By Geno McGahee
I am a huge fan of Charles Bronson and his run of films in the late eighties including MURPHY’S LAW, KINJITE, 10 TO MIDNIGHT and the DEATH WISH films, but I just recently got a chance to watch THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, an action/drama from 1984 that had a world of potential but slightly missed the mark in the end.
Molloch (Joseph Maher) is a man known as “the Doctor” by anyone that knows him and he specializes in torture. He works for various countries and extracts information from those that he needs to. The Doctor loves his work and experiments on a lot of different people, leaving most dead but others to tell the tale of their torture and life-changing event.
One of the victims of the Doctor was a journalist that was trying to take him down. He hangs him up naked and tortures him to death. The journalist was a friend of former contract killer, Holland (Bronson), and when he’s informed of it and of the doctor’s misdeeds, he’s not interested in revenge, but that changes. He watches the testimony of the survivors and what they witnessed and he makes the decision that he has to take down this vicious killer.
The widow of the journalist, Rhiana (Theresa Saldana), poses as Holland’s wife and she brings her daughter as they travel overseas to track down the doctor. To get to Molloch, Holland starts targeting his crew, starting with Randolph (Raymond St. Jacques), a guy that finds joy in many things including women, men, torture, money and so much more. I liked Randolph. He seemed like an OK guy that just chose the wrong line of work. He could have changed his ways and made a difference in this world.
Holland and Rhiana go to a dive bar to find Randolph. Holland goes to get drinks and it doesn’t take long for a big creep to make a move on her and this guy is enormous. He must have been seven feet tall and he immediately grabbed Rhiana’s tit, but I’m not sure that that was in the screenplay. He couldn’t help himself. His hands were so fucking big that they had nowhere to go and if you grab a much smaller person and you have enormous hands, they are going to cover a lot of area.
When Holland returns, he sees this big creep forcing himself on Rhiana. Now, in a normal movie, the hero would beat this man up…maybe take out a gun and shoot him…but this is Charles Bronson, the same guy that shoved a dildo up a bad guy’s ass in KINJITE. So, Holland reaches under the table and starts breaking the guy’s erect cock with his powerful hands. He places his foot under the neck of the big creep to hold him down and keeps twisting the guy’s hard cock until he passes out. That is a unique way of dealing with a creep and I don’t think it happens enough. I might employ that the next time a guy cuts in line at the grocery store or when the UPS guy throws my fragile package onto my porch with no regard.
Watching the spectacle was Randolph and he loved it. Watching a guy get his cock twisted off made Randolph’s day. See, I told you he was cool. He walked over and introduced himself to Holland and the group get a table and start talking about having a threesome. Randolph totally wants to get in on some action with Holland and his wife and Bronson does a good job at flirting here. He was a tremendous actor. Randolph totally believed that Holland was going to suck him off as he pleasured his wife, but it wasn’t to be. After returning to Holland’s apartment, it didn’t take long for Randolph to be killed. I felt bad for him. Granted, he worked for the Doctor and may not have made some mistakes, but he had a heart of gold and a love of threesomes. That sort of guy should not have been killed. He just needed a little counseling…to help with the torture stuff…not the threesomes. Threesomes are OK. Nothing wrong with that.
After creating a lot of turmoil, Holland kidnaps Molloch’s sister, Claire (Antoinette Bower), which was difficult. He had to break into her apartment and then hide under the bed as she made it with another chick. First a threesome with Randolph and now this…Holland has hit the jackpot for crazy sex, but business comes first and he kills a goon by tossing him out the window with a fire hose around his neck, which was awesome, and takes off with Claire.
To even the score, the Doctor kidnaps Rhiana’s daughter, leading to a final showdown at a mine. Unfortunately for the Doctor, the tons of people working at the mine were former victims of his and when they recognize him, they want revenge in the worst way, and we get a satisfying ending to a decent Bronson film.
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO is good but doesn’t have the Bronson magic that was so apparent in his later films. The film would have been better had it been darker and went more for an 8MM approach. All the elements were there for this to be a standout thriller, but it played out more like a drama. If you’re a Bronson fan, this is definitely worth a watch. If you’re not a Bronson fan, what the fuck is wrong with you?
If you like discussion of threesomes and guys getting their dicks broken off, you will really like this one.
