With The Machete 3D hitting stores on DVD/Blu-ray on January 4, 2011, we're in the mood for some over-the-top action! Our Top 10 Outrageous Action Heroes list should be all the onscreen insanity you need to keep the adrenaline flowing through the new year!
The Bride - Kill Bill
Shot in the head on her wedding day. Four years in a coma, during which she carries a baby to term and delivers it. She awakes just in time to avoid being raped by a sadistic hospital staff member, and he becomes the first in a nearly endless line of bodies standing between The Bride and her ultimate revenge against Bill, the man behind her misery (and father of her child). The Kill Bill saga is an incredible one, chronicling The Bride's journey to Japan to coax blade master Hitori Hanzo to craft another piece of steel for her, as well as her journey to retribution, slicing and dicing her way through all those who helped take away everything that meant anything to her. Most outrageous scene: just before her gorgeously captivating deathwatch with O-Ren Ishii, The Bride cuts her way through the Crazy 88, leaving mountains of severed limbs and blood-spraying bodies in her wake.
Neo - The Matrix
The savior of all humanity happens to have lived the mundane existence most of us trudge through day to day, with only one thing making him truly different: he meets Morpheus, takes the red pill and dives into a digital nightmare so deep and vast that it actually unveils itself to be the true reality. Dealing with the existential crisis of a simulated reality created by sentient machines to pacify and subdue the human population while their bodies' heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source is one thing, but looking good while downloading the entire wisdom of the human race (including Kung Fu) and applying it in a war against the machines is another entirely. Once he really gets the hang of things a trenchcoat and sunglasses are added, because what's the point of saving the universe if you can't look good doing it?
Eric Draven - The Crow
Perhaps possessing more responsibility for the birth of emo than all of The Cure combined, comic hero Eric Draven is brought back to life by a crow a year after he and his fiancée are murdered. What's so outrageous about the undead returning for vengeance? Not so much, until you find out that the zombie in question paints his face like a murderous clown and has a soft spot for pre-teen girls and down-on-their-luck cops. There's also the little detail where a crow is the secret to his powers, which means that killing the bird removes all power from the murdered husband-rocker to be.
RoboCop
Peter Weller plays a cop who, under most definitions, has been killed in the line of duty. Refusing to let a good man die, Detroit Metro Police brought the obliterated cop back to “life” as a part-man, mostly robot crime fighter of the future. Facing a corrupt nation run by corporate pillagers, Robocop fights to uphold the law in a seemingly lawless society, while struggling to maintain what little humanity he still possesses. Ridiculous dialogue, terrible stop-motion special effects and comic-book reality delivered as serious cinema makes for one of the single most outrageous big-budget action films ever made, but Weller's RoboCop character was pure awesome, a conflicted battle between man and machine that spawned a series of doomed sequels and remakes.
Barbarella
Barbarella deserves a spot on this list not only for her contributions to late-60s sexualization in the media, but for the completely outrageous surroundings in which she embarked on her ridiculously crazy journey. This 41st century astronaut became a generational icon after landing on the planet Lythion and setting out to find the evil Durand Durand in the city of Sogo, where a new sin is invented every hour. An erotic, deadly wonderland unfolds before Jane Fonda's character's eyes. Obstacles including the Exessive Machine (a sex-organ death machine that kills with pleasure) and a lesbian queen who, in her dream chamber, can make her fantasies take form, were just a sampling of the competition our outrageous heroine faced in vying for onscreen attention.
Toxic Avenger
Melvin the Tromaville Health Club mop boy is one guy who can find the silver lining on anything, even after landing in a vat of toxic waste. With his mutated body and alter ego unleashed, the Toxic Avenger becomes an unlikely superhero, a social misfit savior out to right the wrongs of the thuggish bullies that abused him and bring down the corrupt mayor of Tromaville. No longer subjected to dressing in tutus and kissing sheep, the Toxic Avenger snuffs out evil and corruption in any form, leaving his mop-on-the-face calling card for those unlucky enough to encounter his wrath. The mayor doesn't get off quite so lucky, however, with our outrageous hero tearing out his insides to see if he "has any guts."
MacGruber
Spoof films generally shouldn't be included in an Outrageous Action Heroes list, because - like comic books - there's a mandatory minimum level of outrageous required to even enter the genre. But MacGruber is in a category all its own, for the simple fact that While Forte pushes the MacGuyver spoof to hilariously unforeseen depths, thriving on the asinine and obsessing over '80s pop culture (listening to Billy Ocean in his red Miata, carrying his old-school car stereo wherever he goes), while never too far from offering to fellate a man to get what he wants. Yes, this MacGruber feature film is for grown-ups only, something in the vein of a live-action Team America on acid. Forte walks a hilarious, heavy-handed line between Charlie Sheen in Hot Shots and Schwarzenegger in Commando. Watching him gear up for battle - inserting household items and random objects into various orifices and pockets instead of guns and grenades on straps - is nothing short of thrilling. Overly confident, hopelessly ignorant and 100% outrageous, there's nothing MacGruber won't do to save the day. Except fire a gun. Or mess up his hair.
Machete
Robert Rodriguez' over-the-top killer flick stars Machete (Danny Trejo), a renegade former ‘Mexican Federale’ who roams the cities, towns, and streets of Texas looking for work after a shakedown from a drug lord called Torrez (Steven Segal). Set up in an assassination gone awry, Machete recruits fierce taco queen Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), heavily armed holy man Padre (Cheech Marin) and trigger-happy socialite April (Lindsay Lohan) to balance the odds in a slash-fest for the record books.
Indiana Jones
What other man can find himself involved in some of the world's most important events and thrilling mysteries, and lived to tell the tale? Whether fighting Nazis in a desperate race to the Holy Grail or trying to keep his heart from being ripped out by a satanic overlord while captive in the Temple of Doom, Indy has always kept audiences captivated with somehow-believable narratives while pushing the boundaries of outrageous with treasure-hunting adventures that border more and more on the absurd as the years go on.
The Terminator
First we have to come to terms with Arnold Schwarzenegger as a man-hunting robot from the future with an Austrian accent, a nightmare killing machine that's nearly unstoppable in its quest to eliminate the human race. Then in the sequel we're told he's the protector for the savior of all mankind, and he becomes a somewhat lovable meat-puppet machine that repeats catch phrases ("Hasta la vista, baby") and shares tender moments with the family he was sent to kill in the first place. Confusing? You bet. Once the third film rolled around all sense of reason went out the window, but nothing quite matched the outrageousness of the cause of our nightmares in the early 80s reaching out a cold steel hand and saying "Come wif me if you vant to live."
