Hero at Large

• Title: Hero at Large
• IMDb: link

This Throwback Thursday we take a look back at a mostly forgotten 1980 film Hero at Large starring John Ritter as a struggling actor who becomes the talk of the town when he stops a crime while dressed in the costume of the super-hero Captain Avenger on his way home from the movie’s premiere. Decades before the boom of super-hero movies, director Martin Davidson‘s (Eddie & The Cruisers) movie plays with the concept of what it means to be a hero as our protagonist struggles with the ramifications and consequences of trying to cash-in on his new celebrity.

Co-starring Anne Archer as Ritter’s next-door neighbor who gets dragged into events while helping stitch him up one night from bullet wound, the movie is a mostly lightweight romantic comedy which earns points for dealing with themes of heroism in an interesting way (which helped earn it a spot on this list of super-hero movies). Available on a rather bare-bones DVD, the film has never been released on Blu-ray.

[Warner Home Video, $9.95]