Charles Bronson 1921-2003, mining worker, WW2 soldier, early role 1953 in the Vincent Price classic horror House of Wax, then a lot
of westerns, TV work and gangster movies. Big break in The Magnificent Seven 1960, The Dirty Dozen 1967 and unforgettable as
Harmonica in the 1969 Sergio Leone masterpiece Once upon a time in America. Violent City 1970, Death Wish 1974, Mr. Majestyk 1974

My 3 Favourite Charles Bronson movies:

1. Once Upon a Time in the West, 1969 Direction: Sergio Leone

May be the best western ever made and Bronson as Harmonica is great as the silent stranger. The Morricone soundtrack with the
Harmonica theme reaching it's crescendo when we get to see what happened him could be the most powerful ever on film.
read more about the film further down on my Cult & Classics page 2



 2. Violent City / Citta violenta 1970 Direction Sergio Sollima

Yet again with a fantastic score by Morricone. Read more about the film on my Giallo & Eurocrime page 1

3. Le Passager de la Pluie (Rider on the Rain) 1970 Direction Réne Clément

Great acting performance from Charles Bronson and a very interesting thriller. Read more about it on my
Cult and Classics Film Page 2 - scroll upwards

 
 
St. Ives (1976) Direction: J. Lee Thompson

Cool DVD cover, the Germans really know how to do it

German Savoy Films 2015 DVD edition region 2 with reversible sleeve (censors mark FSK 16 on one side)


It's an OK entertaining crime thriller of the who dun'it type from the era when Charles Bronson made lots and lots of films and was on
Top of the World. Everyone loved him, just everyone and all over the world. In a short featurette featured on this German DVD the
Charles Bronson popularity is mentioned - he was popular in the US, but even more so abroad. He has some sort of integrity -
Jackie Bisset: He watches, he holds back and that makes him interesting.

Yes, a tough looking actor indeed with a minimalistic but very effective acting style. A knight taking on the battle against the Bad Guys
in an endless array of westerns, action and crime films. His face like chiselled out of a rock but when smiling friendliness peeps through
and we know he's the good guy and that the baddies will bite the dust before the film's over.

The Face - Charles Bronson and beautiful Jacqueline Bisset

In St. Ives he does NOT play a hitman or some anti-social tough loner, as a melon farmer (Mr. Majestyk 1974), a harmonica player with a
gun (Once Upon a Time in America 1968) or a man seeking revenge for his family's death (Death Wish series), but the mild-mannered
ex-crime reporter and now author Raymond St. Ives.

He's a bit on the skids due to an excessive gambling habit, when he's hired to act as an middle-man in a blackmail affair. In a mansion
in Beverly Hills, LA, some rich people has lost some journals in a burglary, and they are willing to pay 100 000 USD in ransom to get
them back. Ray is about to leave the money at a certain place, a laundry, but finds a dead man stuck in the tumbler.
Then he is attacked by a gang of killers (including a young Robert "Freddy Krüger" Englund and a ditto Jeff Goldblum, a rapist bum
in Death Wish also, if i remember correctly) and he starts to sleuth around to know why the journals are so valuable.

Note january 2021: Yes, i recently watched the 1974 Death Wish and Jeff Goldblum was one of the three rapist robber thugs that
killed Paul Kersey's wife Joanna and raped his daughter. The director of this film "St. Ives" J. Lee Thompson also directed Charles
Bronson in the 1987 Death Wish 4 and in a bunch of other films.

St. Ives is a perfectly OK crime movie of the who dun'it type, and Charles Bronson's presence makes it entertaining. I'm not sure if i
have seen Bronson in a movie like this before, a crime mystery, but it was interesting. As Ray he's quite tough but he's not exploding
into violence. There is some violence and death's but otherwise this film could've been made for TV.

Otherwise John Houseman is good as the old man, Jackie Bisset is beautiful and Elisha Cook, Jr. the legend in a very small part

The film is presented in anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 with an english audio 1.0 DD Extra: original trailer and a 4 min featurette

 
 
The Valachi Papers (1972 ) Direction: Terence Young

German Koch Media 2017 Blu-ray edition

Yes, Bronson made a lot of good movies and in the 1972 The Valachi Papers - Directed by Terence Young he played one of the
best roles of his career in a very fine Mafia movie depicting the inside workings of the New York Mob

The film is based on real happenings and persons in The Mob, about the mobster career of Joseph Valachi between 1930 - 1973
the year Joe witnessed before a Congress commitee to get FBI protection from crime boss Vito Genovese (Lino Ventura).
Joe's mobster life is told in flashback from when Joe is "snitching" to a FBI man when sitting in a protected jail. About how he
started out as a small time robber, how he became a member of the Maranzano (Joseph Wiseman) family, about the Gang war,
about how the NY Cosa Nostra families united and organized themselves as a military operation.

Because of the "Godfather" this Terence Young directed film was forgotten, but it strives to depict the inner workings of the
Mob, how the Sicilian Cosa Nostra families in New York leans on old initiation blood rites to keep their clans together.
 
The Evil That Men Do (1984) Direction: J. Lee Thompson

Spanish Blu-ray edition Region All

 

 

In the 1980's Charles Bronson movies got trashier and this film directed (as nearly always) by J. Lee Thompson is no exception.
"The Evil That Men Do" is a B action thriller bordering to the C grade .... but, even though Bronson seems to be sleepwalking
through the film it still is entertaining, and i guess the nasty torture scenes at the beginning would've rendered the film to be cut
in a whole lot of countries at the time.

This film is about the truly EVIL doctor Clement Molloc (Joseph Maher) who's touring around the brutal (and surely CIA backed)
dictatorships of Latin America where he teaches the junta regimes of how to best torture dissidents to get confessions.
When a journalist is murdered by Molloc in Surinam an old friend of his, retired killer Holland (Charles Bronson), decides to put
an end to Molloc's terror and together with the journalist's widow Rhiana (Theresa Saldana) he goes to Guatemala.
Besides the opening torture scene there also is a dick ripping scene that surely would've annoyed the censors back then.
Theresa Saldan acts so bad she seems to be retarded, and the final verdict on this Bronson film could only be .... Great Trash !

The film is presented in widescreen 1.78:1 with english audio DTS-HD MA 2.0 and with english subtitles, trailer as extra, region ALL

 
 
Kinjite - Forbidden Subjects (1989) Direction: J. Lee Thompson



German NSM Records 2017 Blu-ray edition

 

 

Dark, unpleasant and dirty crime thriller ............ But, interesting. In this late Charles Bronson entry to the Death Wish type
of avenging cop vs. very bad criminals Bronson isn't even likeable ... at all. He plays a racist anti-asian bordering to being a
nutcase and a character almost as nasty as the criminals he chases.

In the intro of this film he says to his wife Kathleen (Peggy Lipton) that he's sick of the filth he meets in his job as a (elderly,
CB was 67 years old when making this film) Vice cop, and what this filth has done to him as a person. This, after another bad
night on the streets of LA, where he (out of picture) punishes a S&M loving john by violating him with a dildo ....

Japanese business man Hiroshi Hada (James Pax) is transferred to LA and brings his wife and teenage daughter Fumi with him.
Duke (an impressive but disgusting performance by Juan Fernandez) is a slimy pimp who preys on young kids who has got
lost in the big city, and he kidnaps, rapes and turn into a whore, Fumi when she walks from school.
Lieutenant Crowe (Bronson) is anti-japanese but something he hates more than rich japanese buying businesses and estate
are the pimps exploiting kids sexually, and Crowe will do anything to hunt down The Duke.

Juan Fernandez was very good as the Bad guy, and at the end Danny Trejo can be seen for a couple of seconds as an inmate

The film is presented in widescreen 1.85:1 with an english audio DTS-HD MA 2.0 with english subtitles, region B
German and original trailer, and filmographies

 
 
The White Buffalo (1977) Direction: J. Lee Thompson



Swedish Retro Films DVD edition

 


Pretty enjoyable western shot in studio and in Colorado where Charles Bronson plays sharpshooter Wild Bill Hickok.
He's shooting bad guys en masse and for some reason he's on the hunt for the last of the white buffalos in 1874.
People thinks he's after the gold in the Black Hills but it's the white buffalo he's after. Why ? Because he's scared by
the beast in his recurring nightmares. Helping him is his friend One Eye (Jack Warden) and the Sioux indian Crazy Horse

DVD presented in widescreen 1.85:1 and with english audio DD 2.0 with swedish subtitles, region 2 with a trailer and picture gallery

 
 
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