10 to Midnight (1983)

Waste of time

Captivating movie !

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A LAPD detective (Charles Bronson) is on the trail of a very handsome young man (Gene Davis) who had been seducing and slashing many young women to death.Violent and with unseemly subject matter, "10 to Midnight" drew scathing reviews from film critics, including a "zero stars" rating from Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times who wrote, "I admire (Bronson's) strong, simple talent. What is he doing in a garbage disposal like this?" The film did receive positive feedback from others, such as Ebert's colleague Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune and was a financial success. The film has maintained a sizeable cult following through home video releases and heavily edited broadcasts on television which displayed alternate scenes of Stacy and his victims in their underwear instead of being totally naked.I hate to say it, but Ebert could not be more wrong this time. Take the slasher film, blend it with a dirty cop action story, run it through the Cannon sausage grinder... and you have this. I can see why it might have a cult following, because it is completely bonkers. This takes the crazy killer to a whole new level.Being released by MGM, I'm surprised a company like Arrow hasn't stepped in and picked up the blu-ray rights. I mean, holy crap, you could really put some awesome features on this bad boy.

Charles Bronson and director J. Lee-Thompson made nine movies together, and 10 To Midnight certainly makes a worthy attempt at being the kinkiest, sleaziest and most violent of the lot. I expected this to be a real bottom-of-the-barrel entry considering the subject matter, and the fact that Bronson was appearing in one tired revenge-fantasy after another at this point of his career, but Ten To Midnight isn't a total loss. It has a few entertaining set pieces, an interesting moral core, a modicum of suspense during some of the murder sequences, and a decent enough soundtrack courtesy of Robert O. Ragland. Alas, when all is said and done, it is still a fundamentally unpleasant exploitation piece in which the slaying of nubile – and often nude - young women, by a naked knife-wielding psycho no less, is served up for our viewing pleasure. It's not exactly art… it's one of those movies you need to come into accepting for what it is.Weird and voyeuristic office youth Warren Stacy (Gene Davis) has a real problem with women, especially when his overbearing advances are met with rejection and humiliation. However, he gets his revenge by tracking down any women that have refused him and brutally murdering them with a huge knife. Rather perversely, he commits these killings in the nude to avoid leaving any fibres or other incriminating evidence at the crime scene. Old-fashioned cop Leo Kessler (Charles Bronson) is assigned to catch the killer, and partnered with inexperienced rookie Paul McAnn (Andrew Stevens). It doesn't take them long to figure out that Stacy is their man, but pinning evidence on him proves a much trickier challenge. Ultimately Kessler decides to plant incriminating evidence to get the killer jailed, but his plan goes awry and Stacy is soon back on the streets feeling meaner than ever. With Kessler's daughter Laurie (Lisa Eilbacher) the next in line to be killed, it becomes a race against time to stop the psycho before he strikes again…10 To Midnight is not an especially well-acted film. Bronson is in his typically wooden '80s mode; Stevens spends the movie looking handsome but vacant; and Davis looks physically powerful as the bad guy but sounds kind of goofy as soon as he speaks in his peculiar "idiot-drawl". Of the main characters, Eilbacher at least does OK as Kessler's daughter and the killer's potential next target. There are some lulls between the murders and action bits, and the film struggles to maintain much interest when it isn't focusing on these sensational aspects. But fans of Bronson's unique style of squalid, simple, blood-and-thunder action flicks will probably come away satisfied, while the rest of us are left to pick at occasional morsels of quality in an otherwise exploitative potboiler.

I was married to someone who liked Charles Bronson, a gifted actor who worked in master works and this film. This is not a good film. It is cliché to cliché of set pieces and violent pornography. Clint Eastwood played in films that resemble this one, except that those films worked.One aspect of many Bronson films produced by Mehahem Golan and Yoram Golbus is that often backgrounds are badly overexposed. I have no idea why. I have no idea how many of these Adam Greenburg filmed. Some of J. Lee Thompson's Bronson films are quite entertaining and clever. "Murphy's Law" is one of these. Just as Bronson was a gifted actor, so was Thompson a gifted director, who made the outstanding "Tiger Bay". Why this film is as bad as it is baffles me.For some reason, this film never feels plausible or realistic. The blood and gore is not really the problem or even over-the-top. The film fails at some other level that I cannot define.

Bronson was a joke by the early Eighties and just looked way too old and puffy to be playing police detectives. All the films he made with director J. Lee Thompson were crap but this piece of garbage was by far the sickest and most evil. This horrid film is pure rubbish and should be banned. Gene Davis was incredibly wooden as the murderer, I can't believe he agreed to repeatedly take off all his clothes for such a stupid, worthless film like this. The actress playing Bronson's daughter (shopuld have been his granddaughter) was both ugly and talentless. You know there is something wrong when Andrew Stevens gives the best performance. Too many plot holes and sick scenes.Bronson's character would have been arrested and sent to prison for faking evidence in a major murder trial.0/10.