Death Wish 2 (1982)

 

I’m a big Charles Bronson fan, and he was a major star of the Grindhouse Era, once he started down the path of the Death Wish franchise. Before Death Wish turned him into a U.S. star, he was famously a big thing in Europe. Later on in this project, we will get to his output in those days, but up until that huge hit, he was a reliable presence in mainstream Hollywood film, like “The Magnificent Seven”, “The Great Escape” and “The Dirty Dozen”. At the close of the seventies, he was making films for Dino DeLaurentis and his box office was on the decline. He re-paired with Director Michael Winner to make this sequel to Death Wish, and his stature was never the same, because this is a simple brutal exploitation film, and with few exceptions after, those would be the kinds of films he would make.

Paul Kersey is still an architect, only now he lives in Los Angeles, dates a beautiful newswoman, and has moved his formerly catatonic daughter to a recovery center near him and she is making progress. So it all looks good, except at the start of the film, we hear crime statistics being presented on the radio, and inevitably, our New York vigilante will be back in action. The original film contained an assault on Kersey’s family that was horrifying and more explicit than we had seen in mainstream movies up to that point. Director Michael Winner upped the ante here with two rape scenes, the first of which brought howls of protest from critics about it’s gratuity. The housekeeper/maid is brutalized on screen in multiple shots that come close to being pornographic.

The first time I saw this film was in it’s original release, and I went with my wife and another couple. Both of the women we saw this with were traumatized by the film and unhappy that we had selected it for our date night. Completely understandable, and a mistake on my part for sure. In spite of the obvious exploitation, the rest of the film does try to bring a story to the screen that is not bad.

Kersey’s actions in this film differ from those in the first. In this case he is specifically targeting the gang that committed the crimes against his family. The generic social context of the crime issue is replaced with a straight revenge story, and that is much more in the wheelhouse of these exploitation films.

The imagery is definitely designed to make these particular criminals the subject of the audience’s ire, and thus make us root for the vigilante as he tracks them down. There is a good idea in the film, to bring in the cop played by Vincent Gardenia from NY, to consult with the LAPD, but it is the meeting in NYC with the police commissioners that makes the whole thing intriguing. They are worried that if Kersey gets caught, he will spill the beans about how they let him go without being prosecuted in NY. So there is a chance for a political element to sneak into the film. Ultimately that does not pay off, and Gardenia, after some cat and mouse following of Kersey, leaves the picture, and we are back to the revenge plot.

The cast of killers in the gang includes future star Laurence Fishburne.

He gets his in the most elaborate shootout scene in the movie. His character has been carrying a boombox for most of the film, so you know…Chekov’s boombox!

Well before Arnold was making quips with the vermin he was going to take out, Paul Kersey has a come to Jesus moment with the first of the bad guys he catches up with.

The last part of the film is an elaborate plan to execute the final gang member in the mental facility that he has been placed in. The deaths of the criminals have to be dramatic to satisfy the audience’s blood lust. A year after this movie, Clint Eastwood not only dispatches one of the bad guys as Dirty Harry with a big gun, but also has him plunge down on top of a carousel and get impaled by a wooden unicorn. Charles Bronson only manages a bit of electrocution.

The end of the film, clearly leaves the path open for Paul Kersey to return, and it contains a nice shot that will make us want that to happen.

Scream and Scream Again (1970)

 

So the initial post on this site is a 1970 shocker that features three classic horror icons, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. In a bit of a surprise, they each have relatively small roles, at least when it comes to screen(or scream) time. Cushing is out in one scene, and Lee has maybe three or four. Price is a little more prominent but if you timed the scenes out of a 95 minute movie, I’d be surprised if it added up to much more than ten.

Regardless of the three stars, this film is really odd for one main reason, the story lines seem schizophrenic. There is a fascist country with near Nazi like iconography, and one of the Military Officers, appears to be climbing the ladder of power by killing those who question his methods. Meanwhile, in Great Britain, a serial killer is on the loose, picking up girls and then physically mutilating them, including draining them of their blood. We also have patients in a mysterious clinic, being dismembered, one limb at a time, and we don’t know who is doing it or why.

Most of the story follows a police procedural, as a pathologist works with the detectives, to try and capture the serial killer. A by-the-book inspector connects one of the victims to a Dr. Browning, the Vincent Price character, who seems to have some medical research that he is engaged in on his estate. Later, when they have laid a trap to ensnare the killer with a decoy, that suspect ends up suspiciously at Dr. Browning’s property.

The 1970s trappings include a club scene with a rock band. The music is not memorable and everyone seems to be struggling to dance to it. We never really see much of the murders, just a little bit of the aftereffects. There is however a very lengthy chase scene and cars run through the countryside and towns at a reckless pace, but there is not much more than that. When the suspect runs across the farmlands and into a mountain wall, there is a little bit of excitement but it was still odd.

The best scenes in the film suggest the terror that the story wants to provide. A woman is to be tortured, and we are shown the instruments to be used, but not their application. The patient in the clinic, can’t get any response from the nurse and he is losing limbs every time she comes in. The serial killer manages to escape his handcuffs in a way that would make “127 Hours” seem more reasonable. Does it all come together in the end? Sort of. There is a connection between the stories but it feels like a contrivance and the end of the film plays with the notion that there might be a sequel, or at least, we have more to dread.

The only nudity in the film came from an as yet unanimated corpse that is moved from a storage area to an operating table and then back. There was nothing titillating about the scene and the only shocking moments concern a vat of acid, that does not seem to offer any gruesome moments to give us nightmares. I accessed this film on Tubi, and watched a few commercials, but the film seemed unedited. The best thing about it is that it is short.