Hellbound

Warning: this entry contains spoilers, but only if you've somehow convinced yourself that Chuck Norris might not triumph. This is the first Chuck Norris movie I've ever watched and even I knew he couldn't lose.

Actually, there really are spoilers.

Welcome to I Will Devour Your Content. As always, I am your host, John Bem. There are refreshments aplenty in the Inner Chamber: macadamia-nut cookies, a brand of nacho chips heavily coated with particularly vivid and glowing orange powdered cheese-like substance, and grape Kool-Aid. Pull up a chair and let's talk about a movie.

Today's entry is part of the imponderable and spectacular Stacie Ponder's Final Girl Film Club. The movie under discussion: Hellbound (1994) starring Chuck Norris and some other people. I extend a hand of gratitude to Stacie for prompting me to watch my first-ever Chuck Norris flick.

During the opening backstory text crawl, we learn that Prosatanos is Satan's emissary on Earth, sent to wreak havoc and hellishness when mankind is weak and despairing.

Can you imagine the taunting that Prosatanos probably had to endure when he was a child on the playground? I imagine the other children were, as children are wont to be, brutal and unrelenting: "Hey Prostate-Anus, does your mom pack hemorrhoid cream in your lunchbox?" or "Hey, Porky-Snotnose, wash your face already!" and so on. But this is mere speculation. What we do know is that Hellbound opens in 12th-century Jerusalem and Prosatanos is trying to create a gateway to Hell right here on Earth. Richard Lionheart and his doughty band of knightly crusaders is out to stop him. After an exciting battle with much clashing of swords and crunching armor, Richard's men imprison Prosatanos in a sarcophagus underground.

"Damn you spawn of Satan!"

Jump forward to 1951 when graverobbers steal the holy artifacts that are keeping Prosatanos under wraps. "Look at the jewels on the crosses!" they enthuse, and that's that. When said crosses are pulled loose from the sarcophagus, Prosatanos is free once again to plague mankind. Starting with the graverobbers, whom he promptly kills. From the countless mummy movies I've watched and now this, I assure you that should I ever stumble upon an underground tomb filled with treasures, I will leave everything exactly as I found it and back out slowly.

Jump forward one more time, to present-day Chicago, where cops Frank Shatter (Norris) and Calvin Jones (Calvin Levels) are in the street in front of a hotel, questioning (at gunpoint) a junkie about his dealer. Unknown to them, in an upstairs room of the hotel, bad things are about happen that will propel them into a demonic netherworld.

Cut to said upstairs room. A hooker works the kink out of her neck (wonder how she got that, wink-wink, nudge-nudge). (A hooker in a horror movie...hmmm, wonder if she'll survive...?) She crosses the room and knocks on  the door of the bathroom.

We learn that her client is none other than the resurrected Prosatanos. Gasp! (We also learn that the manicurists in Hell must have a supply of press-on pointy fingernails.)

Some bad shit goes down in the hotel room---Prosatanos receives visitors, organs are removed in a manner non-conducive to the sustaining of life, pianos are extracted in a similar deadly fashion (not really)---culminating with the now-dressed hooker exiting the hotel via the defenestration express and landing on the hood of Shatter and Jones' car.

Shatter and Jones go up to the room. They find a dead rabbi. Subsequently, they question an antiquities dealer. Then they go to a university to question an archaeologist named Lockley and his lovely assistant Leslie (Sheree J. Wilson).

A series of clues and events lead them to be summoned to Israel. Hellbound provides us with some lovely exterior shots of Israel.

Including one of the Old Jaffa Hotel where Shatter and Jones have a room. At one point we see Jesus waiting outside the Old Jaffa. I guess they're booked. That Jesus, poor guy just can't catch a break when it comes to finding a vacancy in inns and hotels and such.

At one point during their Israeli investigations, we learn that Shatter is much tougher than Jones. While Shatter is provided with an opportunity to kick ass(assain), fending off two would-be killers at one time, kicking them through glass walls and smashing them into furniture, it only takes one punch from an effete antiquities dealer to knock Jones unconscious.

Well, one thing leads to another (as The Fixx once taught us). Shatter and Jones meet a plucky pickpocketing street urchin. They make their way to a creepy space inhabited by a blind monk who informs them of Prosatanos and his evilness: "The fires of Hell unloosed on Earth." Shatter takes it in stride, but Jones decides he "can't deal with this devil shit."

They soldier on nonetheless, only to find Leslie bound to an altar in a creepy cavern, about to be sacrificed by Prosatanos as part of the unholy ritual he last attempted back in the 1100s to open a gateway to Hell on Earth.

A battle ensues. Prosatanos is pierced by the only artifact that can slay him. He thrashes about in his demonic death throes and eventually explodes. A great evil has been defeated.

Ooh, sparkly!

The story wraps up with Shatter, Jones, Leslie and the plucky pickpocketing street urchin in the airport as the Chicago cops prepare to go back home. The movie ends with a comedic freeze-frame and the end credits roll.

(During the end credits, I saw a copyright notice unlike any I'd ever spotted before: "Copyright for the entire universe, excluding Israel...." Entire universe? That's interesting. No Martians better try to bootleg a copy.

(When the movie was starting, I got very excited about this credit...

...but then I realized that it's the wrong George Clinton and that  the soundtrack would not be funkadelic after all.)

Hellbound moved along briskly and unfolded perfectly. The action, humor, and horror scenes blended together in just the right way. I loved the way the movie was shot too, showing us big vistas and large interior spaces and also closing in on small and scary details. The fights and battles were wonderful and B-movie brutal. The story was well-written and well-told.

I thoroughly enjoyed Hellbound and from the Naugahyde Recliner of Judgement (now stained with orange powdered-cheese fingerprints) I proclaim it to be a very good and fun and entertaining movie. I recommend it. Once again, I am indebted to Final Girl Stacie Ponder for introducing me to this movie, my gateway to a whole new world of Chuck Norris cinema.

I hope you enjoyed my ruminations. I look forward to seeing yours (wink-wink, nudge-nudge). Thank you for stopping by.

Foot Fancier's Frames: At 1 hour and 21 minutes, Leslie is bound to the sacrificial altar and her bare feet peek out from her dark ritual robe.

Tunes: This entry was composed  while listening to The 5.6.7.8's disc Bomb the Rocks: Early Days Singles 1989 to 1996 and a compilation disc called Jungle Exotica, Strip CD 005.