Death Wish II (1982) on Netflix
Architect Paul Kersey moves to Los Angeles with his daughter Carol, still catatonic after an earlier attack. A gang that stole his wallet at a fairground learns where he lives.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.0/1020,612 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes33%
Trailer
Plot summary
Paul Kersey works as a freelance architect in Los Angeles and lives there with his daughter Carol, who is still catatonic after an earlier attack. He dates Geri Nichols, a reporter at a radio station whose owner, Elliot Cass, is one of his clients. The two of them bring Carol home from the mental hospital and take her to a fairground, where a gang steals Paul's wallet. Paul chases the gang and confronts Jiver in an alley, then lets him go.
Cast
- Michael Princeas Elliott Cass
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Death Wish II (1982)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Brian Garfield, who wrote the original Death Wish novel, was so unhappy that the 1974 film turned Paul Kersey into a hero that he wrote his own literary sequel, Death Sentence, saying, "I thought I'd shown that he'd become a very sick man."
- Cannon Films announced a Death Wish sequel before it actually owned the rights, prompting original producer Dino De Laurentiis to threaten a lawsuit until Cannon negotiated proper payments to him, producers Hal Landers and Bobby Roberts, and author Brian Garfield.
- Screenwriter David Engelbach said his original script for Death Wish II contained no rape scenes and that director Michael Winner added them himself, in Engelbach's words, "to get his rocks off."
- Jill Ireland was originally offered a role in the first Death Wish, but her husband Charles Bronson refused because he didn't want her "humiliated and messed around with" by the actors playing muggers; when she finally joined the sequel, he insisted her character not be raped or killed on screen.
- Director Michael Winner let the actors playing Death Wish II's gang members design their own costumes and makeup and test the looks on passers-by; Laurence Fishburne bought magician's gloves to wave his knife like a wand, and Kevyn Major Howard waxed his eyebrows and shaved his head to look like a snake.
- Death Wish II's crew worked twelve-hour days to finish shooting in real rundown Los Angeles neighborhoods before a Screen Actors Guild strike hit, and the production hired twenty off-duty LAPD officers to protect the cast and crew on location.
- Producers recommended Isaac Hayes to score Death Wish II, but director Michael Winner instead picked former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, who happened to be his neighbor at the time.
