Breaker! Breaker! (1977)

User Rating:

2.8/10   

Director:

Don Hulette

Writer:

Terry Chambers (written by)

Release Date:

15 May 1981 (West Germany)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Crime

Tagline:

A town without justice. A hero without fear.

Plot:

Truck driver searches for his brother, who has disappeared in a town run by a corrupt judge. |

Plot Keywords:

Truck | Judge | Brother | Chase | Corruption

Cast

Chuck Norris	...	John David 'J.D.' Dawes
George Murdock	...	Judge Trimmings
Terry O'Connor	...	Arlene
Don Gentry	...	Sergeant Strode
John Di Fusco	...	Arney
Ron Cedillos	...	Deputy Boles
Michael Augenstein	...	Billy Dawes
Dan Vandegrift	...	Wilfred
Douglas Stevenson	...	Drake
Paul Kawecki	...	Wade
Larry Feder	...	George
Jack Nance	...	Burton
David Bezar	...	Tony
Miranda Garrison	...	Barmaid
Amelia Laurenson	...	Luana

Also Known As:

Breaker, Breaker
Cindy Jo & the Texas Turnaround

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Norway:15 (DVD rating) | Iceland:16 | Netherlands:12 (DVD rating) | Australia:M | Finland:(Banned) | France:-12 | UK:15 | USA:PG | West Germany:16 | Norway:(Banned) (1980-2003) (cinema release)

Filming Locations:

Paramount Ranch - 2813 Cornell Road, Agoura, California, USA

Company:

Paragon Films Inc.

Goofs:

Continuity: The same Plymouth Valiant and Lincoln are smashed twice in the compressor machine in the junkyard.

Quotes:

Hillbilly: I'm gonna stick ya!

Soundtrack:

WE NEVER SAID HELLO

C.B. Radio porn for the Smokey And The Bandit / Convoy / Cannonball crowd

This movie is like 84 minutes of straight up C.B. Radio porn for the Smokey And The Bandit / Convoy / Cannonball crowd, as it typifies the country-music-infused blue-collar-trucker sub-genre of movies that peaked in the late 1970's. But this film is more notable to me because it is Chuck Norris' debut in a starring role. The 2000 bare-bones MGM DVD is Widescreen 1.85:1 with Mono sound.

In it Chuck Norris plays J. D. Dawes, yet another one of your average 'martial arts truck drivers' who's little brother Billy is essentially held hostage by an entire town while making his first solo run as a big-rig driver himself. In this back water town, the police to the judge are corrupt, and is run on the money it extorts by unscrupulously diverting honest truckers from the main hi-way to their fly-trap town, where they impose a bunch of tariffs and taxes on the truckers cargo...or risk having their haul impounded, basically stolen. In the case of the naive driver Billy Dawes, this is exactly what happens; his valuable cargo of, yes...TV dinners...is impounded and he is thrown into the local jail for disrespectin' the judge.

Well typical of all other Chuck Norris films for the next 30 years, what happens then is obvious; J. D. Dawes goes on a one man ass-kicking mission to rescue the innocent, even if it means taking on the whole town! This film is nowhere near as entertaining or fast paced as Norris' 1980's Cannon fare, rather the action here is sparse and the acting plain bad. The director and producer Don Hulette, also wrote the music, what a renaissance man.