Today would have been actor Tony Curtis’ 101st birthday!
With a career that spanned almost 60 years, Tony Curtis starred in a whole bunch of classics, especially in the 50’s and 60’s. I’ve always enjoyed watching Curtis, as he could be suave and debonair, hilarious, or even a murderous sociopath, depending on what the role required. Thanks for the memories, Tony!
And one bonus shot…
“Jerry, I’m not a nice person. 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!”
— Detective Leo Kessler (Charles Bronson) in Ten To Midnight (1983)
At first, Detective Leo Kessler seems like exactly the type of cop that you would expect to find in a film about a serial killer who knows how to manipulate the system to his advantage. Kessler is tough, plain-spoken, a blue collar warrior who is trying to keep the streets of Los Angeles safe for citizens of every age.
“I remember when the legal meant lawful,” Kessler says, “Now, it means loophole.”
Kessler isn’t thrilled that his new partner, Paul McAnn (Andrew Stevens), is a graduate of Berkley and that he’s got a degree in sociology. Kessler’s doubts are actually justified. One of the first things that McAnn does is drop a wad of chewing gum on the ground at a crime scene. Kessler also knows that Warren Stacy (Gene Davis) is the psycho who has been targeting young women and making obscene phone calls to his daughter, Laurie (Lisa Eilbacher). When McAnn discovers that Kessler has planted blood evidence on Warren’s clothes, McAnn is torn about what to do. “Forget what’s legal,” Kessler says, “and do what’s right.”
But here’s the thing with Kessler. He may say that he’s a mean son of a bitch but he’s not. He’s actually a pretty nice guy. He even discovers that he likes and becomes a mentor to McAnn. Kessler just doesn’t think that someone like Warren Stacy should be wandering around, free to kill. Charles Bronson never gets nearly enough credit for his acting. Leo Kessler isn’t just a touch cop. He’s an old-fashioned guy in a changing world. He’s someone who doesn’t understand why the system is suddenly more worried about the Warrn Stacys of the world than the victims.
He’s also a father.
Leo: “I hate quiche.”
Laurie: “Why did you get it?”
Leo: “I thought it was pie.”
As violent and exploitive as From 10 To Midnight is, I have to admit that I have a sentimental attachment to the film. The difficult-but-loving relationship between Leo and Laurie Kessler reminds me of my own relationship with my Dad. I see a lot of my Dad in Leo and I also see a lot of myself in Laurie. There’s a scene early on where McAnn mentions to Laurie that she’s a lot like her father.
“You think so?” Laurie replies, “I don’t.”
That scene gets me every time because I’ve had people say the same thing to me about my Dad and I used to have the same response. Everyone else picked up on it long before I realized it. For all of Laurie complaints about Leo having always been too busy for her, she’s there to comfort him after he gets kicked off the force. “I’m getting drunk with my old man,” Laurie says. Leo replies that she’s not.
It’s rare to see Charles Bronson cast as a family man. Usually, he played loners, the type of solitary warriors who seemed to have nothing in their lives beyond doing accomplishing whatever their mission happened to be. The Death Wish films did give Bronson a family but they were all dead by the end of the second film. 10 To Midnight features Bronson as not just a tough cop but also Bronson as a father with an independent and intelligent daughter. I think that’s the main reason why 10 to Midnight is my favorite Bronson films.
“No, we won’t.”
— Detective Leo Kessler
Bronson only fires his gun once in 10 To Midnight but he definitely makes a statement with that shot. And after spending 101 minutes watching Kessler trying to stop Warren Stacy, there’s definitely something very cathartic about the simple brutality of the film’s ending. Trying to analyze or understand evil, the film tells us, is pointless.
Sometimes, you just need someone who is willing to say, “No, we won’t.”
Hero of the Day
“He didn’t want to be a hero…until they pushed him too far.”
One of the reasons that MR. MAJESTYK (1974) is such a great movie is the fact that Vince Majestyk couldn’t care less about being a hero. He has too much work to do. He just wants to get his melons in and be left alone. And when an arrogant gangster tries to bully him, his stubborn ass refuses to be pushed around. That’s all there is to it. This simple character and story results in Vince Majestyk becoming an incredible badass hero.
Charles Bronson plays Majestyk with complete confidence. He’s not scared of Al Lettieri’s hitman, Frank Renda, one bit. The man’s more of a nuisance to him than anything because he’s keeping him from getting his work done. Majestyk feels authentic as a blue-collar, capable, hardworking man. With Bronson’s weathered features, he fits the part perfectly and looks like a man who’s worked outdoors for decades. That gives the film a credibility many action movies lack. You realize almost immediately that Renda has made a big mistake by going after a guy who is a lot smarter and tougher than he seems. The entire story plays out with a feeling of experience and determination beating misplaced arrogance.
Vince Majestyk is a man who has morals that are proven by his actions, not his words. He treats people the way he wants to be treated. He doesn’t posture or scream and threaten people. He’s a man of his word, and when he’s threatened, he simply draws a line in the sand and refuses to budge. That stubbornness becomes heroic as the villains, and the local law enforcement always underestimates him. And when it’s all said and done, you get the feeling that Majestyk will just get back in his truck and go to work.
That’s ultimately why Vince Majestyk is a great movie hero. He’s tough without being cocky, moral but not preachy, and dangerous even though he’s not Superman. Bronson played a lot of heroic characters over the years, but Vince Majestyk is my personal favorite!
Hero of the Day
Back in 2023, my family visited the Black Hills of South Dakota. The first thing we did was visit Mount Rushmore. The second thing we did was visit the Mount Moriah Cemetery and the final resting place of Wild Bill Hickok. Situated on the top of a hill overlooking the city of Deadwood, it’s a beautiful place that also includes the graves of Calamity Jane and Sheriff Seth Bullock. I insisted that we see the location for possibly the most superficial reason possible… because Charles Bronson played Hickok in THE WHITE BUFFALO.
Based on a novel by Richard Sale, the story opens with Hickok having a recurring nightmare of a snowy showdown with a giant white “spike.” And if he has pistols handy, he wakes up firing them uncontrollably and you’d better not be nearby. Determined to face his fear, he heads out into the hills with his friend Charlie Zane (Jack Warden), hoping to find the albino buffalo, so he can put him down and end the nightmares. Around the same time, the great beast has stampeded the camp of Crazy Horse (Will Sampson) killing his child in the process. Convinced that the child cannot have peace in the afterlife, Crazy Horse sets out to kill the buffalo so he can wrap his child in its white “robe” and free her spirit. With Hickok a prolific killer of Indians, and Crazy Horse a brave Lakota Oglala warrior, the two men seem to be on a deadly collision course in those snowy hills.
Charles Bronson’s final western, THE WHITE BUFFALO has a lot of the scenes you’d expect. With Bronson playing a famous gunman, we get to see several gunfights as he makes his way through various Wyoming towns, featuring well-known actors like Clint Walker and Ed Lauter. We also get to see him visit various saloons, as well as the widow Schermerhorn, played by Kim Novak. When he really “knew” her, she was a prostitute named Poker Jenny. Along with those I’ve already mentioned, it’s an all-star affair as we see such familiar faces as Stuart Whitman, John Carradine, Slim Pickens, and even a young Martin Kove sprinkled throughout the film. And of course, we get to see Bronson take on the gigantic white buffalo of the title, first in his dreams, and then later in reality! Directed by veteran filmmaker J. Lee Thompson, these scenes are staged and executed well, with Hickok’s nightmares given an especially eerie quality.
While the movie has the expected scenes, it’s the unexpected character moments that sets THE WHITE BUFFALO apart as a uniquely strong entry in Bronson’s filmography. Hickok may be a man haunted by dreams of a monstrous white buffalo, but Bronson plays him in such a way that we can feel his exhaustion and literal sickness from too many years of a dangerous and difficult life. The buffalo is more than just an animal… it’s a symbol of guilt, fear and the coming of death itself. Bronson could always underplay a role better than just about anyone else, but here he’s reflective and haunted in way that I’ve not seen before, and he’s really good.
I also think the movie gets better every time Bronson shares a scene with Will Sampson. Sampson brings dignity and intelligence to Crazy Horse. His mission is more noble than Hickok’s, and an unexpected friendship develops between the two men, despite their vast differences. Ultimately, it’s this relationship that provides the film an emotional weight that sneaks up on you by the end, even if it’s not meant to last.
THE WHITE BUFFALO is not a perfect film. The animatronic buffalo may look a little hokey, and the film may seem a little slow at times for those expecting an action-packed western or monster movie. However, Bronson and Sampson are so good in their myth-making performances that the film eventually becomes something more. It’s the idea of watching two aging warriors, bound together through the bravery of confronting death, that I found to be more interesting and compelling than anything else on display.
THE WHITE BUFFALO is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Tubi, PlutoTV, and The Roku Channel.
How many of y’all can say that you’ve met Dale Evans, the wife of Roy Rogers?! I can. She was in Perryville, Arkansas to watch one of my fellow high school students play basketball. I don’t remember if he was her grandson, nephew or what exactly the relationship was, but she was there, and I went and introduced myself to her. This would have been in the early 90’s and she was around 80 years old or so. She was so sweet to me, and I’ve always appreciated that I got to meet her.
Today I decided to watch the episode of “The Roy Rogers Show, Season 2, Episode 8, THE KNOCKOUT,” where Charles Bronson is the special guest star. In the episode, Roy notices strangers digging on an isolated section of his land. When he investigates, he discovers that the handlers for prizefighter Willie “Killer” Conley (Bronson) have set up a training camp for the champ. However, Roy begins to suspect that quite a bit more than training is going on there. Before long the fists and bullets are flying as Roy and Dale take down the bad guys. Bronson’s character may be called Killer Conley, but he is a decent guy who’s gotten himself in too deep with the bad guys, and he ends up joining the good guys when the rubber meets the road at the end. That made me happy. With that said, Bronson and Rogers punched it out multiple times before everything worked out well in the end!
This was my first ever viewing of The Roy Rogers Show. From what I understand, it’s a pretty standard entry in a series that consistently displays a simple story with clear morals and a dependable resolution. However, when you consider that this episode was one of the early TV appearances of Charles Bronson, billed as Charles Buchinsky at the time, it emerges as a piece of cinematic history. A couple of decades later Bronson would be the biggest male movie star in the world. At this point for me, it’s nostalgia at its finest!
The Roy Rogers Show is currently streaming on Tubi.
In my quest to see every movie and TV show that Charles Bronson ever appeared in, I finally decided to take on THE MOB this morning. I’ve held off for years because this early, uncredited role as a dockworker only gives Bronson a couple of lines. He looks like a natural fixture on the docks, but his screen time only adds up to a minute or two in total.
With Bronson being little more than some temporary dockside scenery, I settled in for a story about Johnny Damico (Broderick Crawford), a tough, no-nonsense cop who’s doing some rainy night ring-shopping for his girlfriend when a man is killed just outside the store. He bungles up the whole situation, and the killer gets away. It turns out the killing was a mob hit and soon Damico is going undercover as Tim Flynn from New Orleans so he can infiltrate and bust the organized crime ring operating on the waterfront.
Broderick Crawford is so good in this role. His Damico / Flynn has a cynical sense of humor that I enjoyed. He thinks fast, he’s rough around the edges, and he even gets to slap some bad guys around a time or two. He’s one of those characters whose mouth should probably get him in more trouble. Well, now that I think about it, his mouth does almost get him killed a couple of times. Crawford and Bronson would work again together a few years later in the prison film BIG HOUSE USA (1955).
With Crawford’s performance anchoring the movie, Director Robert Parrish delivers a tight, efficient and entertaining crime story that clocks in at just under an hour and a half. One of the things that made the film enjoyable for me is the interesting and recognizable supporting cast of actors who pop up throughout the film. I’ve already mentioned Bronson, but actors like Ernest Borgnine, Neville Brand and Frank DeKova all show up to torment our undercover cop at various points throughout the film. It’s always fun for me to see a cast full of familiar faces!
At the end of the day, I enjoyed THE MOB. It doesn’t try to be anything more than a good crime film, and with Broderick Crawford’s excellent performance, it does its job well.
I remember the first time I ever saw the Charles Bronson western, CHINO. I was probably around 13 or 14 years old and already well known in my school for being obsessed with the actor Charles Bronson, who would have been roughly 65 years old at the time. There was this girl who I guess had a crush on me, so she invited my best friend Chad and I, along with her best friend, over to her house to watch a movie one Saturday. And the movie she chose… CHINO, AKA THE VALDEZ HORSES! I don’t think I watched the movie very close that day. CHINO was treated poorly on VHS in the 80’s, and I was more interested in the DEATH WISH 3s and MURPHY’S LAWs of the world at that time. I was also more interested in trying to make the girls laugh, which was always my main move because I was never good looking enough to smolder.
So, for many years, CHINO was nowhere near the top of my list of favorite Charles Bronson films. I watched it a few times, but I always found it hard to take seriously due to the cheap quality of the video presentation. Well in 2021, Kino Lorber released the film under THE VALDEZ HORSES title in a glorious Blu-ray. CHINO is a revelation with this new release, and I finally saw what I had been missing all these years. For the first time, I felt like I was able to watch it, and judge it, based on its own merits as a film.
CHINO opens on Jamie (15-year-old Vincent Van Patten) riding across the range as the title tune “Freedom Rainbow” plays over the credits. When he comes upon a ranch just as it’s getting dark, a tough-as-nails-looking Chino Valdez (Charles Bronson), emerges from the cabin and offers him a warm fire and a meal. Initially a little scared of Chino, Jamie is looking for work and Chino needs help, so the boy hangs around for a while. Things seem to be going well as the eager Jamie and Chino work the horses at his ranch, but soon issues start popping up. First, it’s the barbed wire that cattle baron Maral (Marcel Bozzuffi) puts up on the range that results in serious injuries for some of Chino’s wild horses. Then, it’s the fact that every time Chino goes to town for supplies, he ends up drinking, brawling, and spending a little time in jail. But those things pale in comparison to the biggest issue… Chino falls in love with the beautiful Catherine (Jill Ireland), Maral’s sister, and Maral will have no part of her falling back in love with the half breed Chino! Maral threatens to kill Chino if he doesn’t quit seeing his sister, and he means it.
Based on the award-winning 1967 novel THE VALDEZ HORSES by female author Lee Hoffman, director John Sturges crafted a movie around a role that seems tailor made for Bronson. Chino Valdez is a loner who reluctantly takes on a fatherly role towards Jamie, and then even more reluctantly falls in love with Catherine. He seemed like the kind of man who would be perfectly fine working the ranch by himself forever until Jamie rides up. A loner in real life who valued his family over anything else, who also purchased his own horse ranch in Vermont the same year of CHINO’s release, it’s hard to know where the character of Chino begins and Charles Bronson ends. This is a particularly strong performance from Bronson, one of his very best.
And you really do need to savor the film for Bronson’s incredible presence, because the film doesn’t have as much action, nor does it lead to the typical showdown that we’ve come to expect in Bronson’s movies. Chino gets into a scuffle when he goes into town, and he shoots some bad guys at the end, but this is first and foremost a character study. As a matter of fact, the film that John Sturges delivered had even less action than what we see in the final product. Disappointed in the surprising lack of action, producer Dino De Laurentiis hired director Duilio Coletti to shoot some additional action scenes for the film after Sturges had left the project. These scenes are incorporated very well into the final product, and I agree that they add value.
Without the typical Bronson action, we’re left with a perfectly cast Bronson interacting with the supporting characters in ways that are atypical for his filmography. Bronson and Vincent Van Patten work well off each other, and Van Patten is phenomenal as the teenage Jamie. I love that their relationship evolves into something meaningful as the movie progresses. Chino learns that he can trust the boy who seems to emerge as a young man right before our eyes. And then there’s the relationship between Chino and Catherine, played by Bronson’s wife Jill Ireland. Not quite as effective as the Chino / Jamie relationship, it’s still character driven and unique. Chino shows a tenderness towards her in a couple of scenes that we’re not used to seeing presented onscreen, even if one of the moments is brought on by the admittedly odd inclusion of the two watching his stud mount a beautiful wild mare. Ireland is extremely beautiful, so it’s not completely surprising that the self-sufficient Chino would fall for her. Unfortunately, while the Chino / Jamie relationship strengthens throughout the film, the Chino / Catherine relationship eventually goes the other way leading to the somewhat surprising, some might say disappointing, finale.
After watching the restored Blu-ray presentation by Kino Lorber, I can confidently say that CHINO is a good Charles Bronson film that features one of his best performances. It’s still not in my personal Bronson top ten, but if you’re a fan of Charles Bronson the actor, then this a must-watch. It’s my opinion, after having read the book and watched the movie, that no other actor could have brought the character of Chino Valdez alive in a stronger way than Charles Bronson. It was the perfect combination of actor and character, and I’ll stand by that opinion to the end.
I’ve been a fan of Tarantino since I first saw him reference Charles Bronson in the opening scene of RESERVOIR DOGS! Happy 63rd birthday, QT! Now the rest of y’all enjoy this incredible scene!
Al Lettieri is one of my favorite cinematic bad guys based on his performance in MR. MAJESTYK (1974) with Charles Bronson. I’ll never forget how bad he wanted those Keys in the famous breakout sequence. Check it out!
I was lucky to be part of a recent interview with actor Jordan Rhodes on the “This Week in Charles Bronson” podcast. Jordan worked with Bronson on two separate movies almost twenty years apart, MR. MAJESTYK (1974) and THE INDIAN RUNNER (1991), so he does offer valuable insight to my favorite actor. Jordan also worked with so many great actors like Joe Don Baker, Sean Penn, Andy Griffith, Gregory Peck, etc., etc. One of the most interesting works of his career is a stage play he developed about Ernest Hemingway entitled PAPA: THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND. I’ve seen a filmed version of the play on DVD and I can confirm that it’s incredible. He toured this play for over 7 years, with the emergence of Covid in 2020 effectively ending its run. During those Covid years, Jordan did find time to write a biography entitled “The Life of a Blue Collar Actor,” which I also own and have read. It’s such an interesting take on what life is like for your basic working actor who never becomes a star, but somehow carves out a four decade career. I found it very entertaining.
If you’re interested in character actors like Jordan Rhodes, you should enjoy this. You’ll find that we do very little interviewing. He just gets to talking and it goes from there. I did want to point out that he does misspeak about a situation in Bronson’s personal life during the episode. He issued this statement on his Facebook page a few days after we recorded:
“I want to apologize for making a misstatement about the death of Charlie’s son, which I quoted as having shot himself on Charlie’s Vermont farm. I was given that misinformation by a producer prior to working with Charlie on a film, and it was incorrect. Charlie’s adopted son, Jason, died from an overdose, and I apologize for making the misstatement.“
We sincerely thank Jordan Rhodes for taking the time to speak to movie nerds like us! I hope you enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 