Happy 52nd Anniversary, DEATH WISH (1974)!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

I’m not sure how many of you are aware of this, but I love Charles Bronson. I don’t mean I just enjoy his movies, either. I have been obsessed with him for most of my life, well at least for about the last 40 years. During that time, I have watched all of his movies, I have driven 17 hours just to watch a Bronson triple-feature at the drive-in, I’ve visited the Colorado filming locations of MR. MAJESTYK, and I’ve visited his gravesite in Vermont. I’m currently a co-host of the “This Week in Charles Bronson Podcast” where I’ve been able to be parts of interviews with his co-stars and even a family member. For a man in his early 50’s, I think an awful lot about a movie star who passed away over 20 years ago. I call it a healthy obsession, but you can feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Well, it all began sometime in ’84 or ’85 when I stayed up one night with my Dad, and we watched the late movie. The movie that night was the TV edit of the Bronson classic, DEATH WISH. Before that night I had never heard of Bronson, but as the movie progressed and bad things happened to his family, Dad assured me that Bronson would take care of the bad guys. Looking back now, it’s ironic since Bronson didn’t kill any of the actual bad guys who brutalized his wife and daughter. Regardless, I didn’t know anything about Bronson, but my Dad certainly did, and that intrigued me as a boy. This also coincided around the same time when our family got our first VCR. Every time we’d go to the video store, I’d see that same guy from DEATH WISH, and I would beg mom and dad to rent one of his movies. I can assure you that no junior high kid in Arkansas knew as much about Charles Bronson in the 80’s than I did.

DEATH WISH premiered at the movies on July 24, 1974! It was an immediate, controversial smash hit, and in today’s dollars, it earned the equivalent of around $150 Million in America and approximately $300 Million around the globe. It cemented Bronson as a bonafide box office star in his home country and spawned the series that he would be most connected with for the remainder of his career. In honor of the 52nd anniversary of DEATH WISH, I’m sharing this iconic scene from the classic:

Villain of the Day: Kai Proctor (Banshee)

Posted on by Arleigh

“At some point, in the very near future, you’ll be made to understand how badly you misjudged me today. And when that time comes and you’re begging me for mercy, I want you to remember this moment because this is the moment you’ve sealed your fate.” — Kai Proctor

Banshee’s Kai Proctor, played with quiet menace by Ulrich Thomsen, distinguishes himself from the familiar lineup of television crime bosses precisely because his authority is defined by contradiction. On the surface, he fits the archetype: a man who controls Banshee’s underworld through legitimate fronts, compromised law enforcement, and an unflinching readiness for brutality. Yet what makes Proctor compelling isn’t the structure of his empire—it’s the tension beneath it, the sense that every assertion of control doubles as a form of self-justification for a man who has never truly stopped answering to the community he claims to have left behind.

That tension is rooted in his Amish upbringing. Proctor’s departure from that world was not a clean break but something closer to an amputation. He retains its language, discipline, and moral rigidity even as he has constructed a life in direct opposition to its teachings. He speaks Pennsylvania Dutch, invokes scripture, and adheres to a personal code of order and restraint that feels almost monastic against the backdrop of his violence.

At the same time, that code should not be mistaken for conventional morality. Proctor is, first and foremost, a brutal crime lord. He traffics in narcotics, prostitution, and murder—violence he is fully willing to carry out with his own hands—and sustains his power through a network of entrenched criminal enterprises. His discipline does not temper his cruelty; it organizes it.

This contradiction becomes even more pronounced in the alliances he chooses to make. The same man who carries remnants of Amish restraint will readily conduct business with Colombian drug cartels or neo-Nazi gangs if it strengthens his control over Banshee and the surrounding counties. His worldview is not governed by external ethics but by an internal logic that allows him to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable acts in service of power and order.

What further complicates Proctor is the way that same internal logic extends beyond self-interest. Time and again, he protects the Amish community that excommunicated him, intervening against outside threats on behalf of people who refuse even to acknowledge him. He does this without expectation of gratitude or reconciliation, suggesting that what drives these actions is not redemption but something more instinctive—an inherited sense of duty he cannot discard. In effect, he continues to guard a flock that has already cast him out.

By the series’ end, Proctor remains a man without a true home—too violent for the Amish world, yet too disciplined and burdened by it to fully belong to the criminal one. His arc does not resolve these contradictions so much as deepen them, and that unresolved tension is precisely what makes him endure. He is not simply a crime boss or a villain, but a figure defined by the uneasy coexistence of brutality and belief, control and longing—someone whose humanity, however obscured, keeps him from ever becoming reducible to a monster.

Villain of the Day

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix for Avalanche Sharks!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly watch parties.  On Twitter, I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday and I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday.  On Mastodon, I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix!  The movie?  Avalanche Sharks!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, find Avalanche Sharks on Prime, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  I’ll be there happily tweeting.  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

See you there!

 

 

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Gus Van Sant Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to one of the pioneers of American independent cinema, Gus Van Sant!

It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Gus Van Sant Films

Drugstore Cowboy (1989, dir by Gus Van Sant, DP: Robert Yeoman)

To Die For (1995, dir by Gus Vant Sant, DP: Eric Alan Edwards)

Gerry (2002, dir by Gus Van Sant, DP: Harris Savides)

Elephant (2003, dir by Gus Van Sant, DP: Harris Savides)

Scenes I Love: Banshee

Posted on by Arleigh

The Hood vs. Damien Sanchez fight in Season 1, Episode 3 is the moment Banshee stops teasing its brutality and just commits to it—and that’s why it sells you on the series. It isn’t stylized, choreographed “hero wins clean” violence; it’s ugly, exhausting, and morally messy, exactly the kind of sequence that tells you this show won’t flinch. Once Hood (played by Antony Starr who will later portray Homelander in the show The Boys) walks into that casino floor and picks a fight with a professional MMA fighter, the series effectively says: “This is what we are. If you’re still here after this, you’re one of us.”

What makes the scene so gripping is how it reframes both characters through pure physical storytelling. Sanchez starts off dismissive, treating Hood like a joke, and for a good chunk of the fight he is outclassed—technically superior, faster, and more precise. But Hood’s violence isn’t about skill; it’s about will, rage, and a complete disregard for his own body. The moment he shifts from “trying to win a fight” to “I will break you even if I break myself” is the thesis of the whole show: in Banshee, power doesn’t come from being the better fighter, it comes from being the one most willing to go too far. That raw, pragmatic brutality—elbows, smashes, no rules—feels shockingly real compared to typical TV brawls, and it cements Hood as a man whose moral code is written in concussions and blood.

This is also the scene that locks in the show’s tone for the long haul. It’s not just “violent”; it’s specifically consequential violence. Hood walks away badly hurt, Sanchez’s career is effectively over, and the repercussions ripple into Hood’s relationship with Kai Proctor and the wider power structure of the town. For you as a viewer, that’s the hook: the series proves it will follow its own logic to brutal ends, and that the stakes aren’t just emotional but physical and permanent. Once you’ve seen Hood willingly turn himself into a weapon against a trained professional fighter and pay the price, you know Banshee won’t pull punches later—so if you loved this scene, you were already braced for everything the rest of the series throws at you.

Music Video of the Day: Europa and the Pirate Twins by Thomas Dolby (1981, directed by Thomas Dolby and Simon Maggs)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The lyrics to this Thomas Dolby song seem to be self-explanatory.  When they were teenagers, the narrator met a girl named Europa, they fell in love while spending their days walking along the beach, and then Europa moved away.  (Dolby sings that “the war” took her away, which sounds ominous but which makes sense when you consider that Dolby’s 1982 album, The Golden Age of Wireless, was based on the idea of him being a part of the first generation since World War II.  “The war took her away” is probably meant to be a comment on how relationships that were once ended by a world war were now just being ended by a parent getting a new job in a new country or town.)  Years later, Europa’s a star and Dolby tries to see her, just to be ushered away by one of her bodyguards.  But, in Dolby’s heart, they’ll always be pirate twins on the beach.

The video has come to be considered a classic example of early 80s music videos, mixing the future and the past and allowing Dolby to capitalize on his nerdy but cool persona. The machines link the song to the future but the black-and-white images bring us to the past, capturing the feel of Dolby’s song.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Hunter 1.13 “Snow Queen: Part One”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, we have part one of a two part story.

Episode 1.13 “Snow Queen: Part One”

(Dir by Tony Mordente, originally aired on March 23rd, 1985)

This week’s episode features two tough guys who are both named Dennis.

Dennis Farina appears as Vic Terranova, a gangster who owns a nightclub and who loves country music.  McCall is working undercover as a country-western singer in order to take both him and his cocaine-dealing operation down.

Meanwhile, Dennis Franz appears as Sgt. Jackie Molinas, a sleazy detective from New York who comes to Los Angeles to extradite Sally LaPone (Lycia Neff), a former New York drug dealer who relocated to Los Angeles after she witnessed a murder in the Big Apple.  Sally is now the exclusive drug dealer for rock star Darby Slash (Brendan Hughes).  When she’s arrested at a raid on one of Terranova’s clubs, Molinas demands that she be turned over to him.  Correctly assuming that Molinas is planning on killing her, Sally escapes his custody.  Molinas’s search for Sally leads to him apparently killing both Darby Slash and also one Hunter’s informants.

Hunter can’t prove that Molinas is the killer but he suspects it.  It seems like he could just ask his Mafia relatives if Molinas is working for the Mob but this show has kind of forgotten that Hunter has relatives in the Mafia.

This episode was part one of two so this review is going to feel incomplete.  When the episode ended, McCall had gotten a job singing for Terranova and Molinas was closing in on Sally.  We’ll see how it all plays out next week.  For this week, I’ll simply say that Dennis and Dennis delivered.  Dennis Farina was properly smooth as Terranova.  Meanwhile, Dennis Franz turned Jackie Molinas into one of the sleaziest, most obnoxious characters that I’ve ever seen.  He’s the type of guy who walks into a place, insults all of the men, crudely hits on all of the women, and then attempts to murder a stranger.  Franz made Molinas into a character worthy of loathing.

I always find it interesting when Rick Hunter has to deal with a bad cop.  It’s like the show is saying, “Yes, Rick kills a lot of people but at least he’s not that guy!”

We’ll see how things work out next week.

Retro Television Review: Decoy 1.39 “The Lost Ones”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Decoy, which aired in Syndication in 1957 and 1958.  The show can be viewed on Tubi!

This week, Decoy comes to an end.

Episode 1.39 “The Lost Ones”

(Dir by Arthur H. Singer, originally aired on July 7th, 1958)

The final episode of Decoy finds Casey dropping in on Elsa Kramer (Phyllis Newman), a recently-released juvenile offender who Casey previously arrested.  Casey just wants to check on her and to welcome her back to society.  But, when Casey steps — unannounced, which may be okay in New York but seems rather rude to my Texas sensibilities — into the family’s small kitchen, she discovers Elsa’s abusive father is dead and Elsa is holding the gun.  Elsa makes a run for it.  Elsa’s mother (Adelaide Klein) and brother (Morton Lighter) say that Elsa shot her father in self-defense.

Casey doesn’t think Elsa pulled the trigger and is determined to find Elsa and learn the truth before Elsa is arrested again.  Not surprisingly, Casey’s right.  It was her brother who killed their father.  Elsa took the blame because her brother was going to medical school whereas Elsa really didn’t have much of a future to lose.

In some ways, this episode is an appropriate send-off for Casey and Decoy.  It has some location footage of New York, which was always the show’s main appeal outside of Beverly Garland’s lead performance.  It features Casey trying to prove that a seemingly guilty person is actually innocent.  That’s certainly preferable to what we saw last week.

At the same time, this episode had some of the same flaws that were present in quite a few of Decoy’s final episodes.  The dialogue was a bit overbaked.  Even worse, the acting from the supporting cast was not particularly impressive.  Morton Lighter was so twitchy as Elsa’s brother that there wasn’t much doubt as to who the guilty party was.  This episode also featured Casey meeting with the least intimidating street gang in New York history.  The whole thing lacked the authenticity that distinguished Decoy at its best.  I’m not really sure if the show’s producers knew that this would be the final episode of the series.  If they did, they allowed to show to end on a bit of anticlimactic note.

So, that’s it for Decoy.  For the most part, it was a good show.  The last few episodes were perhaps a bit too melodramatic for their own good.  One got the feeling that the show’s writers were under orders to “liven” things up.  But the early episodes made great use of the New York setting and, throughout the series, Beverly Garland gave a great performance as the tough but compassionate Casey Jones.

What will I be watching next?  I’ll let you know next week!