12 to Midnight (2024)

Lon Chaney was the man of a thousand faces. Robert Bronzi is the man of one face: Charles Bronson. Born in Hungary as Robert Kovacs, the professional stuntman and horse-rider has somehow parlayed an uncanny resemblance to the ‘Death Wish’ star into an acting career. He is the low-budget film industry's answer to a question nobody asked: what if, like Jesus Christ, Charles Bronson rose again after his death?

Mark Savage’s ’12 to Midnight’ is a classic Bronzi vehicle- that is to say, an unintentionally hilarious parade of technical and creative incompetence. It follows Detective Axel Toth, a hard-bitten cop investigating a series of gruesome murders in which the victims have been mysteriously torn apart. As the body count rises, Toth begins to suspect that the culprit may not be entirely human. Can he stop the killer- whatever it may be- before the next full moon?

A stumbling shambles on every level, incredulously it took four screenwriters to come up with this carnival of schlock. Brimming with cliches and wooden, unnatural dialogue, it makes your average Steven Seagal movie look like the work of Orson Welles. It’s a murder mystery that doesn’t mystify; a horror that doesn’t frighten. The characterisation of everyone involved is thinner than cigarette paper, while the plot is so predictable you’d think originality and surprise were considered anathema to its creators.

Savage cannot even decide what sort of bad movie he wants to make. ’12 to Midnight’ awkwardly straddles the line between police thriller and horror without ever generating much in the way of either thrills or scares. There is no tension, no atmosphere and precious little suspense; scenes that ought to build dread simply plod along until the next slab of clunky dialogue arrives to kill whatever momentum that might have accidentally generated.

Weird and sloppy, the narrative lurches inexplicably from scene to scene, with Savage’s editing compounding the confusion. Lines of dialogue are routinely chopped off mid-sentence, scenes end at bizarre moments and transitions have all the elegance of someone repeatedly hitting the fast-forward button from across a vast room. The whole thing is so clunky and disjointed it feels like a rough assembly cut that accidentally found its way onto screen.

Michael Su’s cinematography is painfully generic, failing to give the film any visual identity or atmosphere, while Chuck Yarmey’s production design is underwhelming. Further, Steve Yeaman’s score functions as little more than background noise, not contributing anything to the film’s mood or tension. Nothing looks, sounds or feels distinctive; every element seemingly assembled with the bare minimum of imagination.

Bronzi, unsurprisingly, is not exactly stretching himself. His performance as Toth consists largely of staring stoically into the middle distance, barking out lines in a gravelly, heavily accented monotone and occasionally shooting someone. He may look like Charles Bronson- especially if you squint- but lacks Bronson’s range, charisma and screen presence. Roger Ebert noted that Bronson moved like a cat; Bronzi moves like a cat that has just been tranquilised.

The supporting cast fare little better, saddled as they are with characters that have been written with all the depth of a cardboard cut-out. Nobody sounds remotely like a real human being. As Toth’s captain, Daniel Roebuck seems depressed to be anywhere near the project, while Tito Ortiz demonstrates why his talents are better suited to the UFC than the acting profession. As a sheriff inexplicably involved in a romantic entanglement with Toth, Sadie Katz does the best work of the lot- though even she cannot overcome the godawful characterisation and dialogue.

If you enjoy really bad movies, you might find Mark Savage’s ‘12 to Midnight’ worth a watch. If, however, the likes of Claudio Fragasso’s ‘Troll 2’ or Ray Kellogg’s ‘The Killer Shrews’ leave you cold, it won’t be for you. Charles Bronson made some pretty terrible movies in the late 80s and 90s- but none were as bad as his impersonator Robert Bronzi’s ’12 to Midnight’. Incompetent on every level, you’d have to have a death wish to watch it again.