{"id":1261,"date":"2024-07-23T21:12:55","date_gmt":"2024-07-23T21:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1261"},"modified":"2024-10-13T19:37:58","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:37:58","slug":"10-to-midnight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/07\/23\/10-to-midnight\/","title":{"rendered":"10 to Midnight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"10 to Midnight <\/strong>(1983)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon Films\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 102 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, graphic violence, full frontal nudity, strong sexual content, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: J. Lee Thompson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: J. Lee Thompson and William Roberts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Robert O. Ragland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Adam Greenburg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 11, 1983 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $7.1 million (US)<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/strong> ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0I’ve always been a big fan of Charles Bronson. In my opinion, 10 to Midnight <\/strong>is <\/strong>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\u2019s a creep. Unlucky for them, he doesn\u2019t take rejection well. Even more unlucky, he\u2019s good at what he does. He\u2019s careful when committing murder. He strips naked beforehand so he won\u2019t get any incriminating evidence on his clothes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Kessler, 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\u2019s latest killing, a young couple having sex in a van. It doesn\u2019t take long for Kessler to zero in on Stacy as the prime suspect. He\u2019s right, of course, but can\u2019t prove it. That\u2019s when he decides to circumvent the system and take matters into his own hands. He steals the victim\u2019s blood sample from the police lab and plants it on the clothes Warren was wearing the night of the murders. He\u2019s immediately arrested and charged. Now it\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n

\u00a0It would be understandable if one was to assume 10 to Midnight <\/strong>is another Death Wish clone. While Bronson\u2019s character takes the law into his own hands more than once, it\u2019s less an actioner than it is a thriller. I\u2019d even say it fits the criteria for a slasher flick. However you look at it, it\u2019s a mostly effective movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For fans, Bronson delivers his usual stoic performance. He\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Davis, the brother of the late Brad Davis of Midnight Express, is terrific as Warren, a vile, repulsive creep that makes people\u2019s 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\u2019s observation that his \u201cknife has gotta be his penis\u201d. Stevens is reasonably good as the idealistic partner, a character crucial to a movie like 10 to Midnight<\/strong>. He\u2019s the guy that provides a counterpoint to the main character\u2019s radical views on law and order. He faces a real moral dilemma when he figures out what Kessler did. He\u2019s not sure if he can \u201cforget what\u2019s legal and do what\u2019s right\u201d (Kessler\u2019s words).<\/p>\n

Directed by J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone), 10 to Midnight<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>10 to Midnight<\/strong> isn\u2019t without its flaws. The romantic subplot involving Laurie and Paul is underdeveloped and all but dropped by movie\u2019s end. They do a little better with the strained father-daughter relationship between Kessler and Laurie. The acting isn\u2019t always good. Some of it is pretty bad. The dialogue sounds like it comes straight from the Death Wish playbook with lines like, \u201c<\/strong>The way the law treats those maggots out there; you’d think they were an endangered species.” That\u2019s to be expected from a Bronson flick though, isn\u2019t it? This is exactly what makes them great!<\/p>\n

\u00a0I remember my dad taking me, my little brother (age 10) and my then-girlfriend to see 10 to Midnight<\/strong> when it came out. It wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s amazing is that he didn\u2019t make us leave before it was over. It\u2019s a violent, dirty, sleazy thriller filled with graphic killings, nudity and sexual references. Roger Ebert called it \u201ca scummy little sewer of a movie\u201d. It\u2019s a bit extreme but I can see where he\u2019s coming from. 10 to Midnight<\/strong> revels in sleaze and sadistic violence. It\u2019s like Friday the 13th<\/sup>, Hardcore and Dirty Harry rolled into one. I don\u2019t mind at all. It\u2019s a Cannon movie starring Bronson; it\u2019s automatically cool in my book.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 to Midnight (1983)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon Films\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 102 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, graphic violence, full frontal nudity, strong sexual content, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: J. Lee Thompson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: J. Lee Thompson and William Roberts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Robert O. Ragland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Adam Greenburg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 11, 1983 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Charles Bronson, Lisa Eilbacher, Andrew Stevens, Gene Davis, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/10-to-Midnight-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1261"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1888,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions\/1888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}