Breaker! Breaker! (1977)

When it comes to bad movies, there are certain mainstream actors who feel like they were staples. They’re not those working actors who pop up in a whole bunch of stuff, like a Mike Dopud or a Aleks Paunovic. I’m talking those big stars who headline movies, many of which could fit into the bad movie realm. You’ve got your Steven Seagals, your Jean-Claude Van Dammes, your Nicolas Cages, and your Chuck Norrises.

Well, Chuck Norris passed away in March 2026. I thought it might be about time to get another movie from old Chucky into the Sunday “Bad” Movies catalog. I just needed to figure out which one. I settled on a 1977 trucker movie called Breaker! Breaker!. It was part of a trucker movie trend in the late 70s and early 80s that included other movies like Smokey and the Bandit and Convoy. See, that could have been my topic, but I haven’t seen many trucker movies beyond those three.

Breaker! Breaker! followed J.D. Dawes (Chuck Norris), a trucker who recently returned home to California after a long stint away. He found one of his friends was injured and could no longer drive, so he enlisted his brother Billy (Michael Augenstein) to drive in place of said friend. Billy took a shortcut through some less populated roads, only to run into trouble at the hands of a smalltown police force and their judge, Arlene Trimmings (Terry O’Connor). It was up to J.D. to go down to this small town and free his brother. Only, the judge and police force would do whatever they can to stop him.

There wasn’t a whole lot of truck driving in Breaker! Breaker!, which was a strange thing for a movie that resided safely in that trucker movie boom. That’s not to say that there was no transport truck action in the movie. It started with Billy trucking his way into the small town of Texas City, California. There was a little bit of trucking in that journey and a near accident. Most of the trucking, however, came in the climax. All of J.D.’s trucker buddies stormed the small town in their rigs.

Breaker! Breaker! didn’t have much trucking in between, however. Most of the movie was a Chuck Norris tour de force in martial arts. J.D. drove into Texas City in a van that would look right with a half-naked Viking lady painted on the side. He went looking for his brother and quickly discovered that the two-man police force and the judge were looking for a fight. The whole small town tried to attack him, aside from one mild-mannered guy who may have had a disability, and he did what any guy would do. He started kicking and punching with the full force of a Texas Ranger, even as he fought against the police of Texas City.

The story was closer to those “one man rids a town of corruption” stories than it was to a typical trucker story. The only reason it got lumped in with the trucker movies of the era was that J.D. and Billy were truckers. And that climactic action scene that involved the truckers storming the small town that had hassled them for a couple years. It wasn’t really a trucker story, though. Breaker! Breaker! had more in common with First Blood, Rebel Ridge, and the first season of Reacher than it did with Smokey and the Bandit and Convoy.

As for the action in Breaker! Breaker!, it was okay. You could tell that a lot of the kicks and punches weren’t landing. The climactic hand-to-hand fight between J.D. and the mustached Deputy Boles (Ron Cedillos) was way longer than it needed to be. It was a nice touch to have it in a horse corral with a horse, though. The truck driving through the helicopter before it took off was amusing. There was good stuff in there, but it was equally balanced with some cheesy, not so good stuff.

That’s really all I have to say about Breaker! Breaker!. It was one of those movies that was put out at a low budget to cash in on a trend. It starred Chuck Norris in his first true lead role. He had been the villain in The Way of the Dragon a few years prior, but there wasn’t a true Chuck Norris movie up to this point. This was the start of his career as a movie star.

Chuck Norris was a part of my growing up. I didn’t see a whole lot of his movies outside Top Dog, which is why it was featured in Sunday “Bad” Movies years ago, and I watched a bit of Walker, Texas Ranger. It was mostly the jokes I grew up around. Things like “Chuck Norris doesn’t get a flu shot. The flu gets a Chuck Norris shot.” They weren’t great jokes, but they’ve existed as long as I can remember. They kept Chuck Norris’s stardom alive well past the time when he was starring in movies that people recognized.

But big, bad death came for Chucky this year. I might not have been the biggest fan of Chuck Norris the movie star or the person. I might not have been the biggest fan of the Chuck Norris jokes that some people found to be just the funniest thing. The movie landscape would be much different without him, though. The bad movie landscape would be a lot different without him. He was one of those stars who became a mainstay in churning out a whole bunch of action flicks for The Cannon Group. And for that, I say, in the words of Peter LaFleur, “thank you Chuck Norris.” The actor, not the religious Republican man who probably did more harm than good.

After that nice, quick post, let’s get a few notes in here:

• Breaker! Breaker! starred Chuck Norris, who was also the star of Top Dog.
• Miranda Garrison was in both Xanadu and Breaker! Breaker!.
• Finally, Ron Holmstrom popped up in Breaker! Breaker!. He had also appeared in Maniac Cop.
• I mentioned Smokey and the Bandit in this post. I covered the four Smokey and the Bandit television movies a while back.
• Have you seen Breaker! Breaker!? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments or you can get a hold of me on Bluesky.
• Bluesky and the comments are also where you can find me to suggest movies for me to check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies. All suggestions are welcome.
• Now it’s time for a look ahead. It might be a couple weeks before the next post, but I’ve got one coming for a 90s action movie called Crash Dive. After that, I’ll have one coming for Screamboat. I don’t know what the future holds beyond those two, but there will be more. I’ll see you for the Crash Dive post soon.