12 to Midnight (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered on episode 210 of the podcast, and I figured with the Bronzi factor, it was worth covering on the site as well. I don't know how true that is actually, but I'm going with it.

12 to Midnight has nothing to do with the 10 to Midnight that it's cribbing its title from--thought that would be an interesting idea for a prequel, no?--but it seems like it might when we find out early on that Bronzi's wife was murdered by serial killer who's still on the loose, and could kill again. But this thing ain't shaping up to finish with Bronzi confronting a nude dude, oh no, it's a backdoor werewolf movie! Fortunately Bronzi's of Eastern European descent, and as such, this isn't his first werewolf rodeo--which, for an animal lover like myself, that may be the best kind of rodeo and the only kind worth supporting--so he's onto what's happening pretty quickly. Well, not quickly enough to spare myriad other victims from the werewolf's wrath, but if he didn't have that Eastern European background, this could easily be a 150-minute slog, so I'm not complaining. It's going to take everything in Bronzi's bag of tricks to bring this werewolf killer to justice.

This wasn't half-bad. You take the concept of Robert Bronzi having a career based on being a Charles Bronson look-alike, which is bonkers enough on its own, mix in Tito Ortiz and werewolves, and I think you have yourself a fun 90 minutes. To be honest, this is doing a lot better than a lot of modern DTV. It knows what it is, doesn't try to be anything it isn't, and the result is something that's pretty fun. That all being said, this is bonkers, and if you're looking at the cover expecting a hard-boiled actioner, you don't really get that. Bronzi has some cop on the edge in him, but once we add in werewolves, all bets are off. Sadie Katz, who we've seen before, looks like she could add in her own "sheriff on the edge," which would've been a fun twist on that premise, but, again, werewolves throw all that out the window. Sometimes you need that though. I don't know how many rough-sit Randall Scandals we've seen that probably would've been more palatable with the inclusion of werewolves. At least half the Bruce Willis ones anyway. 

We've now seen Bronzi twice on the site, which is four behind the actual Bronson's six. It's possible he could catch him, because Bronzi has a bunch of other stuff out there, and we don't really have anything more DTV-wise for Bronson--I'm a little less lax on what I consider DTV than I was in the past, and I don't know that any of the six we've already reviewed for Bronson qualify as DTV by the standards I have now. Anyway, everything, including the title, is meant to evoke Bronson. Throughout the film, characters tell Bronzi he looks familiar, so they're leaning into it, but I don't know how much I like that part. I almost would rather they act like we don't get what's happening, right? "Wait, what? You think Bronzi looks like Charles Bronson? That's crazy! I don't see it though... no, we cast Bronzi because he was the right man for the picture." "A picture about a cop from Eastern Europe living in Pennsylvania who kills werewolves? Bronzi's perfect for that?" "Exactly!" I don't know how many movies we'll see just for Bronzi, but he has enough listed on IMDb that I think we'll see him again, and considering how this one was pretty fun, it might be sooner than later.

Speaking of doppelgangers, Tito Ortiz has a name of his own from his time in the UFC, but he also fills a Vin Diesel niche if you need too. He needs to practice his Diesel yell ("The buster kept me out of handcuffs!"), but the rest is there. He's also a big guy, which helps too for action movies. We don't get to see much of any of that here, because he's down the list on supporting characters, more here to be a face they can add to the tin, which is fine, because he does have some films with bigger parts, like another Ty and I covered, Operation Black Ops. (Yep, that's right, technically "Operation Black Operations.")The other thing is, how much do we need movies with him as the star? Give me a Michael Jai White movie where Ortiz plays the leader of a biker gang or something. Either the kind of biker gang White needs to take down, or the kind where they and White have a common enemy, so Ortiz helps White bring down the baddie. As long as he's living his life .4 kms at a time, I'll be happy.

Another name we're seeing again is Sadie Katz. She plays a hardo police sheriff, who has a change of heart when she sympathizes with Bronzi's personal motives. The characters in the movie used a different term than "hardo" to describe her, which may have been a bit much, but she also came in hot in a way that made her character off-putting to start, so she was really working uphill to become likeable by the end. I think there's a happy medium between Lt. Chapman on Rockford Files and instantly friendly that her character could've existed in to start with, because when she does warm up to Bronzi, it's hard to believe it, no matter how well Katz can sell it. Since we first reviewed one of her films in Nipples and Palm Trees over ten years ago, she's amassed a great genre career, which would make her a big get for a film like this. That's one of the things about doing the site this long that's really cool, to see names that are just starting out grow into something bigger.

Finally, this film features a railroad connecting areas of Pocono County, PA, which as it exists in reality is something just for tourists, and doesn't function as a passenger rail service like it's depicted in the film. It's funny how the concept of rail is great in movies in America, but we can't fund them in real life, so for people watching outside the US, we can add a functioning, robust intercity rail service to the other myths movies perpetuate about us, like we're all pretty and speak region-free American English. And it looks like rail service in Pennsylvania is only going to get worse. Republicans in the senate here are blocking a budget that would help fund not only SEPTA, the Philadelphia transit system, but transit systems in other PA cities as well. It's part of this whole "us folk in Pennsyltucky want to make life difficult for those Liberal Elites who like riding their hoity-toity subways--plus oil companies give us a lot of money to attend Super Bowls and stuff, so there's that." The thing is, they're not very bright, and don't understand that properly functioning, robust transit systems are the engines that power cities, and for those Pennsyltucky senators whose own districts rely on tax revenue from cities like Philadelphia to keep their dead coal communities afloat, it means their communities will suffer too, perhaps even more, when Philadelphia isn't generating enough tax dollars to prop up their failing infrastructure. (Also, coastal elites don't ride the subway here in Philly.) But that's America for you, the country where passenger trains are more likely to exist in Robert Bronzi DTV werewolf movies than in reality.

And with that, let's wrap this up. IMDb lists this to rent on Prime, but as of this writing, you can also stream it free on Xumo too. Despite the bevy of commercials Xumo loads into its movies, I think that's the best way to go with this one. And also check out the podcast Ty and I did, number 210 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21913192

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

The Gardener (2021)

This is it, we're finally covering The Gardiner on here, and finally getting Gary Daniels into the 60 Club with Dolph--who's technically in the 70 Club, but who's counting? In addition to us, The guys at Comeuppance and Todd Gaines at Bulletproof have covered this too.

The Gardener has the Bronson-faced Robert Bronzi as our eponymous hero, tending the garden for a rich family of Brits pretending to be Americans while living in England--at least that's the best explanation for why the family are all UK actors playing Americans while living in the UK. Anyway, at the same time Gary Daniels plays Volker, a baddie who runs a crew of guys who steal things from people's homes. After a recent break-in turns into a home invasion and double homicide, Volker wants this job done right. But when the daughter of the family decides to join her boyfriend during the holiday instead of travel with her family, they cancel their trip, leaving them ripe for these baddies when they break-in. Unfortunately for the baddies though, as their home invasion unfolds, the Gardiner has other plans for them.

What is there to say about this one? It's a home invasion movie that tries to pad out the home invasion by taking its time to get there, and does a decent job of it. Then they use the Three Stooges "there's a man in a gorilla suit taking everyone out in a mansion" paradigm, only here Bronzi as said guy in a gorilla suit--sans gorilla suit unfortunately, because that would've made this movie a ten!--is killing everyone, instead of tying them up and putting them in a closet for laughs. My one complaint would be that I'd like more Daniels, but when you see Bronzi's fighting, you realize pairing him with Daniels wouldn't work if they did it too much, so they have to save it for the end. I guess that's a good way to mitigate it. There were also weird decisions, like setting the film in the UK, and using all UK actors, but having the actors playing the family members play them as Americans. Why would you need to do that? Let everyone be Brits, that's my motto.

We finally got Daniels to the 60 Club, but we made it a year late, because he's now 61, which means Dolph remains the only actor on the site to have more films than his age. And a big reason for that was how hard this was to get on a free streamer. I guess I could've paid for it, but I got the sense from the trailer that this wasn't worth rental money, and I was right about that, this is more a good value for a free streamer or a streaming service you're already subscribed to. The thing is, he's had two films released since this one, Bring Him Back Dead and Repeater, which are both on Tubi, and it feels like this film was made for Tubi, but how can you know in the current streaming climate--though to be fair, this was on Tubi for like a week, then mysteriously was removed. After that it was on Prime for like two weeks, and then too was mysteriously removed, only to be as mysteriously restored, and I figured at that point I couldn't mess around. As far as a Daniels film goes, I think this is around the middle of his movies. It could've been worse, but we've also seen better from him. What I liked was how present he was. At this stage of his career he could start mailing in small cameos like his fellow stars, but he's not doing that, and I think I appreciate that in this film more than anything.

We're finally getting a Robert Bronzi film on the site, and it took Daniels to get us there. He really does look a lot like Bronson, and while he really isn't Bronson the way we understand Bronson with his screen presence, he does a good enough job here giving you Bronson-enough, if that makes sense? Like he's not just a look-alike, he's trying to channel him, which works enough in a movie like this that can use that kind of energy. I wouldn't want to see him in something like a remake of Death Wish--or hell even Death Wish V--but in the same way that Tito Ortiz can give you a cheap Vin Diesel, or Gruner or Bernhardt can approximate Van Damme, Bronzi works enough to punch up a DTV on-the-cheap UK production, which when you add in a name like Daniels, it can get you to the church on time. Speaking of Ortiz, it looks like he has a film with him coming up, which should be fun. Why not just do a whole Expendables movie with clones? I think there's a market for that--which is probably just us, but we're enough of a market... I think.

The only other name in this I recognized was Sarah T. Cohen, but I couldn't figure out from what, and when I looked her up on IMDb, I hadn't seen any of her films. Then I realized, she had been in films that starred, or were directed by or written by, people who were in films I'd reviewed. For example, she's done a few films written by friend of the site and podcast guest Tom Jolliffe. A lot of the films he does as more of a gun for hire like that are shot in the UK but made for American audiences, so all of the cast need to pull out their best American accents, like Cohen and the other family members do in this. She's had to play Americans so much that on her IMDb page she has an American accent demo reel. I guess it makes sense if the movie is marketed to Americans, but something like this that's more international, and actually set in England, I don't really get it--unless for Cohen and the other actors playing family members, a selling point was adding another clip to their American accent demo reel. "Hey, we can't pay you a lot for this, but we'll make the family Americans so you can further show the world how great your American accent is!" "My agent's telling me to take, fine."

Finally, this might be it for Daniels for a while, because after this film we have two Christian movies, a few foreign films, a 3-hour Bruce Lee biopic, and some film called A Stranger in Paradise that I can't seem to find. If you add all that up, if I were do do them all, that's only seven films--and I don't know how much any of them outside of A Stranger in Paradise I want to review--meaning he can't catch Dolph's 70. On the other hand, Art Camacho is at 52, and he probably has enough work out there to catch Daniels, but the next actor after him is Rothrock at 43, and I don't know that she has 17 films that haven't been reviewed in order to catch Daniels, so he's safe at two. Going into making the DTVC, I would've expected Dolph to have the most films, but I had no idea Daniels would not only be the second-most, but the second-most by an unreachable margin. 60 films is a big deal, and deserves its due. Here's to you Mr. Daniels, you're one of the greatest to ever do it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can get this on Prime, but that can change really quickly, as we've seen over the past couple years. It's worth it as a Daniels film on a free streamer, or a streaming service you already have, but I don't know if you need to rent it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11217036

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.