Although Death Wish II was shot twenty-five years ago, actresses Robin Sherwood and Silvana Gallardo, who played the assault victims, both have strong memories of appearing in the film. “I remember everything about Death Wish II,” Gallardo says with a laugh.

Robin Sherwood today

A rare peaceful moment for Charles Bronson, Robin Sherwood and Jill Ireland

Sherwood had already met Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, producers of Death Wish II, many years earlier at the Cannes Film Festival. “I was in Cannes when I was sixteen-years-old. I was already working as a professional model. The Cannes Film Festival is like a candy store of entertainment. [Laughs] Golan and Globus, literally, had a booth that had a curtain and a chair and that was their production company.”

Silvana Gallardo today

Before Silvana Gallardo auditioned for the role of the housekeeper, Rosario, in Death Wish II, her credits included the television miniseries Centennial (1978), the movie Windwalker (1980), and two Broadway plays. “I was working on [the television series] Falcon Crest at the time,” she explains. “My agent called me and I went down to meet Michael Winner, who was a very nice man. He had me seated in a chair. I didn’t read anything; he just walked around the chair. [Laughs] And he asked me some questions and I guess he was seeing how I would react to different things that he was proposing. He talked to me and I listened. It was interesting. I had never had an audition like that. He’s eccentric. I turned the part down several times because it was just too scary for me. I was terrified, so I turned it down. [Winner] called me up at home and I said, ‘Just get another actress.’ He said, ‘I don’t want another actress.’ He was insistent. I said, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it.’ And everybody told me, ‘You’re crazy. You have to take this, you have to take this.’ And I said, ‘I can’t do it.’ I talked to my mother. When I had first come out to California, I did a television movie on Inez Garcia [The People vs. Inez Garcia, 1977]. She had gone to jail for allegedly killing a man who had allegedly raped her. And one of the jurors, after the trial, said, ‘I don’t know why she killed him. He was just trying to show her a good time.’ That stayed with me for quite a bit. I [thought], ‘Well, no, it’s not a good time. And if anybody can do this and show that it’s not a good time, I can do it.’ I went ahead.”

Seconds before the assault: Silvano Gallardo senses Kevyn Major Howard has evil intentions.

“I had not seen [Death Wish],” Sherwood says. “Of course, I was familiar with it because it was a phenomenal success. I made a very deliberate choice not to see it because I did not want to be influenced by [Tolan’s] performance. I loved creating a mute, which is why I took [the role.]”

Both actresses had seen Bronson in person during their childhoods. “When I was a kid, I grew up in a slum in New York,” Gallardo recalls. “Charles Bronson came [to the area when] he was doing the series Man with a Camera [1958-1960]. I remember telling him on the [Death Wish II] set that I had seen him when I was a little girl and he thought that was cool. [Laughs] So that was nice. It’s such a circle.”

“[My family] had gone to Las Vegas. I was about ten,” Sherwood explains. “They flew us in on some convention. It was pretty elaborate. It was probably a fundraiser. [My parents] saw Charles Bronson. They said, ‘Oh, my God, that’s Charles Bronson!’ Of course, they sent me over because I’m the little girl. They said, ‘Go over and ask him for his autograph.’ So, I did. He was charming, lovely, signed it, and smiled. I always remember that about him. His smile. I have always loved Charles Bronson since then. I didn’t meet Charlie [again] until I went on the [Death Wish II] set. [Winner took me] over to Charlie’s trailer. Charles Bronson’s in there in a pair of jeans and a shirt. Now the man is sixty-six [and] he is in perfect condition. Perfect. And what is he doing? He’s polishing his boots. Isn’t that amazing? [Winner said,] ‘This is your daughter.’ And Charlie looks at me and he gets this huge smile and he said, ‘She looks good.’ [Laughs]

The memorable rogue's gallery of rapists and thugs from Death Wish II: Kevyn Major Howard, Stuart K. Robinson, Laurence Fishburne, E. Lamont Johnson and Thomas F. Duffy

“He was wonderful,” Gallardo recalls about Bronson. “He was very real. I remember that he said something about rehearsing and I said, ‘Sure,’ and then he started talking to me and I didn’t know that he had already started the scene. I thought he was just talking. [Laughs] He was a very nice man and so was his wife. She was lovely.” (Bronson’s wife, actress Jill Ireland, costarred in Death Wish II.)

“I loved Jill,” Sherwood says. “She was breathtakingly beautiful. She looked like a porcelain doll. She was concerned that it was my first action film and she was very motherly to me. She said, ‘Make sure that you protect yourself here.’ She was wonderful. I was so upset when she passed.”

Although Gallardo was a lovely young woman at the time of Death Wish II, she was made up to look much older for the film. She explains: “They had me looking very non-attractive because they didn’t want to make it seem like [my character] was bringing [the rape] on.”

Winner supervised “every single detail” of Sherwood’s appearance and the actress didn’t have any input into how she looked in Death Wish II. “I really did not,” she says. “Maybe because I was fitting into a role that had been created in Death Wish I and I had to continue an image. They wouldn’t let me wear any makeup. Michael didn’t want any makeup on me and he designed my hair. He sent me to a person who could cut my hair the way he wanted it. The part was very physical, very emotional. If you work with Charles Bronson, you have to be in very good shape. So I was dancing every morning for three hours and in the afternoon I would be walking miles. I would do this six days a week. I had to become very, very thin because [my character’s] been in an institution, so I had to look frail. I did do some research. In the script [my character] actually screams. Loudly. They wanted me to scream at the rape. That character would have never reacted like that. She wouldn’t have been strong enough to do that. That was something that I chose as an actress and, obviously, they liked it and they used it.”

The thugs get the better of Bronson - but not for long!

“[Winner] was detail oriented,” Sherwood remembers. “He has a great eye. He never missed anything. He’s very improvisational, so if you give him something, he’ll pick up on it and he’ll really elaborate on it. He really does use so much of what the talent brings. He’s a perfectionist. What a character. He’s hyper all over the place. The best way to be with Michael is real calm, because he’ll be hyper for everybody. He’s great to work with, but he has a temper. [Screenwriter David Engelbach] was not allowed on the set. Michael didn’t want the writer on the set. But David came on the set and he looked at me and said, ‘You are perfect. Where did they find you?’ And Michael Winner ran up to him and said, ‘Don’t talk to the actress!’ When Michael would be too much on me, Charlie would make some hysterical comment to Michael and Michael would just back off. If it was a confrontation between Michael Winner and Charlie, Charlie won.”

Illustrated Japanese theater ticket

“[Winner] was very charming,” Gallardo explains. “He wasn’t wishy-washy at all. He was very clear and very exact and very precise about what he wanted. He surely could not tell me anything about how to play the rape scene, because that was just real. I mean, it wasn’t real real, but it was real for me, so I just responded.”

Gallardo had spoken with rape victim Inez Garcia prior to playing her in the television movie and drew on that material while shooting her infamous violation scene in Death Wish II, which took six grueling days to get on camera. The thugs were played by young actors Thomas Duffy, Kevyn Major Howard, Stuart K. Robinson, Laurence Fishburne, and E. Lamont Johnson. Winner, who prefers actual locations, filmed the scene in an occupied neighborhood. “You could hear [my] screaming and I thought, ‘Oh, the poor neighbors,’ Gallardo says. “It was very difficult. [Winner] had to shoot like five different versions of it. It was pretty intense. [It was] mostly improvised. I had to get pushed and so forth. You’re very vulnerable. I had a few black and blues. I was tired. I had never done anything like that. [The other actors] were very careful to cover me up immediately after [a take]. I hated the still photographer. He kept taking pictures even after they had called, ‘Cut.’ I didn’t like that. It was an experience to last a lifetime. It was good for me to do. I had to let go of a lot of fears. It was hard for the [actors], too. I think one of them really got sick on the set. He threw up, or was going to, because it was so violent. [Laurence Fishburne] said it was the most horrible, awful scene he had to do.” (Death Wish II’s original cinematographer, Thomas Del Ruth, was replaced early in the shooting by Richard Kline. One rumor has it that Del Ruth and his crew left because they were offended by Winner’s graphic staging of Gallardo’s rape scene.)

“I didn’t meet the actors [who played the gang] until they showed up on the set,” Sherwood recalls. “They frightened me to death. I knew that they were actors, but they really did look like gang members. I was really frightened. They looked so realistic. [Kevyn Major Howard] looked disgusting. Laurence Fishburne never broke character. I really thought they had just found him in East L.A. They had whips. Laurence was smashing his against furniture all the time. We [were renting] somebody’s location. I said, ‘Laurence, you’re destroying someone’s furniture!’ He said, ‘That’s too bad. I’m going to continue doing it.’ I would watch them with their chains and stuff. I remember Stuart Robinson being sort of calm and sweet. They ate lunch by themselves. I thought, ‘I don’t really want to associate with these people.’ [Laughs] ‘I’ll stick to Charlie and Jill. I’ll put my chair over there.’ They really were a sight. You couldn’t have gotten better actors. Those [characters] have been copied so much.”

The calm before the storm: Bronson and real-life wife Jill Ireland

Sherwood stayed friends with Winner after the production and recalls: “We did start dating during the auditioning process, but nothing really serious happened. We really didn’t return to dating until after everything was shot. I did visit him a couple of times in London.”

Sherwood first saw the completed Death Wish II at a pre-release screening. “I knew that it was going to be a hit and was going to be very controversial,” she says. “It was a very black and white film. But at that time, when everyone was so confused and things were so violent and people were so out of hand, I knew that it would strike a cord with a mass audience. As far as my performance goes, there was stuff that they did cut out. There was sweet stuff, [like] when Charlie took me to a Punch and Judy show. All of that was taken out. That was very upsetting to me because so much of my performance, and so much of our relationship was not on the screen. Then there was beautiful footage on the boat. We had some wonderful, tender moments there. There was a beautiful little section with the glass menagerie, when we were selecting the little pieces. While it still is in there, it’s cut really fast. There was more where I had the glass cat in my hand. When [Winner] came to my home, he saw that I had two cats and I had a little glass collection and that’s how that ended up in the film.”

Stuart K. Robinson and Kevyn Major Howard kidnap Robin Sherwood

Sherwood was unhappy with the way her rape scene was presented and says: “Michael Winner made his point, and he did it well, and then he took it to this level that was very graphic. It just went too far, it was gratuitous. I really was upset about it and Charlie was pretty upset about it, too. [He felt] it was too graphic. We were at a restaurant and [the distributor was] saying that they wanted to really cut down the rape scene for an American audience and Michael Winner was very upset about it. He said [to me], ‘This is really going to limit your role.’ But, quite frankly, I could have done with much, much less. But as an actress, I had no control over that.”

One person who did have control was Richard Heffner, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, who gave Winner’s original cut an X rating. Filmways Pictures, Death Wish II’s American distributor, had to re-cut the film over a half-dozen times to secure an R rating. In England, the R rated version was edited even further by British Board of Film Classification director James Ferman before it was released.

Sherwood saw Death Wish II in a theater upon its initial release. “That was really fun, actually,” she recalls. “It was a pretty young audience and they would cheer and scream and yell and they were so happy when [Bronson was] going after the bad guys.”

Gallardo also saw the film with an audience. “It was interesting because I was afraid people would laugh,” she says. “I went into a really crowded movie theater on Hollywood Boulevard and when that scene came on, everybody was very still, so I thought, ‘I did a good job. I did what I set out to accomplish.’ I liked my work. I got very angry at my manager because she went to see it and she said, ‘How could you have been in such a horrible thing? How could you let yourself be seen that way?’ And she had read the script. I was just mortified. I felt very alone. [A rape scene] was not something that I had ever done [before] or will ever do, probably, again.”

Neither Sherwood nor Gallardo have seen the uncut version of Death Wish II. “I don’t think I could sit through it,” Sherwood says. “Shooting it was difficult enough. Let’s face it, it’s a very hard film to watch. There are some very dark sides to that film.”

The first Death Wish sequel earned money for the creators and notice for the cast. “Everybody talked about my work,” Gallardo remembers. “I got a lot of press on it [saying] it was the most violent rape scene ever. I got written up in the papers a lot. Michael Winner said, ‘Who’s your publicist? You’re getting more publicity than me!’ [Laughs] I did a lot of work after that.” Gallardo also got attention from audience members who saw the film. “They said that they were very moved; that they were affected; how hard it must have been. They were kind. Nobody said anything obscene, which was a fear.”

Back with a vengeance: Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey

“I went out for every female lead that I was right for, for every movie,” Sherwood recalls. “I must have met every director that you could possibly imagine. People would ask for autographs. People wouldn’t always know my name, but they’d say, ‘You look familiar.’ By that time, I had been working since I was fourteen years old and I said, ‘I’m tired, I’m exhausted, I want to go to Paris.’ It’s a completely different world. So, I went over to Paris and I fell in love and didn’t want to go back to acting. I never went back.” (Death Wish II was her last acting role.)

Today, Gallardo works steadily in films and television and is a highly-respected acting instructor whose list of past students includes Angelina Jolie. “I still get a lot of e-mail [about Death Wish II],” she says. “Some really good ones. They’re very perceptive.”

Sherwood is now a writer and an entrepreneur. “Believe it or not,” she says, “I still get people asking for autographs, which I think is funny. Most people are very sweet. I get e-mails, quite a lot, about Death Wish II. I catch it on television when it’s on. It definitely created a classic action hero. I look at it as a hero’s journey. It’s really a classic.”

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