogenarian (funny enough, I liked "The Octagon"). He's never managed charisma or gravitas in any of his roles, and it just amazes me how he acquired this nutty fanbase that somehow sees a badass under that baby beard and those birthing hips.

Ugh. So, it's time to wrap this up - the thermometer's climbing. Chuck Norris and his embarrassing stereotype of a black sidekick are on the hunt for a Satanic toady with ridiculous hair (actually, he's in good company) who wants to gather the pieces of a broken sceptre and raise the Devil. They end up in Israel (because production decided it was cheaper than Iraq, I guess?) and archaeology happens, and the devil dude with the wacky gurning and basso profundo dubbing, and then Chuck + roundhouse kick, + roundhouse kick = THE END.


So much bad hair.


So much bad acting (and obviously, hair).


Let's not and say we did.

This godawful shitpile is worse than all the worst parts of Dead Heat, Lethal Weapon, End of Days and Sister Act and right now I'm so hot and sticky I could cry.


My soiled diapers are still more slimming than Chuck Norris' slacks.

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4 Comments:

At 6:35 PM, August 30, 2010, Blogger Thomas Duke said...

I think Chuck Norris is popular because a hero that beats people up in order to achieve a goal, and always achieves this goal no matter how many people he has to beat up and what type of weapons they are carrying, and he does so without ever registering any concern or emotion or anything. He just speaks his lines in monotone and kicks ass in stereo.

 
At 8:04 PM, August 30, 2010, Blogger Banned In Queensland said...

Great review, spazmo.

After watching Hellbound, I tried to review it but found myself stuck in first gear, continually paraphrasing the rhetorical question "how wooden is Chuck?".

I'm not sure what we did to Stacie to deserve this, but it must have been bad. :(

 
At 8:36 PM, August 30, 2010, Blogger Nick Mullins said...

I love your idea that "shatter" means someone who shat in the past.

I think Norris got popularity in the beginning because of his connection to Bruce Lee. But now, I think people just like to make fun of him.

 
At 4:30 AM, August 31, 2010, Blogger spazmo said...

That's certainly (and ordinarily) true, Thomas, but when a movie pits Chuck Norris against the Forces Of Freaking Darkness, I'm expecting not just stereo ass-kicking, but full-on surround-sound Digital Dolby devastation. What this movie offered was a pair of styrofoam cups tied together with string.

Thanks, BiQ! I nearly gave up my own self a bunch of times. What can you write about something that's not quite bad enough to be sorta good?

Nick - I don't really mean to shit all over Chuck Norris - some of his stuff really takes me back. I saw "The Octagon" at the drive-in and had a fabulous time. Of course, having a cousin with a trunk full of beer taking you to the drive-in when you're sixteen is always going to make for a fabulous time...

 

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