#Joseph Zito

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The Prowler (1981)

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The Prowler (1981) (The Prowler)

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Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

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Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

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Lisa Freeman in Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

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Invasion U.S.A., Spanish lobby card. 1985 Submitted by @videorecord

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Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) // dir. Joseph Zito

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Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

[brokehorrorfan]

Theater of Creeps has released a Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter poster designed by Shane Murphy. The 11x14 matte print costs $15.

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The Prowler (1981) Dir. Joseph Zito

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Invasion U.S.A. (1985) // Dir. Joseph Zito

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On July 30, 2007, The Prowler was released on DVD in Finland.

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Invasion U.S.A., Spanish lobby card. 1985 Submitted by @videorecord

[80smovies]

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Movie Review | Invasion U.S.A. (Zito, 1985)

As someone who doesn’t celebrate Christmas and finds a lot Christmas cheer a tad off-putting, you’d think I’d love a movie that depicts as close to a literal War on Christmas as you get in a mainstream motion picture. But having seen this a couple of times, I didn’t like it previously and still don’t like it. I think I have two fundamental problems with this movie.

One, I don’t inherently have a problem with graphic violence or high body counts, but I do struggle when this much of the violence is directed at unarmed civilians. Putting aside moral considerations, on a narrative level, there isn’t much tension when the people the violence is directed toward can’t or don’t fight back and the aggressors’ willingness to kill has already been established. It takes half the movie for the hero to show up and change the direction of the violence. This often gets grouped with Red Dawn in terms of paranoid right wing fantasies about America getting invaded, but putting aside all the attention John Milius devotes to things like characterization, performance, emotional stakes and tactical considerations, he wisely limits the scenes of violence targeted towards unarmed civilians.

Two, Chuck Norris can be charitably described as a Bressonian presence. His lack of charisma by itself is not a problem. Richard Lynch as the villain is also giving an understated performance. That by itself is also not a problem. The problem is that they’re both playing things super low key and nobody else is making up for the charisma gap. The good Chuck Norris movies don’t magically imbue him with a great deal of charisma (although I think he manages to have some in Lone Wolf McQuade and Code of Silence), but they do wisely put him next to charismatic actors. Here the movie largely isolates both the hero and the villain and limit their opportunities to act off the supporting cast, with a few exceptions. Norris chatting with his buddies and Lynch double-crossing the effortlessly sleazy Billy Drago are the only times anybody here has any charisma; the latter is the best scene in the movie. Or more accurately feels dropped in from a much more fun movie I’d rather be watching.

So with those two fatal flaws, I have a hard time getting much enjoyment out of this, especially when it’s paced nowhere near as frantically to work on the unhinged level of something like Death Wish 3. In part the movie is the victim of the relative craft involved; you’ll note the other movie is shoddier but the violence pops a lot more there as a result. I do think the blockiness of the direction occasionally yields interesting results, like the strange ritual of death quality of the scenes where Norris offs a few soldiers in an alley and the final cat-and-mouse showdown. And the nighttime cinematography by Joao Fernandes, which makes the black uniforms of the villains blend into the pitch black darkness and lets them emerge like spectral presences, is better than you’d expect from this kind of movie.