Hero and the Terror - 1988

We're entering into that weird area again, where I doubt if my reviews are really worthy of writing.  I'm telling you, it's hard to write movie reviews and keep up the drinking when you've got a wife and a job (plus I briefly held 2 jobs for a little bit there).  I've just not had that much free time, been skipping my exercise and diet too.  In summary, I suck, and I'm kind of glad no one reads my blog.

Hero and the Terror is a movie I saw on TV about 10 years ago when I lived in a different town.  It was a different world then, blah blah, but I was the same person.  Being the same, I had a passing interest in Chuck Norris because I am a big fan of Jean Claude Van Damme and Bruce Lee.  I was feeling like if I liked martial arts and all, I was doing a disservice by not watching anything by Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal.  So I saw this movie was on AMC or something, and I recorded and watched it.

Now I'm going to say right here that I've had these experiences before.  The experience where you see a movie and then later you watch it again and it's just not as good.  It's not like I remembered thinking Hero and Terror was great or anything, but I definitely thought it was alright.  Because it has one major difference between it and several other action movies:  it has a plot, and that plot incorporates horror film elements.

Well, maybe not horror, but suspense or thriller.  So I remembered it as "that action movie that kind of had horror parts" and then when it came on Netflix instant view, I saw it again.  This movie has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, and even though I don't understand how their rating works, I guess that's bad.  It just seems backwards.  If it's 0% rotten, doesn't that mean it's good?  It's not rotten?  Yeah, whatever bro.

Hero and Terror is a movie thing about a hero cop (Norris) who stopped some terror killer (other guy) and then is plagued by memories of it for super long.  He's all whiny and depressed, but moving on with his life and banging his psychiatrist (isn't that like, a huge conflict of interest?)  Then, in the most ridiculous way of escaping prison, the terror escapes.  At first no one is sure if the kills that happen then after are the terror or not.  Norris's cop guy is kinda sure, "has a feeling" but doesn't wanna give in to paranoia.

Yadda yadda yadda, things go on, there's filler, and you know how it ends without me telling you.  One cool thing, they filmed at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.  I used to live within walking distance of that theater, and I once went there to see some lame stand up comedy show with my ex girlfriend.  It was lame.  I didn't get laid for it, either.

What I'm getting at here, and haven't said yet, is that the horror element I grossly over exaggerated in my mind.  Sure, there's some suspense, and there's not much action.  All the kills were all done in a very un-horror way, and I really had over-done the amount of tension and whatever in this flick.  It's more a drama, and less a horror.  But it deserves points for trying, 1.5 points to be precise.