10 To Midnight Review

I’ve seen a lot of movies, and if you’ve been following this website for any given amount of time, you know that to be very true. What I’ve found recently is that there are a lot of movies that pass under the radar as simple genre pieces, when they are more than that. That’s the first thing I realized when I was watching the movie I’m reviewing today, starring none other than Charles Bronson. The movie is called 10 To Midnight, and it mixes several elements of exploitation, slasher, and cop movies all into one vat of awesome cinema. This movie has everything you could possibly want from a movie, whether you’re a horror movie fan, an action junkie, or a deviant looking for gratuitous nudity. You’ll find it all happens here and it all hits hard and fast.

The movie starts out like a traditional slasher, with a weird man running naked in a forest killing men and women having a good time. We then shift to a more traditional drama that depicts a hard cop and a newcomer partner that he doesn’t like. The two bicker and have a hard time being friendly, until they have to work together on a case where it involves someone that Leo Kessler (Bronson) knows. The film then shifts back to the killer as he targets women, and eventually targets the detective’s daughter.

There aren’t a lot of gore scenes, but you do get a lot of serial killing action. You see the killer a lot like you saw Christian Bale in American Psycho. He kills often and he kills fast, causing a lot of problems for anyone that gets in his way. He has an insane rampage in a woman’s sorority of sorts, or a nurses ward, I’m not sure, but there’s a lot of twenty something flesh that is exposed.

Some of the camera angles, and knife shots are completely similar to Dario Argento’s “Gialo” type of film process, and that’s where you really start to feel the genre shifting move the audience into select paths. The cop element is brought in when Bronson has to come save the day, and eventually mops up but not before we get the criminal ranting of insanity. Despite how awesome I think this film is, when it was released everyone hated it, and it wasn’t exactly gaining much attention. I think it’s great, Bronson plays his role perfectly, the serial killer is legitimately insane and horror inducing, and you truly feel like you’re watching a slasher/horror film NOT a cop movie. I suggest picking up 10 To Midnight on dvd today.