THE MECHANIC (1972)

  This is one of the top classic Charles Bronson movies from that era when he really couldn't do much wrong. Action scenes include a motorcycle race and lots of assassinations. I have had people tell me the middle part is a bit slow  but I don't find this to be the case. It's just a film that takes it's time to build characters that you might care about unlike pretty much anything made in the last 20 years or so. Speaking of more modern garbage, this was remade in 2011 starring Jason Statham, CGI and shitty modern editing techniques, so I have no desire to view it.  

 Re-released, after the success of DEATH WISH. (and released in England) as KILLER OF KILLERS.

                                    British poster for an amazing Bronson double feature!:

ASSASSINATION (1987)

  This one is down there near the bottom of the list out of all the Charles Bronson movies I've seen. Instead of the usual revenge-seeking vigilante role he usually played in this era of his career Bronson is instead a secret service agent whose job is to protect the first lady(his real-life wife Jill Ireland). Politics usually drag down most films for me and even though this is not a very intricate plot it does that here too. The action scenes are also pretty lackluster and obviously involve stunt people since I'm sure our senior-citizen lead was not actually zooming around on a motorcycles or a dune-buggy dodging bullets. Watching ol' Charlie fire a rocket launcher at some creep is always fun though. 

There is one out of place Native American character(Indian Joe) that was mildly amusing but only in the film briefly. 

MESSENGER OF DEATH (1988)

  So this Charles Bronson Cannon films revenge epic starts out with a bang as a whole family gets shotgun-massacred, including a bunch of children. Then Bronson gets involved. Now since he's just playing a newspaper reporter here there's really no logical reason why he kicks so much ass(throwing people out windows, down multiple flights of stairs and generally being an intimidating guy are some of his superpowers) except that's just what Bronson did best at this stage of his career. Basically pretty predictable but if you like Bronson at all it's still worth a watch at least once. 

 As a bonus the crazy killer from 10 TO MIDNIGHT(Gene Davis) shows up here in a way less crazy role.

COLD SWEAT (1970)

 One of my personal favorite 70s Bronson flicks. Here he plays a man with a secret past that comes back to haunt him. Apparently he was involved in some illegal activities with some of his old army buddies. Not bothering to tell his family any of this it all comes as a great shock when gangsters show up at his house in the South of France. Great chase scene occurs and lots of tense moments arise. Also I imagine that the idea for the long lingering stomach wound in RESERVOIR DOGS was copied from this even though I'm sure it's shocking to Tarantino would do such a thing. Another cool element of this one is that Luigi Pistilli, who is so memorable as the horrible husband in YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY, shows up as one of Bronson's unsavory army pals. 

 Sadly the crappy Wal-Mart $1 VHS I have of this looks like garbage and is obviously copied from a T.V.  showing with naughty words and some brief nudity removed and clear commercial break spots. I really need an upgrade if such a thing exists.

              "COLD SWEAT means more than more!"(whatever that means):

SOMEONE BEHIND THE DOOR (1971)

 This is one of the weirder Charles Bronson films, yes possibly even stranger than that one where he marries a 16 year old in England, and also probably my least favorite. Bronson does get a chance to actually do some acting in this since it is quite the atypical role for him. The plot deals with Anthony "Norman Bates" Perkins as a doctor who wants to get revenge on his cheating wife so he convinces his patient(Bronson), who has amnesia, to do so for him. This might be better if the movie didn't drag so much and the ending wasn't a cop out.


                                         

He's not really the bad guy, he's more of a pawn, but he does do some bad things:

RED SUN (1971)

 I'd seen the clip of Charles Bronson fighting(or more accurately getting his ass kicked by) Toshiro Mifune before but now I've finally seen it in context. This euro-western is a pretty star-studded affair with east meeting west (Bronson and Mifune) along with bad guy (Alain Delon) and love interest/prostitute (Ursula Andress) who all end up in a search for some gold(or in Mifune's case a golden samurai sword). It's a pretty epic tale with double-crosses and a rare chance to see some samurai vs. indians action. As usual Bronson doesn't disappoint me.




                                                                     Germany!:

CHATO'S LAND (1972)

 If you ever wanted to see how amazingly fit Charles Bronson was in his prime this would be a good place to discover that. When I say "in his prime" that's not exactly accurate since he was a little over 50 years old at this point but I can't imagine how he coulda been in any better shape at any point. This is the film where Bronson plays a half-breed American Indian, named Chato, who is on the run from a posse, lead by Jack Palance, seeking revenge for the killing of a white-man that Bronson made in self-defense. For a lot of the movie Bronson stays unseen and Palance is really our main focus portraying a Civil War veteran who leads our justice-seeking band of fairly racist pale-skins. Papa Walton(Ralph Waite) is another memorable member and a real jerk here. There's rape(offscreen), a scalping, a cooked dog and some other exceptionally violent bits that I would imagine could never be acceptable in any PG-rated movies for the last 40 years. A great cast and top-notch acting put this one towards the top of the western and Bronson heap for me.
 Director Michael Winner would work a whole bunch more with Bronson after this. Most importantly on the first 3 DEATH WISH films.

   

Weird-ass double-feature paired up with this comedy/drama from a  few years earlier:

THE WHITE BUFFALO (1977)

 Before the 1980s came along and Bronson got lazy and also typecast into playing just one role over and over again in every movie he was able to stretch his acting ability a bit. This time out he plays the old west gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok. While Hickok was a real person this film takes him on a fictional quest to hunt down the bigass beast of the title. Along the way he runs into "Chief"(Will Sampson) from ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST who's out for revenge against the monster buffalo who stampeded over his kid. The film plays like a monster movie wedged into a western which gives it a unique feel and you almost get a JAWS-vibe here and there due to the similarity in battling a giant mechanical menace. Good example of a decent Hollywood-flick before Hollywood turned into a giant cesspool.

CHINO (1973)

 This is one of those multi-country produced deals so I'm not sure if calling it a spaghetti-western(even though Italy was one of the countries involved) is technically correct so I guess I will just call it a fusion-spaghetti-western.
 This is the Charles Bronson flick where he plays a half-breed Indian(not to be confused with CHATO'S LAND which is the other movie from a year earlier where he does that also). He makes friends with a teen boy(Vincent Van Patten) who he puts to work on his ranch raising horses. Then it just stays a heavy drama and a romantic entanglement with Bronson's real life wife Jill Ireland for most of the movie up until the very end when we get a little bit of the more-typical Bronson-getting-revenge action that you would expect. Pretty disappointing if you're looking for the standard ass-kicking format and the ending is not all that triumphant but if you're a fan of melodramas in the old west and want to see Mr. Bronson in one go for it. AKA THE FREE SPIRIT, THE VALDEZ HORSES, WILD HORSES and VALDEZ THE HALFBREED

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO (1984)

 While this may not be the best of Charles Bronson's 80s revenge flicks if you like one of them you probably will enjoy all of them and this one is no exception to that rule. Things start off pretty dire with a guy being tortured to death by having his nipples and genitals electrocuted by what is essentially a Joseph Mengele/Nazi-doctor-type and quickly Bronson, who was a retired hitman, springs back into action to avenge his friend. Lots of gun-fu and a little knife-fu to change things up happen. I kinda thought from the downbeat opening that this one might be a little darker than normal but it all kinda plays how you expect. To me though even typical Bronson from this period is enjoyable enough. I've only seen the R-rated version of this but there is an unrated cut with some extra bloody violence floating around which might improve things a bit.
 Raymond St. Jacques from lots of 70s blaxploitation shows up as one bad-ass henchman which is neat.

BRONSON will!:

10 TO MIDNIGHT (1983)

 While pretty much all of Charles Bronson's 80's films are variations/remakes/rip-offs of DEATH WISH this one at least has the decency to throw in a slasher movie plot to liven things up. It's probably my favorite of Bronson's later-era work due to this genre-melding and a pretty engaging watch overall. Real-life killer Richard Speck is brought to mind thanks to the film's nurse-slaughter scene, except I don't know if Speck got bare-ass naked and ran down city streets whilst butchering his victims. This does make for quite the cinematic moment though! The ending echoes DIRTY HARRY with a detective going beyond the law to serve justice. I'm pretty sure not as many ultra-liberal types get upset about this film as old HARRY though. Maybe it's because this feels so bonkers in comparison. Give it a watch if ya dig revenge tales or just naked psycho man-ass on the loose!



In Germany Bronson is "a man like dynamite"??!:

TWINKY (1970)

 This has got to be the oddest Charles Bronson film. This is a British film where Bronson plays an almost 40 year old American man who marries a 16 year old English schoolgirl played by Susan George. It's not his best film by far, basically being a lighthearted romantic comedy type of thing, but it might be worth checking out just for it's completely bizarre plot. George does a strange little kid voice throughout the film and wears lots of mini-skirts. There's really nothing very graphic going on but I imagine if this film was made today everyone involved would be brought up on charges of promoting pedophilia or something deviant like that. The director, Richard Donner, went on to make a bunch of big Hollywood stuff including that 70's SUPERMAN movie and more importantly THE OMEN. AIP brought this movie to America re-titled it LOLA and maybe confused a few people into thinking that they were going to see LOLITA. AKA LONDON AFFAIR

Weird VHS title!(should it be STATUTORY RAPE AFFAIR?):

DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN (1987)

By the time you get to DEATH WISH 4 you know exactly the formula you're gonna get. Anyone that's close to Bronson will get killed and possibly raped if they're not lucky and that's just gonna piss Charlie off(you think he would sorta be used to it by now?) and then it's revenge time. This tries to throw in a few new wrinkles by having Chuck take on drug kingpins(complete with the expected heavy-handed anti-drug message) and there's a couple of double crosses and people playing both sides of the law and that kind of thing but it eventually all plays out how you think it will. Bronson also seems to be getting a little too old for the role of Paul Kersey by this time but that didn't stop him from coming back for Part 5 seven years later. None of these sequels even come close to the original but they're all good if you're in the mood for dumb, cheesy action flicks with one of the few men on the planet that could still seem to be a bad-ass, ass-kicker well on into his 60's.

HOUSE OF WAX (1953)

 Vincent Price plays the sort of role that he would become famous for in what is one of the most gimmicky horror flicks of the 50's. The fact that this was shot in 3-D is shoved in your face constantly(which woulda seemed way cooler if I was watching it in 3-D). There's stuff flying at your face, everything from battle mace's to rubber-balls, and seemingly a commercial for the 3-D process right in the middle of the movie as someone starts talking to the audience telling them to watch out for his bouncy balls and whatnot.  I do recall them showing this along with CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON on TV a lot back when they would do those 3-D TV specials back when I was a kid.  I was always more of a fan of the Creature since he was a way cooler monster and I guess I still feel the same way.  I also feel like this movie is specifically made to be viewed in a theater and watching it in any other way loses a great deal.  There was even an intermission in the DVD version that I viewed recently.
 So check this out if you get the chance to see it the way God intended or if you're just a big Vincent Price fan.  It's also got Mr. Charles Bronson in one of his earliest roles as a mute henchman  named Igor so that's something to see right there.
 This was remade in 2005 but all I remember from that one was that Paris Hilton gets killed in a pretty brutal way and there was an actual house made entirely of wax.  Like the screenwriters said "hey man let's take the title literally and make a house of wax!"- fucking idiots!  Also technically this 50's version is a remake of a 1930's flick called THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM which had Fay Wray in it.  I've never seen that one but I'm sure it's better than that new shit.

The most ballyhoo-packed trailer ever!:

HARD TIMES (1975)

 This is probably one of my favorite Charles Bronson flicks because he's basically playing a bad ass throughout the whole movie.  He's a guy who doesn't say too much and does his talking with his fists.  This, of course, would go on to define Bronson throughout most of the rest of his career.  Directed by Walter Hill(his first movie) who would go on to make THE WARRIORS and starring James Coburn and Martin Strother this one is well-acted and really well done all around for a film with a pretty simple plot-line about street-fighting and being a tough guy with honor and all that.    It's sort of an earlier, grittier version of ROCKY really.  Also appearing in a main villain role is a bald headed fellow named Robert Tessier who would go on to play Mr. Clean in commercials.  So if you ever wanted to see a fight between Mr. Bronson and Mr. Clean here's your big chance.

CABOBLANCO (1980)

If you've ever watched the classic 1940's film CASABLANCA and thought to yourself "This movie is OK but I wish there was some Charles Bronson ass kicking scenes" then this might be the movie for you.  In my ongoing quest to watch every movie with Bronson in it this one is a little odd. It's not really a straight forward action flick and it's not the typical revenge flick that we normally got from Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson throughout the 80's. It's more of an adventure/drama film with bits of action thrown in here and there where we get Mr. Bronson in more familiar sequences beating up Nazis and that sort of thing. The main thing that makes this interesting is getting to see Charlie actually act outside of the one-dimensional characters he normally got to portray. It's also the last time he would be given that opportunity since after this it was all about those Cannon films-produced DEATH WISH sequels and clones.  The downside to this particular flick is that most of it is really talky and way more mainstream Hollywood-like than anything I would ever recommend anyone watch. It exists solely as an oddity for Bronson fans like myself although I think it's probably his one film that my grandma probably would have enjoyed more than the others.

MR. MAJESTYK (1974)

If there's one thing I learned from this movie it's that you don't fuck with a man's melons.  In this 70's action classic poor Charles Bronson just wants to grow his goddamn watermelons but no one will leave him alone!  So of course this means Bronson must take on the mob, the cops and other assorted racist/hillbilly types that get in the way of him making himself an honest living.  This your typical yet iconic role for film's greatest revenge-seeking action star of the 70's and 80's and of course it all plays out exactly like you would expect but it's still damn fun.  If your a Bronson fan at all or just a fan of 70's revenge tales this is a must see.  Also if you're a fan of gratuitous melon violence this is the movie for you.  

DEATH WISH (1974)

Yes, the grand-daddy of all revenge flicks. The one they've been remaking over and over ever since. It couldn't be a more simple plot. A mans wife and daughter are attacked and brutalized. Of course the thing that makes it special is that man is Charles Bronson. He portrays such a likable charismatic guy that you can't help but cheer him as he blows away mugger after mugger. It's also amazing to see Jeff Goldblum as the Jughead-hat wearing would-be rapist who sticks his cock in Bronsons daughters face. It spawned 4 sequels each one getting more and more ridiculous as they went on. Check it out for a sleazy slice of 70's New York.

KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS (1989)

Bronson still kicking ass well into his 60's by the time this one came around. Has a pretty sick/disturbing plot about a pimp who employs kids. He also has CHARLES IN CHARGES' Nicole Eggert in his stable for a bit. Bronson doesn't like that shit so he makes this lame-ass pimp eat his own watch and then burns his car up which, of course, instantly explodes since this is an 80's action flick.  Typical action movie in many ways but has just enough craziness to make it stand out.  The pervy Japanese business man is an odd character that you dislike then feel sorry for after his young daughter is kidnapped and raped.  How he gets away with groping Bronsons daughter and gets through this movie without getting an ass-kicking is beyond me.  This was Bronsons last film for the Cannon company, he went on to do a bunch of TV movies after this and the great DEATH WISH V: THE FACE OF DEATH.  I gotta watch that one again sometime soon.