#5: DEATH WISH 3 (1985)

He's Judge, Jury, and Executioner!

Paul Kersey is back in New York, the scene of his first violent escapade as "the vigilante," to visit Charley, an old friend and fellow Korean War veteran. Upon arriving, Kersey is disgusted to discover that his friend has been living within the confines of a ghetto overrun by gang members hellbent on terrorizing, victimizing, robbing, raping, and murdering every last remaining tenant. Hordes of punks stand in groups outside harassing passersby; graffiti covers every wall. The few decent inhabitants of the neighborhood try to walk by unmolested. One of these victimized tenants is Charley, who suffers an attack/robbery from several punks and dies in Kersey's arms just as he arrives, and just before a swath of cops burst into the apartment. Kersey is initially blamed for the crime and taken downtown, where he has a confrontation with Manny Fraker, an albino face-painted punk who just happens to be leader of the gang responsible for Charley's death and all the other neighborhood terrorism. While being booked, Kersey also meets Lieutenant Shriker, a long-time member of the police force well aware of Kersey's past as "the vigilante." Shriker offers Kersey a proposal: he will turn a blind eye as Kersey takes revenge against all the punks responsible for Charley's death, so long as he provides information to Shriker's unit about all the gang's goings-on so they can move in, bust them, and take the credit. Kersey agrees, temporarily moves into Charley's apartment, befriends his old neighbors, and soon embraces his old vigilante ways to clean up the neighborhood the only way he knows how: beautiful violence.

Death Wish 3 was written by Don Jakoby (under pseudonym Michael Edmonds), who also wrote the underrated Blue Thunder, the silly but harmless Arachnophobia, and John Carpenter's Vampires, to name a few. More significantly, this sequel was a hat-trick move from director Michael Winner, who had directed the previous two installments in what would become one of the most marquee-famous action franchises in film history. To watch the first Death Wish, a film steeped in the gritty seriousness and social commentary most filmmakers abandoned following the end of the 1970s, and then watch this entry, which is the equivalent of a live-action "Itchy & Scratchy" cartoon, one would almost have to think that a brand new workman director had been brought on to continue the series, rather than the director who had proved himself capable of marrying a violent concept to a dramatic one and who would never dream of blatantly shitting all over the legacy he'd helped create. But no, the workman director approach wouldn't begin until Death Wish 5: The Face of Death, the final film in the series, and, not surprisingly, the worst. Winner, an actual filmmaker who had proven himself capable of delivering a serious-minded film, is amazingly the same man responsible for the outlandish series of events that a whole bunch of people managed to luck out and film and eventually name Death Wish 3; it's the silliest ninety minutes you're ever apt to see, for all kinds of reasons.

The unexpected tonal change in the Death Wish series very much mirrors that of the First Blood series, in that their increasingly absurd entries unfortunately/fortunately succeeded in not only becoming so exponentially removed from their first films' original ideals that they barely resembled each other beyond those familiar faces painted on their posters, but also (somehow) simultaneously established a precedent of cartoon violence for which those series would ultimately be known. As far as Death Wish goes, this can be likened to the involvement of the legendary Cannon Films, who produced the picture, and who are responsible for some of the most iconic b-action films of all time.

Interestingly and also a little sadly, Death Wish 3 would mark the final of six collaborations between director Winner and Charles Bronson, allegedly caused by Bronson objecting to the amount of violence that Winner secretly shot when the star wasn't on set. And in a fair and just world, it would be the artfully-minded individual endeavoring to maintain a certain level of respectability within his or her craft that would deserve the accolades, but the jury will be forever out on if Death Wish 3 was ever going to be capable of that certain level of respectability. The first sign of that would have been the script itself, which, to describe using modern terms, is a hyper-violent marriage of Grumpy Old Men and Home Alone, and which includes a third-act extended finale where more time is dedicated to people dying than people not dying. At no point do the inner-workings of Death Wish 3—not in any kind of actual way, nor in any "what-could-have-been?" hyperbolic kind of way—land anywhere within remote throwing distance of respectability. By then, Death Wish 2 had already proven that there was no recapturing the kind of zeitgeist-defining lightning in a bottle that the first Death Wish had obtained. Death Wish 2—in which Kersey's daughter was sexually victimized yet again, only this time dying an unnecessarily violent death, leading Kersey to go after an even higher number of gang members—may have raised the stakes as far as sequels demanded, but it did nothing to heighten, and in fact stunted, the artistic integrity for which the first Death Wish had strived. Having said that, Death Wish 2 is an exercise in restraint when compared to Death Wish 3, which is the '80s action film equivalent of the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise. It's just that, this time, the fatalities of Death Wish 3, whether they be of the innocent or guilty variety, were designed for audience exhilaration, not revulsion. And Winner wasn't bothered by all the vitriol tossed his way from critics, as this had been by design. In response to reviewers' condemnation of his fixation on violence and gore, he'd replied, "The public likes action. It takes their minds off the real world for an hour and that’s what entertainment is all about... It’s fantasy; people don’t watch a murder and then go out and commit one." He had also later stated, "I’d have Charles Bronson starring in Death Wish 26 if I thought it would make a profit."

If only.

So far, every film featured in Top Ten Murdered Men has been silly on some level, and some sillier than others (looking and smiling right at you, Face/Off), but Death Wish 3 comes dangerously close to being the silliest. Probably both ironic and unironic love aside, Death Wish 3 is kind of a masterpiece. It is Charles Bronson meets Merry Melodies. It is an unabashed series of vignettes in which people are killed in extremely disparate ways, loosely connected only by one common thread: they deserve it. Kersey knows they deserve it, the audience knows they deserve it, and the audience wants Kersey to make it rain bodies. And by gosh, does he ever. While the previous two Death Wish films, each in their own ways, wanted to make killing ugly, and revenge conflicting, Death Wish 3 wants you to eat your fucking popcorn and enjoy the carnage, you assholes. Out of sight is any sense of conflict. There are no warring minds re: revenge versus justice. Kersey barely needs a reason to begin unpacking his many weapons of mass destruction. Evidently he can't wait to do it. His ease at life-taking has come to define him. He's no longer haunted by the change that's taken place inside him, which turned him from mild-mannered architect/widower to a nonplussed bachelor/accomplished killing machine.

In the first Death Wish, Kersey was an amateur. He knew how to fire a gun, and could sometimes hit a target, but he was in uncharted waters. He was out of his element. It was his fury, heartbreak, and frustration with bureaucracy driving him, not his bloodlust. Same goes for Death Wish 2, which maintained the failure of the justice system, but which also established that, by then, killing for Kersey had become old hat. In Death Wish 3, "blowing a man's fucking brain off" is written on Kersey's daily agenda, next to picking up eggs and shaping his mustache with an X-ACTO knife. At no time does the audience ever feel like Kersey is in real, actual danger—he's become a pint-sized Terminator with puffy cheeks and grandpop emo hair. The audience wants to see him take lives in the same way they wanted to see Fred Astaire dance or Bette Midler sing. (In some respects, the audience even wants to get in on the action: see the official Death Wish 3 video game—one could argue a precursor to Grand Theft Auto— released in 1986 by Gremlin Graphics.) This pro-death stance isn't just relegated to Kersey himself, but to the attitudes of nearly every protagonist involved in the extermination of the city's punk populace. Lt. Shriker (Ed Lauter) shows no sense of hesitation whatsoever when he sics Kersey onto his city, encouraging him to take out as many "roaches" as he can—and this is before Shriker joins in on the hunt himself. Rodriguez (Joseph Gonzalez), one of Kersey's neighbors and whose wife was recently killed by the gang, skips the whole "conflicted" thing that the widower Kersey experiences in the first Death Wish and instead runs around as his assistant holding all the excess ammo being fed into Kersey's dick-extending M60 while occasionally blowing holes in men with a zip gun. Even Bennett (Martin Balsalm), who the film at least acknowledges as a veteran of World War II and therefore a bit more amenable to war, watches out the window as cars explode, dozens of gang members are shot down in the street, and buildings burn—and the look of pleasure, relief, happiness, and ecstasy present on his face is unmistakable. In previous Death Wish films, the vigilante murders had been committed in response to the frustration spurred by feelings of helplessness; in Death Wish 3, they are cathartic release. They are the unleashing pent-up blue balls of a mentally exhausted neighborhood so beaten down and regressed by daily victimization that rioting in the streets and blood in the gutter is tantamount to ejaculatory celebration. To come away with the message "violence isn't the answer" at film's end, where Kersey grasps his suitcases and heroically marches down a street littered with flaming cars, dead bodies, and screaming police sirens—it's the lone rider leaving that Old West town at sun-up—is to embrace your delusion. Death Wish 3 makes one thing very clear: violence works—works well, works often, and should be utilized for every possible situation. (Director Winner was attacked by critics in reviews for all of his Death Wish entries, but especially for Death Wish 3, and accused of encouraging private justice and vigilantism as a means for obtaining law and order. Though he would occasionally go on record to refute this, he had, contrarily, made donations to the "Guardian Angels," a self-professed vigilante group based out of New York.)

Death Wish 3 is also the first entry to realize that entire communities can joyfully join in on the bloodletting, and casts a swath of recognizable faces to watch Kersey's back or carry his ammo. Chief among them is Psycho's Martin Balsam, the elderly tenant who befriends Kersey, and who is not only at the end of his rope, but who also inexplicably owns the M60 that Kersey will use against dozens of gang members right around the time your pants suddenly feel little tighter around the crotch. Bringing up the rear is the immortal Ed Lauter as Shriker, the city lieutenant who has had enough of the violence plaguing his jurisdiction. And speaking of Lauter, and based on how Death Wish 3 concludes, the fact that no one thought to have Kersey and Shriker team up as pissed-off vigilante partners taking on one violence-plagued city at a time in a super-entertaining Death Wish 4 will forever haunt pretty much everyone who is just now realizing how tremendous such a concept would have been.

Death Wish 4: Shrike of the Kersey.

Death Wish 4: Kerse of the Shriker.

Regardless of your title of choice, just think of the poster! 

All of the above is not to be misinterpreted as condemnation; rather, it's the reason Death Wish 3 was, and continues to be, as celebrated as it is. As an honorable sequel to an iconic film, it completely shits the bed, but as a piece of action cinema, its sheer entertainment value is both matched by and heightened because of how spectacularly it fails at preserving the commentary and conflict of the original concept that paved the way for its existence in the first place. Most audiences don't want to be preached to, they want to be titillated. But Death Wish 3 doesn't just want to titillate, it wants to mutilate as a means to titillate—and it's so, so good at that.

THE GOOD GUY

Paul Kersey. Self-confessed liberal. Conscientious objector. Amateur oral surgeon. Exuberant life-taker. Inmate beater. Stuffed cabbage consumer. Ice cream licker. Asshole bait. One-man apocalypse.

The introduction to this column mentions "the guy in a suit with a gun" films of the 1970s, which were a temporary stopping point between the spaghetti westerns of the 1960s and the gloriousness of the 1980s. These '70s comprised guys like Clint Eastwood, Roy Scheider, Lee Marvin, and even Walter Matthau, domestically, and blokes like Michael Caine, internationally, all doing their thing with a single pistol tucked somewhere between their tweed sport coat and brown turtleneck. Physically, the men were rather average, even scrawny, so they depended on their performances rather than ludicrous musculature to exude intimidation. Also born during this era was the realization that Charles Bronson, despite his tiny uncle-like stature and his strange anonymous hybrid of ethnicities (dude looks Mexican, Asian, and Native American all at once), was a remarkable bad-ass. Though he never achieved the same level of critical acclaim as his fellow suit-wearing bad-asses, as he often fell victim to just playing Charles Bronson on-screen, his name is one that often comes up in conversations akin to what this column is celebrating—he sort of one-man army who speaks softly and carries a giant fucking Wildey Magnum.

Bronson wasn't terribly happy during production or with the film's final product, but you'd never know it. There's an unmistakable gleam in his eyes during certain scenes—usually the ones that make clear the knowledge that he will destroy you with ease—and a certain affability seems to be draping over this once tragic character. It's understandable that Bronson likely became disenchanted by the exploitation of his Death Wish series after the first film had actually gone on to achieve a modicum of critical acclaim, but a part of him seems almost relieved that, though Death Wish 3 was probably beneath him, he was finally able to let Kersey have some fun. There would be no raped and ass-defaced housekeepers, and no suicidal daughters hurling themselves onto wrought-iron fences. There would simply be Kersey and his textbook mechanisms for removing life-forces from Planet Earth. Except for a couple of sad-face reaction shots, there'd be nothing so emotionally wrenching that it couldn't be overcome with a spring-loaded mouth smasher. His eyes sparkle as his cartoonishly large firearm arrives in the mail—one used for "big African game hunting"—even referring to it by its model name, "Wildey," which offers it a strangely feminine identity and an even stranger sense of sexual dependency. He proudly shows off his homemade booby traps to the curious and the intrigued, who delight in his sociopathic craftsmanship. Hell, he's no longer waiting for the little sons of bitches to make the first move, and is instead baiting them with shiny Cadillacs and expensive cameras slung around his neck as he takes a leisurely stroll around the ghetto licking his ice cream cone. But to make sure Kersey remains extra incensed, the film goes out of its way to introduce an arbitrary lawyer character (Deborah Raffin) just long enough for the audience to think Kersey might have found his replacement wife before she is quite violently killed, making Kersey's blood-thirst insurmountable.

Let it be known that none of this is something with which one should take umbrage: in case you missed it, this is Death Wish: Part Three.

THE BAD GUY

Manny Fraker. Gang leader. Rapist. Albino. Face-paint enthusiast. Geriatric killer. Prank caller. Gang members union delegate. Future impressionist art project.

Gavan O'Herilhy has one of those faces you just want to punch, which makes him an ideal person to play a villain. O'Herilhy has had a long career as an actor, but also sports one of those resumes filled with titles that don't sound all that familiar. His Fraker isn't exactly stand-out here, nor particularly memorable, but with him presiding over literally hundreds of gang members, all of whom commit most of the bodily harm and explosions, it's easy for him to become lost in the film and not make that big of a splash beyond his weird appearance. In keeping with the up-the-ante traditions of the sequel, Death Wish 3 works much better as having a sea of gang members serving as one foe rather than attempting to offer any of them a specific identity, but with Kersey working alongside his neighbors as well as members of the city police even though he's the hero, there needed to be a face to represent the threat of the bad guys, and what better face than the one that belongs to Gavan O'Herilhy...that you want to punch. (P.S. He is the son of actor Dan O'Herlihy, who also knows a little something about insane Part Threes: he played Conal Cochran in Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.)

Maintaining accidental Death Wish tradition, Death Wish 3 sports several different "Hey, it's that guy!"-type appearances from then-unknown recognizable people. In Death Wish, one of the roving and raping gang members was played by none other than Jeff Goldblum; in Death Wish 2, the rape honor went to Laurence Fishburne; and now, in Death Wish 3, it's Alex Winter's turn to sport the leather jacket and come on way too strong. (For fun, we can conclude with Danny Trejo in Death Wish 4 and Robert Joy in Death Wish 5, neither of whom rape, but both of whom turn into dummies before going full-inferno.)

THE CASUALTIES

The Bad Guys

Between Kersey and his new neighbors, Fraker's gang members endure the following: two are shot in the chest; one suffers a gigantic Wildey-sized hole; one turns into a dummy and is thrown out a window; sixteen are shredded by an M60, four of whom then crash their car and explode; 21 are Wildey-shot, one of whom falls out a window after turning into a dummy; four are clothes-lined off their motorcycles by chains and executed in a hail of bullets; one is thrown down the stairs; one is shot by a cop; one is shot by a zip gun; and two are shotgunned and broom-pushed out a window, respectively.

All in all, Kersey takes the lives of 43 assholes, including the main bad guy. That not only blows all the other Death Wish flicks out of the water twice over, but it's quite possibly a career high for Charles Bronson in general. Second banana Lt. Shriker even manages a respectable eight executions—and this coming from a guy who earlier in the film makes it apparent he can't take part in vigilantism by citing "[he's] a cop." Way to finally see the light, Ed Lauter!

The Good Guys

One gang member whose gang application was rejected is stabbed in the throat while another is pipe-beaten to death; one neighbor's wife is raped (thankfully offscreen) and her arm broken in the process, which somehow leads to her demise; one elderly wife has her throat cut; one old man is set on fire; two cops are shot by an MP5; and a married couple are set on fire and gunned down.

THE BEST KILL

Big, big fan of the one gang member who gets the spring-propelled dagger through the brain. Honorable mention goes to any death that results in the use of a dummy, because seriously, the amount of delight that comes from seeing what's clearly a dummy plummeting from a window and landing unconvincingly on a car windshield is the stuff of dreams.

THE DAMAGE

Well...nothing really. Had Kersey not run around with a bulletproof vest, he would have succumbed either from the switchblade in his kidney or the bullets in his back. The worst thing that happens to him is when he has sex with a lawyer and then she explodes.

Shriker takes a shot to the shoulder, which he dismisses as "just a nick" because Ed Lauter is Lord of the Bad-Asses.

THE BAD GUY'S COMEUPPANCE

Fraker takes a half-dozen bogus rounds to the chest, which are blocked by his own bulletproof vest, but Kersey thinks quickly by blowing him to smithereens with a rocket launcher. And even though the remaining gang members still outnumber the neighborhood citizens by roughly five-to-one, they all look really sad about this and silently agree to retreat. Good guys win! Thanks, absurd violence!

THE LINE

Death Wish 3 ain't exactly big on dialogue, as this is definitely one flick where the carnage does all the talking. Having said that, one of the best lines of the entire running time belongs to one word...

Kersey has just set up a Kevin McCallister-inspired booby trap involving a couple springs and a wooden plank on the floor near a window that gang members use to enter one particular apartment. This plank ends up cracking a gang member right in the mouth, who retreats soon after. The oft-victimized tenants look down at the objects now embedded in the wooden board. "What are those?" they ask, perplexed. "Teeth!" Kersey replies, grinning widely, his glee paramount. In this moment, no one has ever looked happier about mutilating another human being.

Worthy runner-up is Shriker shooting Alex Winter and then bellowing to Kersey, "I owed you that one, dude!"

THE VERDICT

In a way, Death Wish 3 kind of pre-staled the rest of the sequels that would follow (1987's The Crackdown and 1994's The Face of Death, which between the two of them would likely set around thirty-dozen dummies on fire). This second sequel had taken the series so far off the rails in terms of achieving any kind of artistic merit that there was no turning back, but it also painted itself into a corner, because unless Paul Kersey, who was now entirely out of family to be killed off, would be the one to perish at the hands of gang members and then come back from the dead to avenge himself before taking on an entire city with a tank and a collection of conflagratory weapons, the series was never going to top itself. That's not to say the final two Death Wish sequels aren't ludicrous, because they are (the latter has a scene where Kersey dispatches someone with a soccer ball bomb), but with their reduced body counts and with Bronson's evident evaporating level of enthusiasm for what the series had become, it's safe to say that Death Wish 3 was the last truly great chapter in the story of this vigilante—depending, of course, on what your definition of "great" actually entails.

ASSASSINATION (1987)

When it comes to an actress's legacy, I don't think there's ever been anyone as maligned as Jill Ireland. She might even be less popular than Talia Shire (who, if we're being honest, suffered because of the parts she played, not the performances she gave). The real-life spouse of Charles Bronson, Ireland and the celebrated action icon appeared together in sixteen films (seventeen if we count her cameo in Lola), the first being 1968's Villa Rides. Not necessarily one who married an actor and then became an actress, she'd already worked fairly steadily in film and television for more than a decade before meeting Bronson on the set of 1967's The Great Escape. However, out of politeness, it's not commonly discussed that it was through Bronson's stipulation for many of his films that if the studio/director/producer wanted him, they had to have her, too. This was likely a chagrin for said filmmakers, being that, well, Jill Ireland was kind of a lousy actress.

Sure, it's all subjective and it's all just one person's opinion. But, after marrying Bronson in 1968, she made seventeen more films. Fifteen of them were Bronson pics. Their last was 1987's Assassination, considered to be the worst offender of the Bronson/Ireland pairing.

Despite the involvement of both Bronson and Cannon Films, Assassination is a surprisingly light-hearted offering from a pair of collaborators more well known for violent, stark, "adult," and at times even ugly films. Calling it a screwball comedy would be going too far, but there's a definite It Happened One Night vibe, even maintaining the "aristocracy meets working class" aesthetic, but Assassination swaps the snappy dialogue and sexual tension for rocket launchers and a lunatic plot, which sees Bronson's secret service agent single-handedly taking on an unending squad of hitmen bent on taking out the First Lady, who may or may not have been sent by the President himself. (In 1987, this was considered a wacky plot. These days...)

Assassination is oddly dated in certain aspects--beyond the frizzy hair of every female lead, that is. The most glaring example of this is the character played by Jan Gan Boyd, an Asian actress saddled with the hilariously offensive character name Charlie Chang, who spends most of the film begging Bronson to sleep with her. Over and over. In every exchange the characters share on screen, it involves the request that Bronson take her home and give her the ol' heave-ho (which he does). For someone like Bronson, who was probably the only person on Planet Earth to suffer from both superiority and inferiority complexes simultaneously, this attractive woman half his age pleading for sex was likely a machination on behalf of the filmmakers to coax Bronson into signing on to the film. (No joke: Bronson suffered a real-life lack of confidence, to the point where he'd refuse to work with actors who were taller than him.) Take all that, add the press conference scene where a reporter flat-out asks the First Lady if the President was responsible for giving her that black eye, which she'd actually suffered during a botched assassination attempt, and you've got a weirdly inappropriate action film which, if remade today, would have to be gutted and rebuilt from the ground up to avoid storms of political incorrectness.

There's nothing the least bit realistic about Assassination's conflict, and even though Bronson and Ireland were real-life husband and wife, their chemistry isn't anything to write home about, but when the film involves scenes of Bronson firing rocket launchers at fleeing motorcyclists or into entire barns to take out one dude, it's really hard to care about Assassination's shortcomings. It's a fun, light, Bronson-having Cannon film that will undoubtedly entertain the legions of fans the craggy-faced superstar left behind following his death in 2003.

Assassination is not exactly bottom-barrel Bronson, but it's nowhere near his most celebrated, either artistically (Walter Hill's Hard Times) or ironically (Michael Winner's masterpiece Death Wish 3). Still, it's a very watchable and consistently entertaining nonsensical romp with some decent stunt work and a healthy amount of casualties, but most importantly, it's Bronson doing what Bronson does best: kill men, make wry comments, and be effortlessly bad-ass while wearing a suit.

10 TO MIDNIGHT (1986)

“I’m not a nice person,” Charles Bronson explains to a reporter in the film’s opening scene. “I’m a mean, selfish son of a bitch. I know you want a story, but I want a killer, and what I want comes first.”

Immediate smash cut to black, the name CHARLES BRONSON, and the driving electronic score by Robert Ragland.

One of the greatest opening sequences to any film, and it belongs to 10 to Midnight.

Charles Bronson worked with director J. Lee Thompson an impressive nine times, with 10 to Midnight being their fourth collaboration. Though none of them would be considered “classics” (as Bronson didn’t have many of those), their films are fondly remembered by the then-current and what would become the next generation of Bronson fans: films like St. Ives, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (which, while still ridiculous, opted to take a restrained step backward from the cartoonish Death Wish 3 and reground the series in reality), and lastly, 10 to Midnight, the closest Bronson ever got to making a horror film. A psychosexual thriller, 10 to Midnight has Bronson hunting down a serial killer preying on women, who commits his murders while totally in the nude when not placing obscene phone calls to girls and using a Spanish accent. It’s…as awkward as you’re thinking it is.

But, in spite of that, 10 to Midnight is one of the better made films not just in the Bronson/Thompson collaborative period, but really in all of Bronson’s career. One of the critical notices about the film claims that 10 to Midnight “sees Bronson back in his Death Wish shoes,” which really isn’t anywhere near accurate. (Sorry to call you out on it decades later, London Times.) Even a vague awareness of Bronson’s career is mostly comprised of his Death Wish series, which can be dumbed down to a simple image of him walking around with a gun blowing away people indiscriminately. But that’s the furthest thing away from what 10 to Midnight is presenting, which is Bronson taking on quite a human and subdued role as Detective Leo Kessler, a cop who – no lie! – kills exactly one person during its entire running time. You…can guess who.

It might be the presence of Charles Bronson, or perhaps producers Golan and Globus (Cannon Films, essentially) that make critics misremember this film and write it off as nothing more than typical exploitation for which the ’80s (and Bronson…and Cannon Films) were infamous. And yeah, the film sure doesn’t miss the chance to flash a random set of bare breasts on screen, but behind the somewhat slimy on-screen events (this will sound weird), there are signs that Thompson was attempting to make a film that’s classier and more intelligent than other films of its type, despite all the…well, slime.

J. Lee Thompson would go on to direct more straightforward horror fare like Happy Birthday to Me, one of the many holiday-centered slasher films made to exploit the popularity of Halloween. This decision surprised a lot of folks, being that Thompson had been responsible for a handful of classics, among them the original Cape Fear – especially when it came to Happy Birthday to Me's marketing campaign, which sold audiences their only reason to see it: “Six of the most bizarre murders you will ever see.” By this point, studios were well aware that audiences (mostly teens) were flocking to the slasher film for this reason alone: bloody murder. Shades of what was to come are present in 10 to Midnight; though the body count is rather low, the grisliness and seediness of their execution does often come off with a certain slasher film aesthetic. The final sequence, which sees “The Slasher” going after his last intended victim, is legitimately thrilling and disturbing. These instances, however, are planted into a rather traditional police procedural, which sees Bronson’s Kessler doing whatever he can – even unethical – to be sure the killer doesn’t walk on a technicality.

Uh oh, wait a minute. You mean Bronson plays a character who circumvents the frustrating machinations and loopholes of the law only to exact his own kind of vengeance?

Maybe the London Times was right after all.

For the uninitiated who are aware of Charles Bronson’s legacy but have sampled only a few more obvious titles, 10 to Midnight may come as a surprise. Not quite a horror film, not quite a slasher film, and certainly not an action film for which he was most known by then, 10 to Midnight borrows from nearly every genre to present an interesting mishmash of sensibilities and, miraculously, ends up with a rather solid “genre” picture – though which genre to which it belongs will be up to the audience to determine.

THE 'DEATH WISH' SERIES (1974-1994)

1974’s Death Wish, directed by Michael Winner, is nowadays considered a minor classic. While it achieved only a modicum of critical success, it certainly landed much better with audiences and was a box office hit (none of which the pitiful Eli Roth remake from 2018 managed to do). Death Wish was one of the last of the guy-in-a-suit-with-a-gun films of the 1970s, which were a temporary stopping point between the spaghetti westerns of the 1960s and the gloriousness of the 1980s. These ’70s comprised guys like Clint Eastwood, Roy Scheider, Lee Marvin, and even Walter Matthau, domestically, and blokes like Michael Caine, internationally, all doing their thing with a single pistol tucked somewhere between their tweed sport coat and their brown turtleneck. Physically, the men were rather average — even scrawny — and so they depended on their performances to exude intimidation rather than ludicrous musculature. 

Also born during this era was the realization that Charles Bronson, despite his tiny-uncle-like stature and his strange anonymous hybrid of ethnicities (dude looks Mexican, Asian, and Native American all at once), was a remarkable bad-ass. Though he never achieved the same level of critical acclaim as his fellow suit-wearing bad-asses, as he often fell victim to just playing Charles Bronson on-screen, his name is one that often comes up in conversations akin to old school action flicks.

Given Death Wish’s financial success, you might think that a sequel was inevitable, but you must remember that during this era, sequels weren’t nearly as commonplace as they’d eventually become. Death Wish 2 was actually one of the first sequels to be made in what would eventually become a very marketable franchise. It’s also the worst sequel in the series. Based on the finished film, it’s clear Death Wish 2 was eager to hit all the same beats as its predecessor without too much deviation. And its version of Paul Kersey (Bronson) was eager to get to his vigilantism, this time not even giving law enforcement the chance to fail him before he slipped on his knit hat, grabbed a revolver, and took to the streets — this time hunting down the actual punks responsible for the defilement and death of his daughter, hereby eschewing the “any punk’ll do” mentality that gave the original film its voice.

As tends to happen with franchises, the Death Wish sequels were very silly (though not incrementally – Death Wish 3 out-sillies them all), but unlike most other franchises, these sequels barely resembled the groundbreaking first film when the series was only halfway through. This unexpected tonal change in the Death Wish series very much mirrors that of the Rambo: First Blood series, in that their increasingly absurd entries succeeded in not only becoming so removed from their first films’ original ideals that they barely resembled each other, but also somehow established a precedent of cartoon violence for which those series would ultimately be known. As far as Death Wish goes, this can be likened to the involvement of the legendary Cannon Films, who produced all four sequels, and who are responsible for perhaps some of the most iconic B-action films of all time.

Death Wish 2 is the grindhouse entry of the series. It’s grimy, slimy, violent, and discomforting, courtesy of the returning and controversial Michael Winner. For those unfamiliar with the deceased British director, he was the 1970s/80s version of Michael Bay: his talents were hardly ever commended, and not many good films can be found in his filmography, but he always turned a profit for studios, so they were eager to keep him employed. In an almost spiteful reaction to some of the critical drubbings he received on its predecessor, he ups the cruelty for the sequel: the rape scene lasts longer, with more graphic detail and softcore flourishes, and with the added taboo of the victim being mentally handicapped. It also ends in her equally graphic suicide. The reactionary violence perpetrated by “mourning” Paul Kersey that then unfolds results in more bodies dropped, right down to a completely unrealistic mano-a-mano finale set within a hospital (which allows for a small role by Carpenter regular Charles Cyphers).

“Death Wish promotes private justice!” those 1974 reviews stated with condemnation. Winner responded with his middle finger that he later nicknamed Death Wish 2. 

And then there’s Death Wish 3, again helmed by Winner, and considered by many to be the standout of the series for just how ridiculous it is. It’s the equivalent of a live-action “Itchy & Scratchy” cartoon — a hyper-violent marriage of Grumpy Old Men and Home Alone that includes a third-act extended finale where more time is dedicated to people dying than people not dying.

Those people who call Death Wish 3 the series standout are kind of right…depending of course on how seriously we’re considering the rating system. Because Death Wish 3 is kind of a masterpiece. It’s Charles Bronson meets Merry Melodies. It’s an unabashed series of vignettes in which people are killed in extremely disparate ways, loosely connected only by one common thread: they deserve it. Kersey knows they deserve it, the audience knows they deserve it, and the audience wants Kersey to make it rain bodies. And by gosh, does he ever. While the previous two Death Wish films, each in their own ways, wanted to make killing ugly, and revenge conflicting, Death Wish 3 wants you to eat your fucking popcorn and enjoy the carnage, you assholes. Out of sight is any commentary or sense of confliction. There are no warring minds re: revenge versus justice. Kersey barely needs a reason to begin unpacking all of his weapons of mass destruction. Evidently he can’t wait to do it. He’s no longer haunted by the change that’s taken place inside him, turning him from mild-mannered architect/widower to a nonplussed bachelor/accomplished killing machine. His ease at life-taking has come to define him. In previous Death Wish films, the vigilante murders had been committed in response to the frustration spurred by feelings of helplessness; in Death Wish 3, they are cathartic release. They are the unleashing pent-up blue balls of a mentally exhausted neighborhood so beaten down and regressed by daily victimization that rioting in the streets and blood in the gutter is tantamount to ejaculatory celebration. To come away with the message “violence isn’t the answer” at film’s end, where Kersey grasps his suitcases and heroically marches down a street littered with flaming cars, dead bodies, and screaming police sirens — it’s the lone rider leaving that Old West town at sun-up — is to embrace your delusion. Death Wish 3 makes one thing very clear: violence works — works well, works often, and should be utilized for every possible conflict.

Death Wish 3 so changed the overall tenor of the series that there would be no returning to semi-respectable ground, which is why the remaining sequels don’t hold a candle, either in terms of being a rock’em sock’em silly time, or of actually attempting to be engaging, thoughtful films. But the Cannon Group, enjoying another hit, obviously had dollar signs in their eyes and typically premature Death Wish 4 posters floating around in their brains…

Following the “disaster” (read: genius) that was Death Wish 3, a minor shake-up occurred behind the scenes as Death Wish 4: The Crackdown moved ahead without series director Michael Winner. The why of this is unclear. I’ve seen this attributed to Bronson refusing to work with the director ever again after Winner had allegedly secretly shot additional violent inserts on Death Wish 3 while the conscientiously objecting Bronson wasn’t on set. Another story had Cannon claiming that Winner simply wasn’t interested in further sequels (which will seem suspect soon). Whatever the reason, replacing him was J. Lee Thompson, a far better filmmaker (he directed the original Cape Fear, for one) with whom Bronson had previously worked six times, and with whom he would collaborate twice more following Death Wish 4 for an overall total of nine films. (One of these is the bonkers Bronson crime thriller/slasher flick Ten to Midnight, which is required viewing as far as I’m concerned.)

Being a Cannon Films production, Death Wish 4 is still pretty silly, but following the gonzo previous sequel, there’s at least an effort on behalf of Thompson and screenwriter Gail Morgan Hickman, who had written the Thompson/Bronson flick Murphy’s Law, to ground the Death Wish world back in reality. Although this is called Part 4,  the events of Death Wish 3 go largely ignored, and I can see why. If one’s goal with Death Wish 4 is to adhere to a more realistic world, best not mention the time your lead hero literally killed an entire neighborhood of painted, unionized punks.

Death Wish 4 thankfully feels different from what’s come before, although it still embraces the silliness that would come to define most of Cannon Films’ output. Retired from the vigilante life and living with his replacement wife and daughter, Kersey embraces his old deadly ways when his nu-daughter is killed by drug dealers thanks to her shady, drug addict boyfriend. But this time, instead of taking to the streets and murdering any punk he encounters, Kersey is embroiled in a mystery — one that has him infiltrating two competing drug operations and serving up some serious Yojimbo-style double-cross, all at the request of his mysterious benefactor (played by Cannon go-to guy John P. Ryan).

Thankfully missing from Death Wish 4 is the grit and grime from the first two films. Also thankfully, it’s a sequel that preserves the “let’s have fun!” mentality from Death Wish 3, which was quite honestly that sequel’s only selling point. As mentioned, Death Wish 3 had so changed the trajectory of the series that there was no reverting back to the path of the original’s respectability. Death Wish 4 pretty ably straddles that line between actually showing off an engaging plot while trying new things, but also blowing up chunky looking dummies that had, just seconds before, been real, living character actors. (And I love a good dummy.)

Following the release of Death Wish 4, Cannon Films was sold to Pathé, and the Golan-Globus cousins were fired. Golan soon joined 21st Century Film Corporation, who immediately kick-started the redundantly titled Death Wish 5: The Face of Death, the worst sequel in the series since the second entry and the film that Golan hoped would save the ailing company. (It didn’t.)

Death Wish 5 is the most bizarre entry in the franchise, even if the mainstay of Kersey the vigilante remains its chief narrative hook. Again enjoying a quiet life (this time under a new name) with his new girlfriend Olivia and her daughter Chelsea, shit goes sour when Olivia is killed and Chelsea is kidnapped by a maniacal mobster named O’Shea (Michael Parks). Complicating the matter is that O’Shea is Chelsea’s biological father, so the cops (one of whom is played by a generally terrible Saul Rubinek) can’t do anything about it.

Enter the vigilante.

Bronson was 72 when he made Death Wish 5, which was the main dig most critics got in when the critically savaged sequel was released — that the aging action star was far too old to be engaging in something so silly and violent. Not only that, but much of the sequel feels cheap, offering the kind of small scale environments prevalent in direct-to-video features. There are very few city exterior sequences, which had been a stalwart of the series up to that point. The actual cities of New York and Los Angeles had become part and parcel with the stories being explored in those entries; sorry, I have to say it: they became characters. Death Wish 5 was the series’ only Canadian production, and it’s evident that director Allan Goldstein was eager to hide this whenever possible.

Death Wish 5 offers a fair share of entertainment strictly on two terms: the presence of Michael Parks, who absolutely excelled at villainy, and the lunacy involved with Kersey’s murder methods, whether they be remote-controlled soccer ball bombs or poisoned cannolis borrowed from The Godfather III. Beyond that, Death Wish 5 has absolutely nothing else going for it — even the presence of an aging, puffy-faced Bronson, who had been completely over the Death Wish franchise since Part 2, is a serious bummer, because you can tell he’s not at all into it — and, as the critics noted, definitely showed his age.

Director Michael Winner, who helmed the first three Death Wish films, once said, “I’d have Charles Bronson starring in Death Wish 26 if I thought it would make a profit.” From the point of view of someone strictly looking for a silly, B-movie good time, I’ll say it’s a shame that the series ran out of steam far before that projection — that is, of course, assuming that some of those never-to-be sequels would have reached the same lunatic heights as seen in Death Wish 3. Because at that point, there was no turning back — no sense in trying to end the series before it jumped the shark, because that shark had most definitely already been jumped. So long as Bronson had been willing, I’d have easily taken 21 more entries in spite of how terrible the last official sequel had been. Over Charles Bronson’s storied career, he made far better films than the original Death Wish, but the long-running vigilante series would eventually define his career. It’s a shame this was the final theatrical note on which he had to go out.