{"id":6719,"date":"2024-10-23T13:47:59","date_gmt":"2024-10-23T17:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6719"},"modified":"2024-10-23T13:47:59","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T17:47:59","slug":"hellbound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/23\/hellbound\/","title":{"rendered":"Hellbound"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Hellbound <\/strong>(1994) \u00a0 \u00a0Cannon\/Action-Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 95 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Aaron Norris\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Brent Friedman and Donald G. Thompson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: George S. Clinton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Joao Fernandes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 21, 1994 (Los Angeles, CA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Chuck Norris, Calvin Levels, Christopher Neame, Sheree J. Wilson, David Robb, Cherie Franklin, Jack Adalist, Erez Atar.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hellbound<\/strong>\u00a0marks the end of an era. It\u2019s not only the last of the Cannon movies; it\u2019s the last to receive theatrical distribution. It never made it to Philadelphia even though one theater advertised it as a coming attraction for nearly a year.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In addition, it\u2019s the next-to-last theatrical film starring martial artist Chuck Norris. In it, he plays a Chicago cop going up against an evil supernatural being. Sounds like a real winner, right? That\u2019s what I thought when I first saw the trailer for Hellbound<\/strong> in late \u201993. I had to wait until April \u201995 when it came out on video to feast my eyes on\u00a0it. I didn\u2019t like it at the time, but after watching the recent documentary about Cannon Films, I felt like giving it a second chance. I watched it with lower expectations this time and it paid off. It\u2019s as silly as all get-out, but it\u2019s kind of fun if you\u2019re willing to accept the ludicrous premise. Directed by Aaron Norris (Missing in Action III), it\u2019s a weird mixture of cop flick and supernatural thriller. It\u2019s an uneasy blend to be sure, but I\u2019m giving it a lot of leeway since it\u2019s a Cannon production.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Norris plays Frank Shatter, a Chicago cop on the trail of a demonic being called Prosatanos played by Christopher Neame (Steel Dawn). He and his partner Calvin Jackson (Levels, Adventures in Babysitting) stumble onto the demon after discovering the body of a rabbi with his heart torn out in a seedy hotel. It\u2019s not the first time Prosatanos, an emissary of Satan, has walked among us. He was vanquished by Richard the Lionhearted in 1186 and sealed in a tomb for nearly 800 years until grave robbers unwittingly release him. He\u2019s searching for the nine pieces of a scepter that will allow him to bring about Armageddon. Shatter and Jackson are summoned to Israel to answer questions about the rabbi\u2019s murder. Even though the local police chief expressly forbids them from plying their trade on his turf, they continue their investigation which brings them into contact with an archeology professor named Lockley, also played by Neame.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Chuck gets a romantic interest in the form of Leslie (Wilson, Fraternity Vacation), assistant to Professor Lockley. As part of the ceremony, he needs to make a human sacrifice. Guess who that sacrifice will be. How else would Chuck have somebody to rescue at the end?<\/p>\n

\u00a0From start to finish,\u00a0Hellbound<\/strong>\u00a0is pure hokum. How seriously can you take a movie that contains lines like \u201cThe scepter is the key to the gates of Hell.\u201d? That the actors deliver such lines with straight faces is an accomplishment in and of itself. The movie opens with a Star Wars-style text crawl explaining the prophecy that a warrior from the West will ultimately defeat Prosatanos. Nice to see\u00a0Hellbound<\/strong>\u00a0get off to such a laughably dumb start.<\/p>\n

\u00a0We already know what kind of an actor Norris is; therefore, the makers give him several opportunities to show off his martial arts skills. What he lacks in one area, he makes up for in another. Levels doesn\u2019t so much play a character as he does a character type, the comic relief sidekick. He\u2019s no Steve James, but he\u2019ll do. As Lockley\/Prosatanos, Neame hams it up to the max. Wilson is okay as the only significant female character.<\/p>\n

\u00a0But who really cares about the acting in a movie like\u00a0Hellbound<\/strong>? How is it in other areas? It has a few decent fight scenes, cheesy special effects and an engaging storyline. It\u2019s darker in tone than any of Norris\u2019 other movies. It\u2019s actually strange to see him in a horror movie; that is, unless you recall Silent Rage, the 1982 movie that pitted him against a revived-from-the-dead psychopath.\u00a0Hellbound<\/strong>\u00a0was shot entirely in Israel, even the Chicago scenes. That explains why we don\u2019t get any shots of the usual Windy City landmarks. It\u2019s a goofy one, but no more so than any other low-budget supernatural thriller from the previous two decades. It is the only one starring Chuck Norris so it has that going for it.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hellbound (1994) \u00a0 \u00a0Cannon\/Action-Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 95 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Aaron Norris\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Brent Friedman and Donald G. Thompson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: George S. Clinton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Joao Fernandes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 21, 1994 (Los Angeles, CA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Chuck Norris, Calvin Levels, Christopher Neame, Sheree J. Wilson, David Robb, Cherie Franklin, Jack Adalist, Erez Atar.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,27,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-b-movies","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Hellbound-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6719"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6957,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719\/revisions\/6957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}