10 to Midnight (1983) Cannon Films/Action RT: 102 minutes Rated R (language, graphic violence, full frontal nudity, strong sexual content, drug use) Director: J. Lee Thompson Screenplay: J. Lee Thompson and William Roberts Music: Robert O. Ragland Cinematography: Adam Greenburg Release date: March 11, 1983 (US) Starring: Charles Bronson, Lisa Eilbacher, Andrew Stevens, Gene Davis, Geoffrey Lewis, Robert F. Lyons, Wilford Brimley, Iva Lane, Ola Ray, Kelly Preston, Cosie Costa, June Gilbert, Jeana Tomasina, Paul McCallum. Box Office: $7.1 million (US)
Rating: ****
I’ve always been a big fan of Charles Bronson. In my opinion, 10 to Midnight is his best non-Death Wish movie. He plays Leo Kessler, a tough Los Angeles cop on the trail of a psychopathic killer, an office equipment repairman named Warren Stacy (Davis, Cruising). He targets women who reject him. They reject him because he’s a creep. Unlucky for them, he doesn’t take rejection well. Even more unlucky, he’s good at what he does. He’s careful when committing murder. He strips naked beforehand so he won’t get any incriminating evidence on his clothes.
Kessler, a seasoned vet sick of watching criminals go free, is assigned the case with a new partner, an idealistic young detective named Paul McAnn (Stevens, The Seduction). They meet at the scene of Warren’s latest killing, a young couple having sex in a van. It doesn’t take long for Kessler to zero in on Stacy as the prime suspect. He’s right, of course, but can’t prove it. That’s when he decides to circumvent the system and take matters into his own hands. He steals the victim’s blood sample from the police lab and plants it on the clothes Warren was wearing the night of the murders. He’s immediately arrested and charged. Now it’s a question of ethics. Is it okay to break the law in order to enforce it? Should he keep quiet and let the trial proceed or admit to what he did and let a killer go free?
It would be understandable if one was to assume 10 to Midnight is another Death Wish clone. While Bronson’s character takes the law into his own hands more than once, it’s less an actioner than it is a thriller. I’d even say it fits the criteria for a slasher flick. However you look at it, it’s a mostly effective movie.
For fans, Bronson delivers his usual stoic performance. He’s never been known for emoting and continues this trend here. At the same time, you can feel his anger brewing beneath the surface when Warren goes after his daughter Laurie (Eilbacher, An Officer and a Gentleman) at the end. It leads to one of the best movie endings EVER.
Davis, the brother of the late Brad Davis of Midnight Express, is terrific as Warren, a vile, repulsive creep that makes people’s skin crawl. Unfortunately, his character is afforded little depth. Aside from a brief mention of a childhood offense, we learn nothing about his background or psychology other than Kessler’s observation that his “knife has gotta be his penis”. Stevens is reasonably good as the idealistic partner, a character crucial to a movie like 10 to Midnight. He’s the guy that provides a counterpoint to the main character’s radical views on law and order. He faces a real moral dilemma when he figures out what Kessler did. He’s not sure if he can “forget what’s legal and do what’s right” (Kessler’s words).
Directed by J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone), 10 to Midnight is actually inspired by a couple of real-life cases. The first is Richard Speck, a mass murderer who killed eight student nurses. The second is a Scotland Yard inspector that was fired for planting evidence on a suspected killer. Near the end, Warren goes after Laurie and her friends, all of them student nurses. Thompson, who co-wrote the screenplay with William Roberts, does a good job combining the two narratives.
10 to Midnight isn’t without its flaws. The romantic subplot involving Laurie and Paul is underdeveloped and all but dropped by movie’s end. They do a little better with the strained father-daughter relationship between Kessler and Laurie. The acting isn’t always good. Some of it is pretty bad. The dialogue sounds like it comes straight from the Death Wish playbook with lines like, “The way the law treats those maggots out there; you’d think they were an endangered species.” That’s to be expected from a Bronson flick though, isn’t it? This is exactly what makes them great!
I remember my dad taking me, my little brother (age 10) and my then-girlfriend to see 10 to Midnight when it came out. It wasn’t hard to talk him into it because he was a Bronson fan too. The audience at the Sunday matinee ate it right up just like the crowd at Death Wish II the year before. What’s amazing is that he didn’t make us leave before it was over. It’s a violent, dirty, sleazy thriller filled with graphic killings, nudity and sexual references. Roger Ebert called it “a scummy little sewer of a movie”. It’s a bit extreme but I can see where he’s coming from. 10 to Midnight revels in sleaze and sadistic violence. It’s like Friday the 13th, Hardcore and Dirty Harry rolled into one. I don’t mind at all. It’s a Cannon movie starring Bronson; it’s automatically cool in my book.
