Let's Start Dying: Death Wish (The Original)

Let's Start Dying: LSD . . . get it?

Hold it! One - more - wrinkle - and - you're - DEAD

 T  he story is legend by now: Charles Bukowski, a.k.a. Chuck Bronson, in the seminal Michael Winner film, Death Wish.

Yeah, I know: seen there, been that. But I'll bet you've never seen it on Acid.

There are some mistakes in life you just don't want to repeat, and watching Death Wish for the first time, sprawled on a shag rug carpet in front of your parents, who are reclining with their evening scotches in their easy chairs -- you, eschewing the scotch in favor of a particularly strong hit of Blotter - well, I guess ya just hadda bin there.

Now, some forty years later, I watch it with a much more jaundiced eye -- one that is not busy seeing small patterns move in the wallpaper.

We all know the story, but what do we really know about this movie? There are a bunch of superlatives. This was a true groundbreaker -- it did, after all, spawn three sequels -- and pretty much put Charles Bronson permanently on the A-list of Hollywood.

He had had a storied career so far, in such legendary cinematic triumphs such as Once Upon a Time In The West and The Dirty Dozen -- but this was his crowning ouevre.

Let me start by noting here is that this is a movie that is a period piece of New York in the 1970s, along with others such as Mean Streets, The Out-of-towners, and Serpico. The grit is real, the store signs are authentic and even the subway trains have Winston cigarette ads.

I am very familiar with this territory because I lived in Manhattan between the years 1970 and 1973, on what is now a ritzy Upper East Side. It wasn't so ritzy in 1971. In fact, New York was in the midst of a low-grade war.

Although I was just in my early teens I do remember that living in New York at that period of time was somewhat stressful, to say the least; schoolyard bullies ruled the roost and the Public School system was a nightmare to be in.

So Paul Kersey, the protagonist in this movie, is the proverbial embattled Everyman, whose wife is murdered by a youthful (and uncredited) Jeff Goldblum, his daughter left a vegetable.

We all know the story: Paul channels his inner Charles Bronson and goes on a vigilante rampage, creating a Who Is Killing The Great Muggers Of Manhattan classic.

What is interesting here is to watch director Michael Winner's cinematography. It screams Kubrick, Kubrick Kubrick -- but this is a full six years before The Shining.

Heeeeere's a fairy!

The classic Kubrick wide shot where all angles lead to the geographic center of the screen, in which stand the two main characters, is used with great abundance here. It's hard to say whether or not this was a typical trope in the Director's Bag of Tricks at the time or particular to Winner and Kubrick but let's just say that Kubrick could have been the director of this movie.

Lots of odd angles and strange closeups of bugged-out villains populate the landscape and The French Connection also makes its first true reappearance in this movie, although that was done by William Friedkin, and there are no car chases in Death Wish.

Hmm. Now where have I seen this in the future?

Otherwise, it's Mix and Mash The Early 70s Directors Week at the cinema here; I suppose, like all film eras, this one has a name: "School of newly minted widescreen classics" or something similar.

But a forgotten gem in this movie is the soundtrack, by jazz giant Herbie Hancock, in a classic Fender Rhodes and synth soundscape that yells "Never been done before," like so many other things in Death Wish.

The story is predictable but we forget that this was the first to do it -- all others since have merely quoted the master -- and let me tell you, watching this movie on very good LSD was an experience that Timothy Leary would have been shut the fuck up for.

In retrospect, maybe it wasn't such a mistake. But I'll pass on the blotter tonight -- San Pellegrino is the New Acid.

I don't recall what my mother thought. I was too busy counting Wall Lions.