“10 to Midnight”

Movie Review

Adapted from a screenplay by William Roberts, 10 to Midnight is a 1983 American crime-horror-thriller movie that was directed by J. Lee Thompson. In addition to Lis Eilbacher, Andrew Stevens, Gene Davis, Geoffrey Lewis, and Wilford Brimley in supporting roles, the movie also stars Charles Bronson as the main lead.

Young office equipment repairman Warren Stacey, played by Gene Davis, murders women who decline his advances once they reject them. His attempts at flirting are consistently rejected by women because they find him scary. In order to get the women sitting next to him to remember him, Stacey goes to a theater one night to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He enters the theater's restroom during the film, gets naked, dons gloves, and escapes through a window. He follows a coworker named Betty who had turned him down to a wooded spot where he witnesses her having sex with her partner in the back of a van. Betty had turned him down. She is pursued into the forest by him as he ambushes the couple, kills her boyfriend, and then returns to finish her off with a fatal stabbing. He then leaves the theater with the other patrons, giving him a reliable alibi.

Charles Bronson's character as the detective Leo Kessler is looking into the killings with Paul McAnn. Unlike McAnn, who is somewhat younger, Kessler has been on the force for a time. Leo Kessler's daughter, Laurie Kessler, a nursing student, is attempting to mend their connection but Laurie is having difficulty doing so.

When Stacey is at Betty's burial, she overhears her father telling a family friend, Kessler, that Betty kept a journal about her interactions with other men. Stacey explores Betty's bedroom in her apartment because of concern that he would be referenced in the diary, but is cut off when Karen Smalley, Betty's roommate, and coworker, arrives back from the burial. Stacey kills her with a knife in the kitchen, then goes back to look for the diary. But Kessler had already taken it from Karen during his interrogation, so she is no longer there.

Stacey eventually experiences a formal arrest and accusation. Kessler makes the decision to fabricate evidence in order to frame Stacey and put him behind bars permanently. When McAnn learns of this, he confronts Kessler and declines to cooperate out of respect for his right to testify truthfully in the case. Kessler ultimately admits to fabricating the evidence, which leads to the dismissal of Stacey's case and Kessler's termination from the force.

Stacey, who is now a free man, calls Kessler and makes fun of him, but Kessler returns the favor by breaking into Stacey's apartment, making fun of him on the phone, and getting him fired from his job. Kessler follows Stacey around the streets of Los Angeles that evening while keeping a close eye on him. He notices him picking up a prostitute and taking her to a sleazy hotel. But when he gets to the motel, he discovers that Stacey has vanished and the prostitute has died. Stacey breaks into the dorm and brutally murders Laurie's three roommates while she hides from him after realizing that he is after her. He desperately calls Laurie's dorm at the nursing college where she stays to warn her and her housemates, but he is too late.

Laurie is able to flee after injuring Stacey with a hot curling iron while Leo informs McAnn of Stacey's presence and they both hurry for the dorm. He pursues her down the street while completely undressed, but McAnn and Leo are able to catch up with him and save Laurie. Stacey starts shouting about how he is insane and should be let out of jail after serving his sentence. Stacey threatens Leo that "the whole fucking world" will hear from him again as the cops, approach and handcuff him. Leo replies coldly, "No, we won't," and shoots Stacey in the head, killing him.

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