Charles Bronson Film Collection (Trailers)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Trailers: B

 

 

There are many big stars in Hollywood history, but the idea that all movie stars must be with the big studios and do the same formulaic stupidity over and over again to make money sends the wrong message about stardom and moviemaking.  That kind of message has been destroying filmmaking, as a matter of fact, which is why the new trailers set dubbed The Charles Bronson Film Collection is so interesting.

 

Novices will be amazed that one star could have such a run without big studio support, but it is not studios that make stars, it is ultimately the public.  That is why all of us at the site are so sick of even actors we like being shoved in our faces to death, the promo departments on steroids trying way too hard to make stars happen.  Bronson did it the old fashioned way, the camera liked him and he had good taste in material for a very long time.

 

This collection offers 38 trailers for the following films:

 

Drum Beat

Target Zero

Showdown At Boot Hill

Machine Gun Kelly

The Magnificent Seven

X-15

Kid Galahad

The Great Escape

This Property Is Condemned

The Dirty Dozen

Guns For San Sebastian

Once Upon A Time In The West

Lola

Rider On The Rain

You Can’t Win Them All

The Family

Cold Sweat

The Red Sun

Chato’s Land

The Valachi Papers

The Mechanic (aka Killer Of Killers)

The Stone Killer

Chino

Mr. Majestyk

Death Wish

Breakout

Hard Times

Breakheart Pass

From Noon Till Three

St. Ives

The White Buffalo

Telefon

Death Hunt

The Evil That Men Do

Death

Murphy’s Law

Assassination

Messenger of Death

 

 

Some are widescreen, others are not, but all of the scope (2.35 X 1 films) are usually shown at 1.85 X 1, if not pan and scan!  Image quality is usually good and many of these clips are rare.  Some are classics, some clips are not on the DVDs issued of them, and some are on DVD with no trailer at all!  Many are not on DVD yet and a few were barely on VHS, if at all.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono reads on the back of the case as if it were 1.0 Mono based on the diagram, but it is better sound than it gives itself credit for.  The only extra is a text biography of Bronson.

 

Bronson was smart enough to work with directors who could really help him, such as Terence Young, Richard Fleischer, or J. Lee Thompson, but the first Death Wish (there were five of them he starred in before his death, and one extremely dreadful remake we’ll skip comment on) turned his career into a new direction that ultimately did not help him.  By the 1980s, he suddenly fit in to a cycle of reactionary films that quickly became a laughable formula, and he landed up trivializing himself.  He was surviving, making films, but being stuck at the now-defunct Cannon Pictures was like a slow death.

 

With political correctness, he was disposed of by Hollywood altogether, demonstrated by how his death was virtually ignored by all media when it happened.  Most of the same people who ignored him likely never saw his best work, if any of it, and most of the filmmakers today who try to fit into the latest sch0ool of commercial filmmaking thought will never make films anywhere near as good or as memorable as Bronson’s very best.  The simplest reason is that most of them are too busy trying to look good and fit in, instead of taking risks and having something to say.

 

Those trailers are pretty much laid out in chronological order and Bronson’s career takes place form a very unique perspective to see the profound changes the industry went through over four decades.  Bronson too was interesting when the material was right and gave some key performances in films like Once Upon A Time In The West (reviewed elsewhere on this site).  With the industry in a twisted situation of a very bad run of ill-greenlighted money machines posing as entertainment, this is a great time to check out The Charles Bronson Film Collection.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo