Invasion U.S.A.

Prepare for muscles, mustaches and mayhem during CANNON FILMS FOREVER Month at Mondo Mondays, celebrating awesome ‘80s action flicks from the studio that blew up the world! Cannon Films closed up shop in 1994, but 30 years later, their legend lives on!

“No one ever thought it could happen here …”  Communist terrorists invade America and Chuck Norris kills them with extreme prejudice in the brain-blasting Cannon action extravaganza, Invasion U.S.A.! An evil Soviet super-agent named Mikhail Rostov (Richard Lynch, The Sword and the Sorcerer) leads an invasion of terrorist guerrilla squads who, after landing in southern Florida during the Christmas season, spread throughout the U.S. and start shooting bazookas into suburban homes, inciting riots, attacking parades and planting bombs in churches and on school buses. Soon martial law descends as the country sinks into chaos. Cue heavily-mustached, retired CIA American super-agent Matt Hunter (Norris), who is living a peaceful life in the Florida everglades, zipping around on his swamp boat and wrestling alligators and old men. When the government tries to get him back into the game, Hunter wants no part of it, until the terrorists blow up his swamp house and kill his best friend John Eagle, at which point our reluctant hero, equipped with a huge pick-up truck and a rocket launcher, unleashes the full “Chuck Norris Shock and Awe” treatment on the terrorists in an effort to save America (or rather, Miami, which in this movie stands in for the rest of the country) from a Red Dawn-esque Communist takeover. Eventually, Hunter and Rostov must face off in the ultimate macho pissing contest, with Rostov in full-body black leather, Hunter in an unbuttoned shirt and painfully tight blue jeans, and the freedom of every U.S. citizen hanging in the balance. A big, blustery, paranoid Cold War Reagan-era action flick high on dead bodies and low on logic and common sense, laden with ridiculously over-the-top violence, shopping mall battles, exploding cars and campy villains, not to mention Chuck Norris (who co-wrote the screenplay) at his most bizarrely stoic, Invasion U.S.A. is one of the ultimate ‘80s Cannon films, from the director of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter! (Dir. by Joseph Zito, 1985, USA, 107 mins., Rated R)