Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charles Bronson: not everyone's idea of perfect party guests but nonetheless deserving of attention and even respect, since together they control such a formidable share of the movie market. Only last week, Mr. Norris's ''Missing in Action'' and Mr. Schwarzenegger's ''Terminator'' were being advertised as the nation's ''New no. 1 hit!'' and ''The N1 movie in the U.S.A.,'' respectively. And ''The Evil That Men Do,'' the latest from Mr. Bronson, made a comparable splash several months earlier.

The success of this triumvirate is greeted in some quarters by indifference, even scorn. For all the many filmgoers who would not, even at gunpoint, watch a Bronson or a Schwarzenegger epic, there are even greater numbers who could not pick out Mr. Norris from a lineup of fortyish blond tennis pros. Surely Mr. Norris, who spent many years as a karate instructor (and enjoyed a reign as world karate champion) before launching his film career, is the most underrecognized movie star in America, if not the most underrated.

Empirical evidence, in the form of millions of ticket-buying patrons, tells us that Mr. Norris unquestionably has his appeal. (When persuading a producer to back his debut feature, ''Good Guys Wear Black,'' Mr. Norris is quoted as having made an irresistible numerical argument. ''There's four million karate people in America,'' said he. ''They all know who I am. And if only half of them go to the movie, that's a $6 million gross on a $1 million budget.'' He was right about everything except the gross, which proved three times what he had estimated.) But explaining that appeal isn't easy. Certainly much of it is nonverbal, as is Mr. Bronson's and Mr. Schwarzenegger's. Each of them says so little in their latest films that their collective dialogue wouldn't be enough to keep Clint Eastwood going through one of his .

Mr. Eastwood started out in the same tight- lipped action genre as his current disciples, who also owe noticeable debts to strong, silent types like Steve McQueen and John Wayne. Mr. McQueen reportedly advised Mr. Norris that he had spoken too much in his first film, telling him ''Too much dialogue. Let the character actors lay out the plot. Then, when there's something important to say, you say it and people will listen.'' However, Mr. Eastwood has long since made the leap out of the B-movie chasm in which his successors still toil. ''Tightrope,'' his most recent effort, attributed complex feelings to its hero and made some effort to understand and explain them. This sort of pussyfooting is complete anathema to everything B-moviedom stands for.

What the Messrs. Norris, Schwarzenegger and Bronson offer audiences is the opportunity for utterly uncomplicated visceral response, often to political-sounding issues. It is no accident that ''Missing in Action'' concerns itself with prisoners of war in Vietnam, or ''The Terminator'' with a nuclear holocaust or ''The Evil That Men Do'' with human rights violations. Mr. Bronson, whose concern with the latter issue comes awfully late in a career of unadulterated mayhem, has understood since ''Death Wish'' the expediency of using explosive subject matter (in that case, rape and murder) to whet an audience's appetite for revenge. Mr. Norris and Mr. Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, in their current films appear to be using similar tactics in a much less cynical way.

Unlike ''Uncommon Valor,'' another vehement action film about a scheme to rescue missing American soldiers, ''Missing in Action'' wastes neither time nor words on veterans' complex feelings about Vietnam, or the war's effects on their families. Instead, it begins as an unabashed shoot- 'em-up, with Mr. Norris, as an Army colonel, blasting his way through the jungle. Most of his men disappear during the battle, after which the colonel is seen back home, brooding about their fate. A little later, he embarks on his own private rescue mission and returns to Vietnam. The rest of the film is distinguished by its vigorous action sequences, its unequivocal depiction of the Vietnamese as shifty-eyed villains, and an ending in which Mr. Norris's bravado is allowed to show up the weak-kneed foreign policy of the United States Government.

Presumptuous and overbearing as this may sound, it doesn't play that way; in fact, the bashfulness with which Mr. Norris approaches such issues is a large part of his charm. Only with the greatest reluctance does he hurt anyone, albeit also with the greatest finesse. His singlemindedness is so great that he makes a point of not noticing the nude barroom dancers who, in a movie like this, constitute an obligatory bit of atmosphere. And when a female co-star, enlisted in a plot to fool Vietnamese officials by pretending to be in bed with Mr. Norris, tries to pique his genuine interest in such activities, Mr. Norris stares blankly into space. Audiences seem to love his imperviousness even more than his righteous rage.

Of course, no one's self-sufficiency can match Mr. Schwarzenegger's in ''The Terminator,'' which casts him as a post-holocaust robot capable of repairing his own physical equipment. Mr. Schwarzenegger, in preferring the villainous title role to the leading man's heroic part originally offered him, opted for a much steelier character than the grunting lunkheads he had previously played. The change is strategic, since it presents Mr. Schwarzenegger as a figure of pure menace rather than one meant to invite understanding or sympathy. In addition to its lively and intricate plot, which has the Terminator returning from the year 2029 as a hit-man making a mysterious effort to change the future, the film owes much of its success to the star's sheer inexorability. Mr. Schwarzenegger's relentlessness here is matched only by his cautionary import as a harbinger of what a post-nuclear future might bring.

It's true that both Mr. Norris and Mr. Schwarzenegger have a long way to go before they graduate from the ranks of exploitation films to anything above-ground. But both ''Missing in Action'' and ''The Terminator'' are significant improvements over what, in each star's career, has come before. Mr. Schwarzenegger may be ready to treat his own hulking strangeness as his most marketable asset, instead of an obstacle to roles that revolve around sex appeal. And Mr. Norris, such a quiet firebrand and so sheepishly sincere, has moved well beyond the all-karate crowd.