Saturday, June 8, 2013

Junesploitation Day 8: Charles Bronson!

When murder and rape invades your home and the cops can't stop it...this man will. HIS WAY.

Today, Junesploitation celebrates everyone's favorite one man army with zero charisma!

Note: For some reason, the platform we're on is shooting a lot of comments to 'spam' even when they are not. We will be diligent about checking a couple times a day, so if you're comment isn't showing up right away, try to be patient (unless it's time sensitive for some reason) and we'll get it to show up. Not sure why this is happening, and it's super annoying/frustrating. Just bear with us. Clearly the internet is overloaded by the awesomeness of Junesploitation!

18 comments:

  1. Terence Young's COLD SWEAT (1970) on Amazon Prime for the first time.

    An ultimately disposable but entertaining European-set thriller from the director of "From Russia With Love." Bronson plays Joe Martin, an American living in France whose home is invaded by the poe'd former Korean War comrades/partners in crime whom he left holding the bag a decade earlier. A bearded James Mason and a bloodthirsty Michel Constantin lead the bad guys in their effort to use Martin to both score a drug deal and avenge his betrayal.

    The best part of "Cold Sweat" ('Sweatsploitation!') is seeing how Bronson and Mason (using Liv Ullman, Jill Ireland and a young girl as hostages/bargaining chips) keep gaining, losing and flipping the upper-hand over the other at unexpected moments. There are also a couple of cool car racing scenes, but Charles isn't really in bad mofo mode here as much as concerned husband/stepfather mode. Even when he's slumming in a 'B' project with his wife and Ingmar Bergman's muse though, Bronson remains effortlessly cool and a magnet of attention any time he's on-screen.

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  2. Death Wish III (1985)

    New York neighborhood in utter chaos. Thank god the Bronson vengeance tour has arrived. We get extreme justice from the most even tempered SOB vigilante brought to celluloid. Also old painless's little brother handled by senior citizens! Bronson made this film at 63, I'm not too old for this shitsploitation!

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  3. thanks Patrick, another line that cracked me up in that movie for some reason was "Your wife has expired" what doctor says that? my wife isn't a gallon of milk!

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  4. The Evil That Men Do (1984)

    The C.B. wikipedia page touted this one as "ultra-violent" and the opening scene promised a sadistic torturing doctor as the antagonist. Hopes were high. Unfortunately after the opening we have to wait til 40 minutes in before we see C.B. kick some ass, and even then it splutters in dribs and drabs until we get to a random finale that involves C.B. walking away while uninvolved extras kill the doctor. Boo CB, Boo.

    Boospolitation.

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  5. Telefon (1977)

    So-so thriller has Bronson as a good-guy KGB agent trying to stop a brainwashing scheme. There's an interesting subtext lurking in the background about the similarity between brainwashing and "just following orders," but it's mostly unexplored. I love Lee Remick, but she's miscast (Tyne Daly is also in the movie, and would have made a much better foil for Bronson). What's most interesting about this film is how much The Naked Gun got its brainwashing plot from it. The scene between Ricardo Montlalban and "Pap Schmeer" is a beat-for-beat remake of a scene in Telefon.

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  6. Death Wish 3 (1985)

    *NON-CONFIDENTIAL TO TOM BARTMAN*: If you think Death Wish 3 was I'm-too-old-for-this-shit-sploitation, just wait til you check out Death Wish 5, which came out a whopping 9 years later, making Charles Bronson the second most inactive action hero (after Steven Seagal).

    Ah, Death Wish 3. Of all the Cannon Films, you may just be the Cannoniest. Street gangs straight out of a Frank Miller comic, giant guns with stupid names ("Meet Wildey"), reverse-mohawks, and a man who has had every member of his family and circle of friends raped and murdered. Ninety-plus minutes of batshit insanity, gigglers, grenades, Gatling guns, and Geritol.

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  7. Murphy's Law (1986)

    One of the few '80s Bronson movies I had never seen all the way through. For a J. Lee Thompson movie, it's pretty generic and lacks the craziness of his more entertaining Cannon movies. I guess if you've always wanted to see his lack of charisma banter with a foul-mouthed young woman (whose insults all consist of things like "Snot Breath" and "Sperm Count"), this is your movie.

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    1. I didn't realize it until I researched Bronson's filmography on IMDB, but he and J. Lee Thompson had a DeNiro-Scorsese, Mifune-Kurosawa thing going over the years. They did ten movies together, mostly in the latter years of their careers. The More You Know.

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  8. DEATH WISH 3 (1985)

    HO...LY...SHIT.

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  9. Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects (1989)

    I really wanted this to have more vengeance against pedophiles. That would have been great. But, there really wasn't enough of that. The action sequences we did get were short, and yet they felt slow. I ultimately just felt empty and sad throughout most of it. But, the end was pretty good.

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    1. Yes! Why did NOTHING happen with the Asian guy from the train? Empty and sad is an apt description of A LOT of the Bronson movies from the '80s. They're all just so...sleazy...this one more than most. It's fascinating.

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    2. Sleazy. That's a good word for it.

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  10. Death Wish (1974)

    I can't believe I've never seen this movie before now! I'm sure it's not as corny and exploitative as any of the sequels, but I enjoyed it immensely. I've never really gotten around to watching any Bronson movies where he's the main draw (Bronsploitation) but I definitely want to dig deeper. Plus, a funky soundtrack by Herbie Hancock and the first film appearance of a young Jeff Goldblum (and his bare butt cheeks). Oh, and Christopher Guest has a bit part, too. Big fan of this movie.

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  11. I took the dare and watched DEATH WITH 3. Bronson versus the punks from Class of Nuke 'Em High! It's ridiculous in pretty much every way. But, is Bronson a Vulcan? Does he ever change his facial expression or mannerisms? (Woodensploitation!)

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  12. Death Wish 3 (1985)

    After watching this I'm definitely going to let my kwahom grow in - why didn't someone tell me that was such a bad look?!

    I enjoyed pretty much every moment of this insane movie - I didn't even find it "so bad it's good", it does what it's trying to do and it does it well. Charles Bronson really is the fucking man.

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