12 to Midnight

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If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Charles Bronson had to hunt a werewolf and decided to play detective instead of hanging from Torino’s rooftops, “12 to Midnight” is here to answer that question with all the subtlety of a silver bullet to the jaw.

Robert Bronzi leans so hard into his Charles Bronson impersonation you half expect him to growl “Don’t pull that stunt on me, pal” at every suspect. His trademark scowl is in full force, but the script seems to recognize that Bronzi can’t quite nail the dialogue—so he just stands there, arms crossed, delivering each line in unintelligible monosyllables until everyone else on screen tries and fails to fill in the blanks. It’s stoicism by requirement, and Bronzi owns it.

Plot coherence? Forget it. “12 to Midnight” is a glorious fever dream of mismatched clues, midnight stakeouts that last five minutes, and villains who apparently transform more for the camera than for the storyline. Somehow, this budget brawler doubles as a werewolf vs. detective flick: one moment Bronzi’s trench-coated gumshoe is dusting for prints, the next he’s running down bad guys in a front-end loader. It’s utterly nonsensical—and that’s exactly the point.

But oh, the cheesy goodness from the effects department! Clunky prosthetics that wobble when the werewolf snarls, practical blood squibs that spray like party poppers, $1 store eyeballs and an epic moonlit finale complete with teleporting characters and poorly timed howls. If you’re in it for goofy action set pieces and unintentional laughs, “12 to Midnight” delivers a full-throated howl. This is cult cinema at its best—so bad it’s howling good fun.

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