EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.

I have no idea why Lone Wolf McQuade hasn’t been on the site.

I mean, it pits Chuck Norris as McQuade — along with a pet wolf! — against Rawley Wilkes (David Carradine) and has a supporting cast of Dana Kimmell (Friday the 13th 3D, Sweet Sixteen) as McQuade’s daughter, Barbara Carrera as the love interest and Robert Beltran, Leon Isaac Kennedy, L.Q. Jones and R.G. Armstrong as fellow cops.

Directed by Steve Carver (The Arena, Steel), this had the director work with writer B.J. Nelson to “mess up” Norris’ on-screen image by having him grow a beard, drink beer and be in a Sergio Leone-inspired movie. Carradine is also a great for him; he told Psychotronic Magazine, “Chuck had a feeling when I was working with him, that he wanted to be a better actor. At one point, when we were working on the fight, I got close to him, and I said. This is really right man, puttin’ your face in the dirt.’ And he looked at me, you know, and he didn’t expect that from me. And we got to be buddies. For just that period. I don’t hang around with Chuck. Chuck mainly doesn’t like to work with co-stars. His movies are all solo movies.”

Carver had high marks for Norris and spoke of the difficulties of getting the trained martial artist to loosen up and act: If you block a scene with an athlete, if you ask an athlete to move from point A to B, or to pick up something, or do anything, he will do these movements mechanically. Which is not a bad thing, because with every rehearsal the movement becomes more fluid. Whereas a theatre actor will project their movements and their dialogue. It’s a stage to them. That’s the difference. Chuck was a little bit stiff in An Eye For An Eye. He became looser in Lone Wolf McQuade. After that he became better with every picture he did.”

It all worked, as Roger Ebert noted the Italian Western parts of the story and even gave this film three out of four stars. And how can you not love a movie where Chuck Norris uses a supercharged truck to break out of a makeshift grave?

Sadly, Carver and Norris would have a parting of the ways. Norris credits Lone Wolf McQuade as the inspiration for his hit television series Walker, Texas Ranger.  In fact, the pilor had to be rewritten because it was a Lone Wolf McQuade. This Orion Pictures film, much like the other Cannon Pictures movies that Norris worked on, are all owned by MGM. Left in the dust were Carver and his production partner Yoram Ben-Ami, who sued the producers of Walker, Texas Ranger for $500 million dollars. He would say years later that the lawsuit was where he and Chuck stopped being friends, as well as saying, “MGM and CBS had bigger and better and more lawyers than we did, all the way to the Supreme Court. We failed to convince the Supreme Court that there were similarities. Now, you and I and anybody else knows that there are similarities between Lone Wolf McQuade and Walker Texas Ranger.”

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of Lone Wolf McQuade here.