10 To Midnight
As the old censorship code of Hollywood motion pictures faded in the late 1960s into the 70s and thus allowed elements of violence, profanity and sexual situations into mainstream movies, the first movies to capitalize on these kinds of creative freedoms were (obviously) horror, but as the 1980s approached, other established genres began to heed the necessity to include more explicit content in their material, including that of the action film. This 1983 release certainly pushed things as far to the edge as had ever been seen by that point in the genre, with the storyline almost seeming as if someone had decided to take the famous exchange in The Mayorās office from the original Dirty Harry (āWhen a naked man is chasing a woman through a dark alley with a butcher knife and a hard on, I figure he isn’t out collecting for the Red Cross.ā) and then develop an entire screenplay based just off of that, only here instead of Eastwood being the star, we get Charles Bronson, arguably a better choice since there were few others in the history of cinema who just naturally carried an avenging angel vibe about him as he personally dispensed Godās Justice to the wicked. As implied in the Dirty Harry reference, the plot revolves around a psycho sicko weirdo who stalks and kills his (mostly female) prey while being completely stark naked, the reason being it appears that he considers his murders to be either an act of seduction or just plain rape with Bronson correctly ascertaining that he must think of his knife as being the substitute for his penis with the heavy implication being that the killer is obviously impotent and possibly a virgin. When we meet the killer himself (Gene Davis in what goes without saying is a fearless performance), he appears to be a handsome, well built young man (with a major interest in Bruce Lee and martial arts) who nonetheless is so socially awkward that most girls who cross his path quickly label him as being ācreepyā, in many ways because he displays a (unjustified) arrogance that most girls whom he meets are somehow not good enough for him. The opening murder establishes both the sleazy vibe of the film as well as the extent to which the killer will go to cover his tracks, starting with him going to a movie theater (and harassing a couple of pretty girls just so they will remember his face) before sneaking out during the movie and tracking down and murdering a girl whom he knows from his workplace who had previously rejected him, killing both her and her boyfriend (with all three of them being naked at the time) before heading back to the movie theater and harassing the same girls while walking out so that his alibi will be iron clad. The discovery of the bodies doesnāt suit Bronson all too well (since he had been friends with the girlās family) plus the fact that heās currently in the process of breaking in a new, obnoxious young partner (Andrew Stevens) with highly idealistic values who doesnāt know the first thing about actually bringing down the bad people whom Bronson has been locking up for years. When the killer panics and makes a major mistake that leads to a quick arrest for phone harassment, Bronson pegs him for an insecure loser and works him over mercilessly in the interrogation room trying to make him crack, using several psychological digs including crowing about the fact that heās never been laid. But when Bronson pulls a Mark Fuhrman and tampers with evidence in order to guarantee a conviction (and Stevens has a crisis of conscience about it which compels Bronson to admit his own wrongdoing), the killer is freed but yet still foolishly carries a grudge, calling up the now fired Bronson on the phone and vowing revenge (a proposition that makes Bronson smile in anticipation) before targeting his nurse daughter (Lisa Eilbacher) who is dating Stevens and stalking her back to her apartment complex where she lives with three other girls. Now besides the obvious police / crime thriller aspect and the sleazy exploitation vibe (especially during the opening scene), the film is also strongly reminiscent of something that could be categorized in the horror / slasher genre as well. Ironically, since those sorts of films were still considered pretty lowbrow at the time (Halloween and Friday The 13th notwithstanding), perhaps the ONLY thing that kept it out of the horror aisles was the very presence of Bronson himself, still at that time as respectable an A list star as anybody in the business. The police morality angle of tampering or altering evidence is actually handled with a much lighter touch than expected, with Stevens set to testify at the killerās preliminary hearing and acting tortured about it even though he has nothing on his partner to prove that such a thing happened, but when he asks Bronson point blank, Bronson admits it before deciding to tell the prosecutor and judge on his own, actually respecting Stevens afterwards for still upholding the law while his daughter whom Stevens had been dating now hates him for ruining her father. Much more disturbing is a conversation between the killer and his shyster lawyer (Geoffrey Lewis) who literally tells him that regardless of what he may or may not have done, if worse comes to worse they can just move forward with an insanity plea that would get him off (even describing the type of fake psychosis that the killer would have) and when the killer even tells him that heās not insane, the lawyer replies with āThey can carry you out of the gas chamber but you can walk out of the looney binā which implies that even the lawyer knows that heās guilty of brutally murdering these girls but doesnāt even care because as Bronson says, āFor him winning this case is like winning The Super Bowlā which again evokes images of the ultimate legal showdown that would take place 10 years later in a courtroom involving what many feel was an obviously guilty suspect in OJ Simpson. Indeed, when the killer launches his final rampage before being cornered by Bronson dead to rights, he starts to rant and rave (while naked) about how obviously crazy he is to be doing what heās doing (a similar tactic later used in the Stallone film Cobra) and how thereās just no way that heās going to be locked up forever given that the insanity plea will so clearly protect him (thus reversing what he had told his lawyer earlier about not being crazy). Even as the insanity plea (under fire at the time in real life due to the Dominique Dunne murder case and its subsequent outcome) would pretty much become a non factor as time went on except in the most obvious cases, here it works pretty well as a plot point in both deciding Bronsonās final actions and in the view that no such defense should ever be accepted when you factor in the killing of innocent lives at the hands of such an individual (maybe their moral compass should have compelled them to seek psychiatric help before resorting to ending peopleās lives, no?) which in the end makes for some substantial food for thought along with the exploitative elements. The film also features appearances by Wilford Brimley as Bronsonās police captain and a very young Kelly Preston as one of the victims, but the standout performance would probably have to be from the very little known to this day Gene Davis as the killer himself (and being directed by J. Lee Thompson on top of that, the same guy who directed Robert Mitchum as the first Max Cady in the original Cape Fear), a good looking guy who could be popular with the ladies if he just settled down and acted normal, but instead prefers to commit murder while also talking shit to both Bronson and his daughter, which leads to Bronsonās own cruel psychological tactics against him in the second half of the film, belittling and verbally berating his prey while also clearly following him and even playing pranks on the killer in both his home and his workplace as a way of taunting him (even compelling the killer later on to accuse Bronson of ādriving him to do itā although he was already committing the murders before Bronson got on his trail) as the actor Davis even manages to bring a smidgen of sympathy to the character as Bronson psychologically tortures him. Just witness Roger Ebertās notoriously scathing review on the film, awarding it zero stars and calling it reprehensible even as the whole point of Bronsonās actions are that weāre supposed to find them rather questionable (just like in Dirty Harry, the hero has the villain pegged early on to be a piece of shit and turns out to be exactly right) which helps to make this another exciting yet thorough examination of law enforcement ethicsā¦
8/10