Death Wish most copied film in history: Winner

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) – Flamboyant British director Michael
Winner is in no doubt — his vigilante movie “Death Wish” is
the most copied film in the history of cinema.

“It is as fresh as ever and people still talk about it in
the street,” Winner said of the 1974 cult movie starring
Charles Bronson as a vigilante architect wreaking revenge on
muggers for a murderous attack on his family.

At the age of 70, Winner is happy to admit he made some
real stinkers in his film career and also turned down the
chance to direct classics like “The French Connection.”

But he is unrepentant about “Death Wish.”

“It was a complete watershed film. It was inconceivable
that anyone could make a film where the hero killed other
citizens,” he told Reuters in an interview to promote “Death
Wish” being launched on Monday in a special DVD edition.

One critic once caustically called Winner’s “Death Wish”
and its sequels “a sort of Groundhog Day with guns” but Winner,
who took five years to get the movie into production, boasts
“it is the most copied film in the history of cinema.”

“It broke barriers that had existed since the inception of
cinema,” he said. “It had only been done in westerns before.”

And Bronson was an essential ingredient as the vigilante
who goes on the rampage.

Winner was heading to Kennedy Airport with Bronson after
making a movie called “The Stone Killer” when he asked “What
shall we do next?”

He told Bronson the plot about a wife who is killed and her
avenging husband goes out and shoots muggers.

Bronson said “I would like to do that.”

“What, the film?” asked Winner.

“No, shoot the muggers,” replied Bronson.

“He had this marvelous face and this marvelous attitude,”
Winner said of the actor who died three years ago. “Charlie was
awfully good at appearing to have a great deal of pent-up anger
and you are waiting for him to explode.”

But Winner, now as famous in Britain for the caustic
restaurant reviews that he writes for the Sunday Times
newspaper, has no desire to retread the same old path.

He said he still gets offered “the 23rd remake of Death
Wish under a different name. I don’t want to do something for
the sake of it. I am prepared to wait. If I wait until I am
buried, too bad.”

So what would he choose as the perfect epitaph on his
gravestone after a film career that ranged from “Death Wish” to
“Some Like It Cool” about the joys of nudism.

“I shall return” was his unhesitating choice of epitaph.

“That should worry them.”