Rambo's back! After hiding himself away in the jungles of Southeast Asia he's emerged for another jaunt into the bloody, steamy hell that we all love watching him fling himself headlong into. The '70s and '80s were filled with characters like this, righteous killers who left a trail of bodies in film after film after film. And we ate it up.

Here are the biggest and the best in the "righteous killer" genre:

Name: John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone)
Number of films: four (First Blood, Rambo First Blood Part II, Rambo 3, Rambo)
Favorite Targets: Commies
Why we love him: A product of the final years of the Red Scare, John Rambo turned (in one fell swoop) from a wounded vet just trying to find a place to hang his hat, into a communist-killing machine. No one dispatched with the Red Menace like John Rambo. No one.

Name: Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson)
Number of films: four (Death Wish, Death Wish II, Death Wish 3, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown)
Favorite Targets: Street Trash, punks, lowlifes
Why we love him: He cleaned up the streets, HIS WAY! Forget the cops, his justice was the only way. Hell, down the line, the cops turned to him for help. No one was badder than Bronson. No one.

Name: "Dirty" Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood)
Number of films: five (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, The Dead Pool
Favorite Targets: Street Trash, punks, lowlifes, and the occasional serial killer
Why we love him: He cleaned up the streets, HIS WAY. But with a bigger gun than Paul Kersey. Better one-liners too. Just couldn't keep a partner to save his life. No one broke more laws in the pursuit of justice. No one.

Name: John Matrix (Arnold Schwarzenegger)
Number of films: Just one (Commando)
Favorite Targets: Terrorists
Why we love him: The worst one-liners of all time making for one of the cheesiest, fun, tongue-in-cheek bloodbaths of the '80s. No one showed such reckless abandon for the well-being of others or hesitated to kill less than John Matrix. No one.

Name: John McClane (Bruce Willis)
Number of films: four (Die Hard, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Die Hard With a Vengeance, Live Free or Die Hard)
Favorite Targets: Thieves posing as terrorists
Why we love him: He was the everyman. He was just some cop having a bad day, then a bunch of submachine-gun-carrying thieves put his wife in danger. At Christmas. Twice. No one bloodies a wife-beater t-shirt like John McClane. No one.

C. Robert Cargill - - - Email Me

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