As we saw our own DJ Webb partaking of the boob tube this holiday season, I also took rare look at TV programming this New Year’s Eve. I caught several movies that I’ve been meaning to look into. These are the first 3 installments of the Death Wish series of movies.

There are men. There are men we look up to, and there are men’s men. And then there is Charles Bronson.

This man’s mustache and overall ugliness could only be trademarked. While Hollywood girly-faced actors are revelling in this metrosexual era, Bronson only had one thing to say about his visage: “I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone has dynamited.”

The story of Death Wish is a simple fantasy to even the most liberal of us and one which probably started a vein of vigilante stories that, already cult classic, Boondock Saints continues with currently. That is, to issue justice as we ourselves see fit. Bronson plays an average New Yorker family man who stumbles on the misfortune of having his wife and daughter robbed, raped and killed by Jeff Goldblum and his gang of thugs. What ensues over 5 films and 2 decades of filming is Bronson exacting revenge not only on the personal perpetrators, but over hundreds of similar scum.

The height, for me, is in Death Wish 3, when Bronson, already in his 60’s by then, teams up a crew of senior citizens in low-income housing to take back their safety from organized gang members, including Bill S. Preston, Esq.. But Bronson has help from one more source. He has Wildey on his side.

A decade before there was the Desert Eagle, we had Wildey, which fires a .475 Wildey Magnum, a shorter version of the African big game cartridge. Shown above is the 18 inch barrel (I think Bronson -only- used the 12″ or 14″ in Death Wish 3). Fabled to resolve most fights without a shot being fired, the Wildey is said to reduce a cinder block to dust, having the main drawback of not stopping until it has gone through 2 or 3 human targets.

I think this post is done, but it doesn’t stop there. Maybe later I’ll talk about the Death Wish 3 Commodore 64/Spectrum ZX video game which revolutionarily allows you blow through thugs, cops and bag ladies alike with an RPG.