#15: Death Wish
Release Date: January 1st, 1974
Format: DVD
Written by: Wendell Mayes
Directed by: Michael Winner
3 Stars
Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) were part of a wave of influential Vietnam-era Hollywood films that pushed mainstream American cinema to darker realms, both thematically and stylistically. You can see the influences in Michael Winner’s classic 1974 exploitation movie, Death Wish.
His film definitely borrows from Clockwork in its glaring depiction of an act of sexual violence that sets in motion Paul Kersey’s vigilantism: A brightly lit, violent gang rape during a home invasion where an elderly family member is incapacitated while a younger female is overpowered and assaulted. While you watch, you want somebody, anybody, to intervene. Help, please! Somebody help!
Like many things Kubrick, his vision is the more visually arresting and philosophical - Death Wish’s is bluntly exploitative. It’s tough to watch that attack on screen. It’s just not something that would be filmed in a Hollywood movie today, or at least not filmed in that style.
Death Wish also takes from the technical aspects of The Exorcist, which dug its claws into cinema goers the year before. I think most people chalk up the terror of The Exorcist to the head spinning and pea soup, but that film slowly evokes the viewers’ horror far before Father Karas is battling the devil. There is a harshness to the sound design in The Exorcist that Death Wish copies effectively. Hard shoes click on cold pavement. American sedans breathe low and dirty exhaust into the streets. Machines whir and clank. Voices are loud and agonized. Evil laughs overwhelm any sound of joy.
I can’t help but see the connection between the Death Wish franchise and the Rocky franchise. Both had five entries in their original iterations, and both seem to be a reaction to the general malaise and negativity of the 1970s. In a hard world, Rocky shows hope and love and realizing your potential in spite of the odds.
Death Wish shows ghastly vengeance.
