Formative movie experiences

Me. 9 years old or so. Sitting in my granny's house. My parents were away somewhere so I was staying with her. It was Saturday evening. We had a little ritual where we'd watch Hart To Hart or McGyver or whatever big show was on and I'd eat a Turkish delight bar while she had a Fry's peppermint cream. We were creatures of habit.

This night was going to be different though. We were going next door to the Guilfoyles to watch a film they'd taped off ITV. They'd just gotten their first VHS recorder and they were mad to show it off. Video recorders were still relatively rare in Roscrea of 1988 and in those pre xtravision days video shops were non existent so we had to rely on taped stuff or the infrequent appearances of the shifty fella with a video collection in his van. So over we popped. Tea was made. The big USA  biscuit tin was cracked open. Fags were lit. I was loving it. I was being treated like a grown up. I may have even been given a glass of Madison. Me and three 60+ year olds settling down to watch a film.

That was Death Wish 3.

Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey.

This. Was. Awesome.

I remember it vividly. The scumbags who looked like they'd crawled out of Police Academy 2. The woman who died of a broken arm (in actuality it was far worse but ITV censorship removed all that). Bronson's ridiculous gun. The way the movie made New York look like a post apocalyptic playground. The semi human feral bastards killing all around them. Until Paul Kersey had enough. His buddy the World War 2 vet was sick of it too. And he had a machine gun.

I was in heaven. I'd seen gunfights before but they were gunfights from the High Chapparal or The A-Team. Innocent fluff. This was different. People exploded. Bits flew off them. It felt forbidden. I knew I was watching something that would have made me ma spontaneously combust had she been in the room. The highlight of the film was (and still is) a group of pensioners tying a wire across a road which a gang of bikers crash into. Said pensioners then go and flat out murder the surviving bikers.  These were people who'd lived through Hitler. They took no prisoners. All this and, now this was a huge deal to me....

People were saying *shush* the f-word.

Then Kersey killed the main baddie with a bazooka and it was over. I was buzzing. I felt grown up. So this was what films shown on TV at night were like. I wanted more. I needed more. I'd gotten a taste for the forbidden.

When I was old enough to get served in video shops I watched every Bronson flick I could get my hands on. Death Wish parts 2 and 4 ( Part 1 was de facto banned and part 5 hadn't been made yet), The Evil That Men Do, 10 Minutes To Midnight , Kinjite (25+ years later this one still feels transgressive), Murphy's Law and so on. They were trashy and fun but none of them ever lived up to that first viewing. From Bronson I went onto Seagal, Van Damme, Billy Blanks, Jalal Merhi aka Beirut's Steven Seagal, Loren Avedon, Cynthia Rothrock. I fell into a b-movie vortex that happily I've never really climbed out of. And it all began with my Granny. Cheers Nana.