In 1985, Cannon Films brought us a Chuck Norris action movie called Invasion USA, which involved Norris’s character – former CIA agent Matt Hunter – trying to stop an invasion of the United States that’s being carried out (in December) by a team of Soviet and Cuban guerrillas headed up by a villain played by Richard Lynch. It’s a violent, explosive shoot ’em up that makes for good Christmastime viewing alongside classics like Lethal Weapon, First Blood, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Die Hard. It wasn’t a massive hit (it made $17.5 million on a budget of $12 million) and didn’t go over well with critics – but it has its fans, and apparently even helped overthrow the Communist government of Romania!

Directed by Joseph Zito from a screenplay that Chuck Norris and his brother Aaron crafted with James Bruner, Invasion USA has the following synopsis: Retired CIA agent Matt Hunter is forced back into the business when a villain from his past re-emerges. Soviet Mikhail Rostov, a terrorist whom Matt once caught, wants to exact revenge. After failing to find Matt at his Everglades home, Rostov and his army of Communist guerrillas begin carrying out terrorist acts all over southern Florida. Millions of innocent lives are at risk, and it’s up to Matt, the National Guard and the FBI to save them.

In Nick de Semlyen’s book The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood’s Kings of Carnage (pick up a copy HERE), it’s said that Invasion USA became an underground sensation in Romania in the second half of the ’80s, with bootleg VHS copies of the film being passed around, helping fuel the Romanian revolution that took place during the Christmas season of 1989.

Bruner says, “They use the poster, to this day, in Romania when they protest the government. Ultimately, action movies are about freedom. Overcoming evil, in whatever form it may be. To find out that was one of the inspirations for them to become free, it was really nice. Never in a million years would I have expected it.“

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