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Watching Hour Preview: 10 to Midnight

Justin here, as The Movie Advocate’s resident authority on all things Bronson, it’s my duty to tell you about this week’s Watching Hour feature, 10 to Midnight showing Friday the 11th at 10:00 at the Denver Film Center.

I've seen a hell of a lot of Charles Bronson movies lately. He's my badass auteur. Some people follow Seagal, or Bruce, or Sly, or Arnold - make mine Bronson. I can't really explain why, there's just something about his old-guy vigilante shtick that's really compelling. 10 to Midnight is one of Bronson's better movies, in this one he plays a detective on the trail of a serial killer who dispatches his victims with a knife while being totally nude. When the killer starts to target Bronson's daughter, he has to decide whether to play this one by the book or to take justice into his own hands.
I have a theory that 10 to Midnight is an American giallo movie in the tradition of the more grounded movies in that genre like Deep Red and Tenebre: we have a series of first-person perspective murders, the weapon of choice - a knife, gratuitous quantites of blood, a large cast of women who are perpetually in danger.
Maybe it's more like a mash-up of a giallo with a Bronson movie. The killer in 10 to Midnight is genuinely pretty creepy. Aside from the highly sexual way he murders his victims, he also makes harassing phone calls to them in an inexplicable Spanish accent.

10 to Midnight was one of the many collaborations of Charles Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone). Together, they would make a total of 9 movies that rate among the best Bronson ever did. This was their 4th movie together and it's easy to tell how well they work with each other and how comfortable they feel.

10 to Midnight is also classic Cannon Group. Cannon produced a whole series of really solid mid-budget mystery-thrillers. It's kind of refreshing watching a simple movie that is executed well in a time when even the most subdued movies have to be big spectacles and have a huge marketing push to make back their cost. Don't get me wrong though, Delta Force this is not.

Movie like 10 to Midnight are starting to be regarded as a new kind of pulp. Lurid tales of perversion and violence where even the good guy is a little bad. 10 to Midnight is a solid genre thriller and honestly, way better than it has any right to be.

As an added bonus, this screening of 10 to Midnight will feature FREE pizza from Basil Docs at 9:00 and some kind of drink special. Also, as the regular watching hour host, Keith Garcia is out of town, yours truly will be introducing the movie.

-Justin

The Watching Hour is a weekly film series at the Denver Film Center, highlighting new and old cult, genre, or otherwise bizarro movies. Quite simply, The Watching Hour is usually the best thing to do in Denver on a Friday or Saturday night. From Giallo to schlock, Blaxploitation to Aussiesploitation, zombies to martial arts to who-knows-what, and everywhere in between. This is good ol’ rock and roll cinema spectacle. Not to be missed. (See the schedule, buy tickets, get directions, etc. here.)