A few weeks ago, while I was writing a review of the action movie Chuck Norris Forced revenge for my other column here at 411, The free B-Movie column, I started to wonder who were the best bad guys who faced the big Chuck during his career of over thirty and thirty years. The bad guy in Forced revenge, Stan Raimondi (Michael Cavanaugh), is pretty badass. I mean, Cavanaugh is not a martial artist, and yet in the film, his Raimondi hits the ass of Josh Randall of Norris. Raimondi doesn’t win the final fight, of course, because Chuck Norris is the star and Forced revenge East a film by Chuck Norris, but who the devil thought, watching Forced revenge For the first time ever, this fat Chuck would get his ass pounded by, well, anyone who wasn’t Bruce Lee or some sort of unstoppable killer? I know not.
But, among the various villains that Chuck’s characters have faced over the years, Cavanaugh was not among the top five. Top ten? Absolutely. But the upper level villains? If there were “honorable mentions” for the proper mentions, the Cavanaugh Raimondi would be there, no doubt. So who, exactly, is among the top five? Which bad guys make the cut and are the cream of the crop?
As I said, I wondered about this when writing the review for Forced revenge, then, after I finished this review, I rated the bad guys I thought were in the top five. In the weeks since then, I changed the list exactly once, moving a bad guy and replacing him with someone else. And now, with this issue of Dumpster Fire, I have decided to write, for posterity, who the hell is on the list of Chuck Norris’ 5 best villains.
And now, without what you have, the Dumpster Fire of the Week: The Top 5 Chuck Norris Movie Villains Edition.
**
Above, the honorable mentions:
5-Morgan Canfield- An eye for an eye: No matter who you are as an actor or a performer, if you ever face Christopher Lee, Christopher Lee absolutely must appear on the list. I mean, come on, this is Christopher fucking Lee. And Lee’s Canfield, although it is not a physical match for Norris’ badass, revenge has fueled ex-cop Sean Kane, sure that hell provides worry and somber obscurity to the proceedings of An eye for an eye. Canfield is a television publisher who happens to be the head of a massive drug management operation that operates out of San Francisco, making it, in many ways, the scum of the Earth, but since it is played by Christopher Lee, on Du haut du malaise et de la décontraction, there is also a kind of elegance to Canfield. It’s not so shocking to find out that he’s the villain of the movie, but at the same time a TV editor is using drugs? How the hell did this happen? And congratulations to Canfield for having the great professor Toru Tanaka as one of his best minions. You can’t really go wrong with this choice. Man is a monster. Sneaky like fucking too.
4-Rawley Wilkes- Lone Wolf McQuade: Played by David Carradine, now late but still great, Wilkes is a fucking shit pistol racer who likes to show how smooth and sophisticated he is. Rawley is really not one of those things. The reality is that he is just a mega rich thug who uses his money and power to get what he wants, and he will do absolutely everything to get what he wants, including killing or assaulting innocent people ( like JJ McQuade’s daughter Sally, played by Dana Kimmell). And think about what Wilkes is doing to Lola Richardson of Barbara Carrerra, killing her family and forcing them to be her lover (see what I mean? Wilkes is a fucking shit). Rawley Wilkes is just a terrible person.
Now, on top of all that, Wilkes is sort of a martial artist and, very early on, wants to fight Norris’ badass Texas Ranger JJ McQuade. McQuade despises (he knows he would kick Rawley’s ass, but he didn’t want to do it in front of Rawley’s “friends” and so on. McQuade just isn’t that kind of guy). McQuade finally faces Rawley at the end of the film in one of the best fights in Norris’ film career. Chuck Norris versus the star of Kung Fu. It’s not Chuck against Bruce Lee, but, hey, “close enough”, right? Anyway, Wilkes starts the big fight by making some sort of wavy shit, and, yeah, the guy ended up owning it because of it. You don’t do that kind of shit by fighting Chuck Norris.
And I’m ready to say it: no one deserves a hand grenade more than Rawley Wilkes, at least not in 1983.
3-Colonel Yin- Missing in Action 2: The Beginning: As the Soon-Teck Oh, now late but still brilliant, shows, Colonel Yin is the sadistic leader of a prisoner of war camp in northern Vietnam which is full of American prisoners of war, including Colonel James Braddock of Chuck Norris . Yin, with his main henchmen (one of them is Professor Toru Tanaka), tortures the prisoners physically and mentally (he forces them to engage in hard work in the opium fields while the colonel essentially runs a secondary activity of supplying raw materials to drug manufacturers, and he burns letters from the house to prisoners of war and tells them that they have been abandoned by their country and their families). And if that weren’t enough, Yin isn’t one of those “I’m just following orders” guys. Yin really likes being a mean and torturing rat bastard. Watch what he does to a guy’s pet chicken. Colonel Yin ends up getting his big match, fighting Braddock in a hand-to-hand contest he loses. He then dies via a remote control explosion, something he so deserved.
2-John Kirby- Silent rage: Played by Brian Libby, John Kirby was one of the scariest slasher killers of the 1980s. Most people don’t consider Kirby to be a slasher killer or Silent rage a slasher movie, but I’m asking those of you who think it’s not a slasher movie to go watch it again. Silent rage East a slasher movie. Before becoming an unstoppable killer due to various scientific experiments, Kirby is essentially a guy with serious mental problems who one day breaks and kills a bunch of random people with an ax. Norris sheriff Dan Stevens arrives and beats the guy to death (well, Kirby gets shot several times too. I bet that shit hurts). When scientists (one of them played by a conflicting Ron Silver and another played by Steven Keats not very conflicted) work on Kirby and bring him back from brain death, Kirby is unstoppable; he can’t be killed, he has a healing factor of sorts, and he seems to have what amounts to super strength. After the new Kirby has killed a bunch of people, including his deputy Charlie (played by Kent “Flounder” Dorfman himself Stephen Furst), Sheriff Dan returns to Kirby again. This time, however, Dan can’t kill Kirby, maybe he can beat him against a draw. Now we all know that Chuck Norris is not going to lose the big final fight and that somehow he is going to beat Kirby because he is Chuck Norris, but there is a real sense in Silent rage this Chuck could to lose. Kirby can’t be killed, so how do you defeat this guy? How do you fight it “for a draw?”
You knock it out and then throw it into a deep, deep well and hope it doesn’t find a way to crawl.
It’s a shame we never got Silence Rage 2. I really wanted to see if John Kirby did well and how the hell he did it. Maybe it can happen someday soon? Chuck is still alive and, as far as I know, Libby too. I bet people would pay money to see it.
**
And the 411 Dumpster Fire of the Week: Chuck Norris Movie Villains Editionfirst place goes to:
1-Mikhail Rostov- U.S.A invasion: As Richard Lynch described, now late but still big, Rostov is a comedian who creates a multinational terrorist gang that infiltrates the United States and engages in various terrorist activities in the hope that the States -United fall. Rostov also wants to kill the badass of the CIA, Matt Hunter (Chuck), because he sees Hunter in his nightmares. Rostov does almost both. He attacks Hunter at his “home” in Florida (he kills Hunter’s Indian boyfriend), then he begins to kill people and detonate shit all over the southeastern United States. American authorities have no idea how to arrest Rostov, so they take Hunter out of retirement and let him do whatever he needs to do to stop the terrorists. And it’s exactly what Hunter does. While Hunter is doing this, Rostov watches a lot of television, pursues his big plan, shoots a guy in the bullets (this is one of Rostov’s favorite moves, sticks a handgun in a guy’s pants and hits an entire clip), and trying not to shit his pants in fear because Hunter is on the case and, maybe, very soon, it will be “Time to Die” (that’s what Hunter told him always said).
Lynch is a fucking demon as Rostov. He is so determined to destroy Hunter and America that he will do almost anything to do it. He doesn’t succeed (he faces Chuck Norris so how the hell could he succeed?) But, man, he’s doing his Commie scumbag better. The man never smiles (in happiness, I mean), never laughs, always has a grunt on his face and is perpetually nervous. He allowed a group of immigrants in a boat to be machine-gunned to death. He blew up a bunch of suburban homes with a rocket launcher. Man is just evil.
Hunter destroys Rostov at the end of the film with a LAWS rocket launcher. Blast this bastard. And he deserves it, for all the shit he made and let happen. If only Hunter could detonate it a second time. Fucking bastard.
**
Thanks for reading. Agree? To disagree? Connect with record and comment. You know you want to, so go for it do it.
Please “like” the free B-Movie column on Facebook!
Oh, and the B movies rule. Always remember this.