“The way the law protects these maggots, you’d think they were an endangered species.” Charles Bronson takes matters into his own hands as a pissed-off cop willing to skirt the rules in ruthless pursuit of a deranged serial killer in 10 to Midnight. An explosive combination of slasher movie and police procedural, director J. Lee Thompson’s fourth pairing with the grizzled star is one of his best, a vicious and uncompromising Cannon Group crime classic mixing sadistic thrills, sleazy sexploitation, a buck-naked slayer, scenes filmed at the Aero Theatre and a steely-eyed Bronson shouting lines like “IT’S FOR JACKING OFF!”
“Damnably clever at dropping in its vicious vigilante theme without being didactic, and J. Lee Thompson’s direction, borrowing from Hitchcock’s editing in Psycho, creates the full horror of blades thrusting into naked bellies without the viewer ever actually seeing it happen.” – Variety
“This is a scummy little sewer of a movie, a cesspool that lingers sadistically on shots of a killer terrifying and killing helpless women, and then is shameless enough to end with an appeal to law and order. The people who made Ten to Midnight have every right to be ashamed of themselves” – Roger Ebert
