Michael Winner has never been known for his subtlety, and never has his lack of restraint or taste been more apparent than it is in this belated (and, to be honest, quite unnecessary) sequel to his 1974 breakthrough hit DEATH WISH. Whatever the restaurant critic, boulevardier and occasional film-maker spent the eight year interim doing, he certainly can't have been brainstorming, because this is little more than a rehash of the first movie, with a couple of twists. Firstly, this one takes place in Los Angeles rather than New York, which hurts the atmosphere somewhat. Secondly, because this is a sequel and has a Roman numeral after the title, someone has decided that it makes sense to have twice as much on-screen unpleasantness. And you know where this review is heading, right? THAT scene in which Bronson - the only man alive who could have the bad luck to get mugged whilst queueing for a Cornetto - finds that the horror that befell his family in the Big Apple has followed him to the City of Angels. I have a soft spot for trash cinema and exploitative sleaze in general - I grew up during the video boom in England, and a lot of the first films I saw were entertainingly dreadful, so you could say I acquired the taste early - but the gang rape scene is so lurid, prurient and revolting, especially in its uncut form (I found a precert copy of this film in a thrift shop), that it's well-nigh unwatchable. Not only that, there's absolutely no reason for its inclusion in the film other than to make the bad guys even badder and to rub the audience's nose in the grime. It's horribly out of kilter with the outrageous (bordering on ridiculous) shoot-'em-up carnage that follows, as is a similarly disturbing scene in which Bronson's mute daughter is raped (again - remember the first film?) before jumping through a (closed) window to her death, a messy and graphic impaling on metal railings. This is Winner going for broke, playing naughty boy games with the censors, and the fact that the BBFC cut three minutes out of the cinema release couldn't have hurt the publicity drive one bit. Video was uncensored in England until 1984, so the first home release wasn't subject to such officious meddling, and I can only wonder how the 'lucky punters' who bought this thing after seeing it in the cinemas reacted. I'm guessing, however, that they didn't just mutter "I didn't see that bit at the ABC" and leave it at that! Once you get past the opening salvo of misogynist sleaze, however, DEATH WISH II turns out to be (whisper it) pretty good fun, in a mindless, hideous, crowd-pleasing way. The violent thugs are lined up and shot down in the manner of an arcade game, Bronson is his reassuringly hard-faced, hard-assed self and it's all unrealistic enough to put a decent amount of distance between the on-screen carnage and the viewer. There's also a goodly amount of cheese for connoisseurs, such as the hilarious 'street' dance moves from the ghetto blaster-toting freaks, drug dealers straight from central casting, a FACES OF DEATH-style electrocution, rubbish dialogue from all and sundry and Jimmy Page's bizarre score which alternates between faux-classical passages, ear-splitting string-bending and weird electronic swoops...hang on, it's Spinal Tap! Let's hear it for Derek Smalls, he wrote this! In all seriousness, DEATH WISH II is a hard film to like. The rape scenes make it objectionable almost from the get-go, and the set-up for Bronson's second bite at the revenge apple is revoltingly overdone by anyone's standards. Technically, it's about average, with Winner's restless direction taking in some bizarre set-ups and disorientating editing along the way, and most of the performances are flat enough to be medically classed as comatose. But if you're in the mood to see predatory hooligans wasted in various nasty ways, the final hour may be diverting enough to give you a few chuckles on a slow night. Just don't say I didn't warn you.