Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1972’s A Great American Tragedy! It can be viewed on YouTube!
Brad Wilkes (George Kennedy) had a good career, working as an aerospace engineer. He was able to buy a nice house. With his wife, Gloria (Vera Miles), he was able to raise a good family. He was even able to buy a sailboat, one that is the pride of the entire marina. But then, one day, he’s told that the company is letting him go.
Returning to his home, Brad tells Gloria that he’s lost his job but that everything’s going to be okay because not only does he have a $10,000 pension but he’s sure he can find a new job. “Of course, I might not be making $35,000 a year….” he says.
(Watching at home, I said, “Pfffft! I make more than that!” But, of course, Brad is talking about $35,000 in 1972 money, which would be the equivalent of a quarter of a million today.)
However, Brad soon discovers that getting a new job will not be as easy as he assumed. It turns out that there are a lot of people out there looking for work and most of them are younger, cheaper, and better educated than Brad. The bills start to pile up. His former boss (Robert Mandan) informs Brad that his pension is going to be $7,000 less than he thought. Brad forces himself to go down to the unemployment office so that he can collect $25 a week and then suffers the humiliation of being offered a loan by his well-meaning son-in-law (played by a youngish James Woods). Gloria gets a job at the same clothing store where she used to shop and her lecherous boss (Kevin McCarthy) starts to hit on her.
For Brad, the final humiliation comes when he has to sell the boat. A younger boat owner (Tony Dow, with a huge mustache) puts Brad in contact with a woman named Paula (Natalie Trundy). Paula wants to buy the boat and, after they take it out on the water, Brad finds himself tempted to cheat on his wife. It all gets to be too much for Brad and soon, he’s on a plane to Nevada where hopefully one good night at the craps table will be enough to pay his bills….
Watching this film, I found myself feeling very sorry for Brad while, at the same time, becoming very frustrated with him. On the one hand, his company tossed him out after years of loyal service and then tried to screw him out of his pension. On the other hand, Brad spent almost the entire movie in denial about how bad things actually were. It’s one thing to be proud and it’s another to just be stubborn. Knowing that he has next to no money, Brad still insists on throwing his annual 4th of July party and he even invites his former boss to come over and celebrate. Brad simply cannot bring himself to admit that his old life is over but really, who can blame him? He’s not the one who chose to be fired.
A Great American Tragedy was directed by J. Lee Thompson, who also did Cape Fear, The Guns of Navarone, the Planet of the Apes sequels, and several Charles Bronson films. There are no fight scenes to be found in A Great American Tragedy but Thompson does get good performances from his cast and the film makes great use of George Kennedy’s likability. The viewer remains sympathetic to Brad, even when he makes mistake after mistake. A film about a formerly secure family suddenly discovering just how much the economy sucks, A Great American Tragedy remains just as a relevant today as when it was first made.
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!
109 years ago today, the director J. Lee Thompson was born in Bristol, England. Though he never quite got the respect that he deserved while he was alive (though he did receive an Oscar nomination for TheGuns of Navarone and later won fame as one of the few directors that Charles Bronson actually liked), J. Lee Thompson has since been recognized as a master of genre filmmaking and as someone who was not afraid to add a little subversive subtext to his films. From TheGuns of Navarone to the later sequels of Planet of the Apes to working with Charles Bronson and Robert Mitchum, Thompson was one of the best.
In honor of the man and his legacy, here are….
4 Shots From 4 J. Lee Thompson Films
Cape Fear (1962, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Sam Leavitt)
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Bruce Surtees)
Happy Birthday To Me (1981, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Miklos Lente)
10 To Midnight (1983, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Adam Greenberg)
The 1983 film, 10 to Midnight, opens with LAPD detective Leo Kessler (played by legendary tough guy Charles Bronson) sitting at his desk in a police station. He’s typing up a report and taking his time about it. A reporter who is in search of a story starts to bother Leo.
“Jerry,” Leo tells him, “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.”
It’s a classic opening, even if Leo isn’t being totally honest. Yes, he can be a little bit selfish but he’s really not as mean as he pretends to be. He may not know how to talk to his daughter Laurie (Lisa Eilbacher) but he is also very protective of her and he wants to be a better father than he’s been in the past. He may roll his eyes when he discovers that Detective Paul McAnn (Andrew Stevens) is the son of a sociology professor but he still tries to act as a mentor to his younger partner. Leo may complain that the criminal justice system “protects those maggots like they’re an endangered species” but that’s just because he’s seen some truly disturbing things during his time on the force and, let’s face it, Leo has a point. When one of Laurie’s friends is murdered, Leo is convinced that Warren Stacy (Gene Davis) is the murderer and he’s determined to do whatever he has to do to get Warren off the streets. “All those girls,” Leo snarls when he sees Warren, his tone letting us know that his mission to stop Warren is about more than just doing his job.
Warren Stacy is handsome, athletic, and he has good taste in movies. (He’s especially a fan of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Just don’t try to trick him by saying Steve McQueen played the Sundance Kid.) Warren is also a total creep, the type of guy who complains that a murder victim “wasn’t a good person,” because she trashed him in her diary. When Leo takes a look around Warren’s apartment, he finds not only porn but also a penis pump. (“It’s for jacking off!” Leo yells at Warren, enunciating the line as only Charles Bronson could.) Warren is also a murderer but he’s a clever murderer, the type who sets himself up with an alibi by acting obnoxiously in a movie theater. Warren strips nude before killing his victims, in order to make sure that he doesn’t leave behind any evidence. (This film was made in the days before DNA testing.)
Leo knows that Warren is guilty but, as both his gruff-but-fair captain (Wilford Brimley, naturally) and the D.A. (Robert F. Lyons) point out, he has no way to prove it. When Warren starts to stalk Laurie and her friends (including Kelly Preston), Leo decides that he has no choice but to frame Warren. But when Warren’s amoral attorney, Dave Dante (Geoffrey Lewis, giving a wonderfully sleazy performance), threatens to call McAnn to the stand, McAnn has to decide whether to tell the truth or to join Leo in framing a guilty man.
10 to Midnight is a violent, vulgar, and undoubtedly exploitive film, one that features a ham-fisted message about how the justice system is more concerned with protecting the rights of the accused as opposed to lives of the innocent. And yet, in its gloriously pulpy way, this is also one of Bronson’s best films. It’s certainly my personal favorite of the films that he made for Cannon.
Director J. Lee Thompson and Charles Bronson were frequent collaborators and Thompson obviously knew how to get the best out of the notoriously reserved actor. Bronson was not known for his tremendous range but he still gives one of his strongest performances in 10 to Midnight, playing Leo as being not just a determined cop but also as an aging man who is confused by the way the world is changing around him. Stopping Warren isn’t just about justice. It’s also about fighting back against the the type of world that would create a Warren Stacy and then allow him to remain on the streets in the first place. Interestingly, though Leo doesn’t hesitate when it comes to framing Warren, he is also sympathetic to McAnn’s objections. Unlike other Bronson characters, Leo doesn’t hold a grudge when his partner questions his methods. Instead, he simply know that McAnn hasn’t spent enough time in the real world to understand what’s at stake. McAnn hasn’t given into cynicism. He hasn’t decided that the best way to deal with his job is to be a “mean son of a bitch.” Bronson and Andrew Stevens, who had worked together in the past, have a believable dynamic. McAnn looks up to Leo but is also conflicted by his actions. Leo may be annoyed by McAnn’s reluctance but he also respects him for trying to be an honest cop. Their partnership feels real in a way that sets 10 to Midnight apart from so many other films about an older cop having to deal with an idealistic partner.
One of the most interesting things about the film is Leo’s relationship with his daughter, Laurie. Over the course of the film, Leo and Laurie go from barely speaking to bonding over liquor and their shared regrets about the state of the justice system. When McAnn first meets Laurie, she’s offended when McAnn suggests that she takes after her father. But, as the film progresses, she comes to realize that she and Leo have much in common. (To be honest, I related quite a bit to Laurie, especially as I’ve recently come to better appreciate how much of my own independent nature was inherited from my father.) Lisa Eilbacher and Charles Bronson are believable as father-and-daughter and they play off of each other well. The scenes between Laurie and Leo give 10 to Midnight a bit more depth than one might otherwise expect from a Bronson Cannon film. Leo isn’t just trying to protect his daughter and her roommates from a serial killer. He’s also trying to be the father who he wishes he had been when she was younger. He’s trying to make up for lost time, even as he also tries to keep Warren Stacy away from his family.
As played by Gene Davis, Warren Stacy is one of the most loathsome cinematic villains of all time. Warren’s crimes are disturbing enough. (Indeed, the surreal sight of a naked and blood-covered Warren Stacy stalking through a dark apartment is pure nightmare fuel.) What makes Warren particularly frightening is that we’ve all had to deal with a Warren Stacy at some point in our life. He’s the sarcastic and easily offended incel who thought he was entitled to a phone number or a date or perhaps even more. As I rewatched this movie last night, I wondered how many Warrens I had met in my life. How many potential serial killers have any of us unknowingly had to deal with? Warren tries to strut through life, smirking and going out of his way to let everyone know that he knows more than they do but the minute that Leo turns the table on him, Warren starts whining about he’s being treated unfairly. During his final, disturbing rampage, Warren yells that his victims aren’t being honest with him, blaming them for his actions. The film deserves a lot of credit for not turning Warren into some sort of diabolical and erudite supervillain. He’s not Hannibal Lecter. Instead, like all real-life serial killers, he’s a loser who is looking for power over those to whom he feels inferior and for revenge on a world that he feels owes him something. He’s a realistic monster and that makes him all the more frightening and the film all the more powerful. Warren is the type of killer who, even as I sit here typing this, could be walking down anyone’s street. He’s such a complete monster that it’s undeniably cathartic whenever Leo goes after him.
How delusional is Warren Stacy? He’s delusional enough to actually taunt Charles Bronson! At one point, Warren informs Leo that he can’t be punished for being sick. Warren announces that, when he’s arrested, he might go away for a while but he’ll be back and there’s nothing Leo can do about it. (The suggestion, of course, is that Warren will be back because he committed his crimes in California and all the judges were appointed by a bunch of bleeding heart governors. Warren may not say that out loud but we all know that is the film’s subtext. Some people may agree with the film, some people may disagree. Myself, I’m against the death penalty because I think it’s a prime example of government overreach but I still cheered the first time that I heard Clint Eastwood say, “Well, I’m all torn up about his rights,” in Dirty Harry.) How does Leo react to Warren’s taunts? I can’t spoil the film’s best moment but I can tell you that 10 to Midnight features one of Bronson’s greatest (and, after what we’ve just seen Warren do, most emotionally satisfying) one-lines.
The title has nothing to do with anything that happens in the film. In typical Cannon fashion, the film’s producers came up with a snappy title (and 10 to Midnight is a good one) and then slapped it onto a script that was previously called Bloody Sunday. Fortunately, as long as Bronson is doing what he does best, it doesn’t matter if the title makes sense. And make no mistake. 10 to Midnight is Bronson at his best.
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!
108 years ago today, the director J. Lee Thompson was born in Bristol, England. Thompson started his career making social realist films before he moved into making genre pictures. He was nominated for Best Director for his work on 1961’s The Guns of Navarone. That said, during his lifetime, Thompson was never exactly a critical favorite. When they were first released, critics were dismissive of his entries in the original Planet of the Apes franchise and they were downright hostile to his work with Charles Bronson. However, all of those films were better appreciated by audiences and they remain cult classics to this day. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, with its themes of protest and revolution, has especially been the subject of much recent critical reevaluation. Thompson may have been a genre director but that didn’t mean that his film were devoid of subtext. If anything, Thompson was a master of sneaking subversive themes into the least likely of works.
Thompson was a filmmaker who knew how to tell a story and who always did the best with whatever he had to work with. To be honest, many aspiring and working directors could learn a lot from spending a weekend watching some of Thompson’s films.
In honor of the man and his legacy, here are….
4 Shots From 4 J. Lee Thompson Films
Cape Fear (1962, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Sam Leavitt)
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Bruce Surtees)
Happy Birthday To Me (1981, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Miklos Lente)
10 To Midnight (1983, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Adam Greenberg)
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 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of an actor who is very popular here at the Shattered Lens, Charles Bronson! In honor of the momentous occasion, we now pay tribute to the one and only Bronson with….
4 Shots From 4 Charles Bronson Films
Death Wish (1974, dir by Michael Winner, DP: Arthur Ormitz)
Mr. Majestyk (1974, dir by Richard Fleischer DP: Richard Kline)
Breakheart Pass (1975, dir by Tom Gries, DP: Lucien Ballard)
10 To Midnight (1983, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Adam Greenberg)
The Oscar nominations are finally due to be announced on March 15th and the Oscars themselves are scheduled to be awarded at the end of April. In anticipation of the big event (and the end of this current lengthy awards season), I am going to spend the next two months watching and reviewing Oscar nominees of the past. Some day, I hope to be able to say that I have watched and reviewed every single film nominated for Best Picture. It’s a mission that, with each passing year, I come a little bit closer to acomplishing.
Tonight, I decided to start things off by watching the 1961 best picture nominee, The Guns of Navarone.
The Guns of Navarone takes place in 1943, during World War II. 2,000 British troops are stranded on the Greek island of Kheros and the Nazis are planning on invading the island in a show of force that they hope will convince Turkey to join the Axis powers. The Allies need to evacuate those troops before the Nazis invade. The problem is that, on the nearby island of Navarone, there are two massive guns that can shoot down any plane that flies over and sink any ship that sails nearby. If the British soldiers are to be saved, the guns are going to have to be taken out.
Everyone agrees that it’s a suicide mission. Even if a commando team manages to avoid the patrol boats and the German soldiers on the island, reaching the guns requires scaling a cliff that is considered to be nearly unclimbable. Still, the effort has to be made. Six men are recruited to do the impossible. Leading the group is Major Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), a natural-born leader who is described as having almost supernatural luck. Franklin’s second-in-command is Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck), an American spy who speaks several languages and who is an expert mountain climber. Spyros Pappadimos (James Darren) and Butcher Brown (Stanley Baker) are both assigned to the team because they have fearsome reputations as killers, though it quickly becomes clear that only one of them kills for enjoyment. Colonel Stavrou (Anthony Quinn) is a member of the defeated Greek army and he has a complicated past with Mallory. Finally, Corporal Miller (David Niven) is a chemistry teacher-turned-explosive expert. Waiting for the men on the island are two members of the Resistance, Spyros’s sister Maria (Irene Papas) and her friend, Anna (Gia Scala). The mission, not surprisingly, the mission doesn’t go as planned. There’s violence and betrayal and not everyone makes it to the end. But everyone knows that, as tired as they are of fighting, the mission cannot be abandoned.
The Guns of Navarone was a huge box office success when it was originally released, which probably has a lot to do with it showing up as a best picture nominee. It’s an entertaining film and, watching it, it’s easy to see how it served as a prototype for many of the “teams on a mission” action films that followed. Though none of the characters are exactly deeply drawn, that almost doesn’t matter when you’ve got a cast that includes actors like Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, and David Niven. At it best, the film works as a triumph of old-fashioned movie star charisma. Peck is upright and determined to do whatever needs to be done to get the job done. Quinn is tempermental and passionate. David Niven is cynical, witty, and very, very British. Quayle, Darren, and especially Stanley Baker provide strong support. Before Sean Connery got the role, Stanley Baker was a strong contender for James Bond and, watching this film, you can see why.
Seen today, there’s not a lot that’s surprising about The Guns of Navarone. It’s simply a good adventure film, one that occasionally debates the morality of war without forgetting that the audience is mostly watching to see the bad guys get blown up. Some of the action scenes hold up surprisingly well. The scene where the team is forced to deal with a German patrol boat is a particular stand-out.
The Guns of Navarone was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Though it lost the top prize to West Side Story, The Guns of Navarone still won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
If you thought Bohemian Rhapsody was overedited, you wait until you see the 1966 British horror flick, Eye of the Devil.
Seriously, I lost track of average number of of cuts that were used in each scene. It was like, “There’s Deborah Kerr! There’s Deborah Kerr from another angle! There’s Donald Pleasence staring at something! There’s David Hemmings in a corner. There’s Deborah Kerr again! There’s an overhead shot of the entire room! Hemmings again, staring off to the left. Now, a different shot of Hemmings staring off to the right. Pleasence! Kerr! Hemmings! There’s Sharon Tate, was she there the whole time? Another overhead shot.” All in five minutes.
Now, I will admit that the frantic editing style was a bit more effective in Eye of the Devil than in Bohemian Rhapsody, if just because Eye of the Devil was meant to be a bit of a filmed dream. The whole movie was set up to be a surreal journey into the heart of French darkness so the disorientating visual style was effective, even if it did kind of give me a headache while I was watching it.
In the film, Deborah Kerr play Catherine, who is the wife of Philippe (David Niven), who owns a vineyard and who is perfectly charming and David Niven-like until he returns to the vineyard. Then he suddenly becomes withdrawn and cold. It turns out that the vineyard is struggling a bit. It’s the dry season, which I guess is a bad thing when you’re making wine. While Philippe tries to keep morale up among the peasants, two siblings — Christian (David Hemmings) and Odile (Sharon Tate) — wander around the castle. Christian carries a bow and arrow and seems to be kind of arrogant. Odile smiles enigmatically and turns frogs into doves. Meanwhile, Donald Pleasence plays the vineyard priest, who appears to believe that something drastic needs to be done to reverse the dry season.
Soon, Catherine is stumbling across strange ceremonies and discovering that no one seems to care about her concerns that Christian and Odile are going to be a bad influence on the children. She’s especially upset when Christian points an arrow at her. Philippe, meanwhile, just laughs off her concerns. Obviously, it was just a joke! he says.
Eye of the Devil is about as enjoyably pretentious as a British film from 1966 can be. It’s not just that the movie is edited to the point of chaos. It’s also that characters have a bad habit of going off on discussions about relationship between magic and reality. And yet, it’s so pretentious and so silly and so overdirected that you can’t help but love it. It’s just such a film of its era that it’s impossible not to get something out of it. Add to that, Sharon Tate and David Hemmings share an otherworldly beauty as the two siblings. Deborah Kerr shows that she could make even the silliest of situations of compelling. David Niven is surprisingly effective as a non-charming character. And then you’ve got Donald Pleasence, making enigmatic statements and showing off the intense stare that would later make Dr. Sam Loomis an icon of horror.
Eye of the Devil may be a mess but it’s a beautiful mess.
After her archaeologist father disappears while searching for the fabled mines of King Solomon, Jesse Houston (Sharon Stone) hires famed explorer Allan Quartermain (Richard Chamberlain) to help her find him. After walking around in the jungle and exploring a nearby village, Allan and Jesse discover that her father has been kidnapped by a German military expedition who want to use King Solomon’s treasure to fund their war effort. Working with the Germans is Allan’s old enemy, Dogati (John Rhys-Davies). Allan and Jesse find themselves in a race against time to find the mines before the Germans. Along the way, they steal an airplane, fight German soldiers on a train, and nearly get cooked alive in a giant cauldron.
Because this is a Cannon film and it was made at the height of Indiana Jones’s popularity and it stars John Rhys-Davies and it has a score that sounds like it was written by someone trying too hard to be John Williams, you might be tempted to think that King Solomon’s Mines is a rip-off of Raiders of the Lost Ark. However, there are some crucial differences between Raiders and King Solomon’s Mines. For instance, Raiders of the Lost Ark took place during World War II. King Solomon’s Mines takes place during World War I. Raiders of the Lost Ark had angels that melted a man’s face. King Solomon’s Mines has a lava pit that makes you explode if you fall into it. Raiders of the Lost Ark has a big fight in an airfield while King Solomon’s Mines has a big fight at an airfield …. well, wait, I guess they do have a few things in common.
Probably the biggest difference between Raiders of the Lost Ark and King Solomon’s Mines is that Raiders had Harrison Ford and Karen Allen while King Solomon’s Mines has to make due with Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone. (If the imdb trivia section is to be believed, Sharon Stone was cast because Menahem Golan mistook her for Kathleen Turner.) Along with generating zero romantic sparks, neither Chamberlain nor Stone come across as if they’ve ever even seen a jungle, much less explored one. The only time that the two of them are credible as anything other than actors slumming on Cannon’s dime is when they’re yelling at each other. There’s also a scene where they’re trying to steal an airplane and Chamberlain tells Stone to “reach between your legs and grab it.” That was funny, I guess.
Along with trying to be an adventure, King Solomon’s Mines also tries to be a comedy. As a general rule, Cannon films are great when they’re unintentionally funny but not so much when they actually try to be funny. The film’s idea of comedy is Richard Chamberlain having to do an impromptu jig while someone shoots at his feet. Add in a healthy dose of casual racism as Allan and Jesse run into a tribe in Africa who want to cook them in a giant stew pot and you’ve got a film so bad that you’ll hardly believe it could have been produced by the same people who gave us Delta Force, which is, of course, the greatest film ever made.
Golan and Globus had enough confidence in King Solomon’s Mines that they shot a sequel before the first film was even released. Tomorrow, I will force myself to watch and review Allan Quartermain and The Lost City of Gold. And, after that, I’ll probably go sit in a corner and think about what I’ve done.
To quote The Main With No Name, “When a man’s got money in his pocket, he begins to appreciate peace.”
Two years have passed since Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) last visited and cleaned up New York. He is back in Los Angeles, the president of his own successful architectural firm. Now a rich man, he has retired from killing criminals, though he still has dreams where he shoots muggers in parking garages. Paul has a new girlfriend, journalist Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz). When Karen’s teenage daughter, Erica (Dana Barron), dies of a cocaine overdose, it’s time for Paul to get his gun out of storage and blow away a drug dealer.
Shortly after shooting that drug dealer, Paul finds a note on his front porch. “I know who you are,” it reads. Paul then gets a call from a mysterious man (John P. Ryan) who identifies himself as being a reclusive millionaire named Nathan White. Nathan explains that his daughter also died of a cocaine overdose. He wants to hire Paul to take out not just the drug dealers but also the men behind the dealers, the bosses. Using his vast resources, Nathan has prepared a file on every major drug operation in Los Angeles. He offers to share the information with Paul.
“I’ll need a few days to think about it,” Paul says but we all know he’s going to accept Nathan’s offer just as surely as we know that Nathan White has an ulterior motive that won’t be revealed until the movie’s final twenty minutes.
For the first time, Paul is no longer just targeting muggers and other street criminals. This time, Paul is going after the guys in charge and trying to bring an end to drug trade once and for all. (The idea that the best way to win the war on drugs was just to kill anyone involved in the drug trade was a very popular one in the late 80s.) L.A.’s two major drug cartels are led by Ed Zacharias (Perry Lopez) and the Romero Brothers (Mike Moroff and Dan Ferro). Along with their own activities, Paul and Young work the turn the two cartels against each other.
It’s not just the criminals that have changed in Death Wish 4. Paul has changed, too. Paul used to just shoot criminals and run away. In Death Wish 4, he gets more creative. He sneaks into Zacharias’s mansion and bugs the phone so that he can keep track of what’s going down. When it comes time to kill a table full of drug dealers (one of whom is played by Danny Trejo), Paul doesn’t shoot them up. Instead, he sends them a bottle of champagne that explodes when they open it. By the end of the movie, Paul is blowing away the bad guys with a grenade launcher! How many former conscientious objectors can brag about that?
The biggest difference between Death Wish 4 and the films that came before it is the absence of director Michael Winner. Winner and Bronson had a falling out following Death Wish 3 and, as a result, Winner had little interest in returning to the franchise. Instead, Winner was replaced by J. Lee Thompson, who had already directed Bronson in several other Cannon films. As a result, Death Wish 4 is less “heavy” than the previous Death Wish films. Whereas Winner’s direction often felt mean-spirited and exploitive, Thompson plays up the film’s sense of airy adventure.
Though it barely made a profit at the box office and has been dismissed by critics, Death Wish 4 is an enjoyable chapter in Paul’s story. If you’re looking for mindless 80s mayhem, Death Wish 4 gets the job done with admirable efficiency. It would have made a great ending for the franchise but Bronson would return to the role one last time.
Clement Molloch (Joseph Maher) is a doctor who uses his medical training to torture journalists and dissidents in an unnamed South American country. Holland (Charles Bronson) is a former CIA assassin, who is content with being retired. But when Molloch kills a journalist who was also an old friend of Holland’s, it all becomes about revenge. No one’s more dangerous than Charles Bronson seeking revenge. Working with the dead journalist’s widow (Theresa Saldana), Holland heads down to South America. Since Molloch is always surrounded by bodyguards, it is not going to be easy to get him. But who can stop Charles Bronson?
Bronson was 62 years old when he made The Evil The Men Do and he was still the toughest, coolest killer in the movies. The Evil That Men Do is a rarity, an 80s Bronson film that was not produced by Cannon. It still feels like a Cannon production, even if it is a little more interesting than some of the other films that Bronson was making at that time. Dr. Molloch was clearly based on the notorious Nazi Klaus Barbie and Joseph Maher plays Molloch as being a dignified sadist. Molloch also has a strange relationship with his equally cruel sister (Antoinette Bower). That Molloch is so extremely evil makes the film’s final scenes all the more satisfying.
The Evil That Men Do is one of the best of Bronson’s later films. Charles Bronson, man. No one got revenge better than Bronson.
To quote The Main With No Name, “When a man’s got money in his pocket, he begins to appreciate peace.”
Through the Shattered Lens 