cult film freak: CHARLES BRONSON IN 'COLD SWEAT' W/ LIV ULLMANN & JILL IRELAND

Charles Bronson starring in COLD SWEAT Year: 1970

In-between Charles Bronson appearing in Film Noir and the Michael Winner winners, he took the "Reign in Hell or Serve in Heaven" approach, and at this time his resume was an eclectic hit, miss... or both, like the pulpy thriller COLD SWEAT, based on a novel by Richard Matheson titled RIDE THE NIGHTMARE... Which doesn't fit this picture as it occurs mostly in daylight (for that matter, either does the original title NIGHT VISITORS); is too controlled for a bad dream...

And yet, like many a Noir... usually ones set in the Florida Keys but here taking place in France... the main character's a charter boat captain who, returning home after work, gets a phone call from the past followed by a visitor from the present, attempting to use that past to his extortion-plotting advantage, which Bronson puts a wrestling lethal end to: Long story short, an hour later he and his pretty wife are visited by the kind of crime film "with friends like these" types led by James Mason as Captain Ross, using a Nantucket accent along with the true villain in severe-looking Frenchman Jean Topart as Katanga, who, during an attempted oceanic drug run with Bronson at the helm... his wife and daughter held hostage inland... the heavy hints at a fondness for 12-years-old girls, causing what might have instinctively been another quick death scene...

Charles Bronson in COLD SWEAT Rates: ***1/2

But as shown during an important flashback involving a prison escape where Katanga kills a bicycle policemen, Bronson's "Man with New Name" getaway driver Joe Martin is a good guy surrounded by bad ones, only killing in self defense, and he'd taken off, leaving his fellow cons with a larger prison sentence until they reenter his new life backed by the gorgeous yet grainy French landscape, ranging from the ocean to coastal villas into craggy mountainous terrain, where one dire situation is stretched for the last half of the film. And since James Bond director Terence Young behind the camera, the action flows better than it should with such a distracting, anemic budget...

And there's some well-played tension as Captain Ross, shot in the gut by his own double-crossing partner, has to be saved or he'll kill Bronson's wife, played by Liv Ullmann, whose role pales to Bronson's real life betrothed Jill Ireland as the Captain's mouthy hippie moll, reluctantly teamed with our hero on a car speeding race-against-time, yet the better scenes take place back at the rural cabin. Where Mason's Ross sits in pain, dying to stay awake and alive while Katanga, probably the best character on board, waits for his time to strike either Captain Ross, Ullman, the pretty young daughter (Yannick Delulle), or all three. It might have worked better had Ireland played the fictional wife so that Ullman, wasted here with domesticated expressions of somber, passive grief, could truly (and energetically) co-star alongside Bronson, as promised.