DEATH RAGE (1976)

  Yul Brynner stars in this Eurocrime thriller as an American hitman in Italy out to get revenge for his murdered brother while taking on the mob and the police.  They also shoehorn a bit of an homage to THE MECHANIC with Brynner taking on a young apprentice(Massimo Ranieri) and showing him the ways of an assassin. Barbara Bouchet plays the lovely love interest and Martin Balsam plays the police chief. Car chases and gunplay are plentiful in this formulaic actioner. The version I watched of this seems to be missing a few minutes and is terribly panned and scanned though so perhaps I would give this a higher ranking if I could see an uncut/better-looking print.  

 Released on video as BLOOD RECKONING

                               Original Italian title was WITH ANGER IN HIS EYES:

SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM (1976)

  So this Italian exploitation flick is a bit weird because it starts off like it's going to be one of those polizziotteschi movies where it's all about a tough cop kicking ass. The alternate title of BLAZING MAGNUM really makes you think this! Surprisingly though it turns into a more giallo-esque situation so I'll give this one extra credit for combining two genres. I'll also give it credit for having a scene where our main tough guy cop(Stuart Whitman) shoves a hot curling iron up the ass of a tranny the very same year as BLACK SHAMPOO which features a very similar sequence(in that case though it was a villain not the hero which makes this film even nuttier!). There must have been something in the air in '76! Loaded with sleaze, car chases and great character actors John Saxon, Martin Landau, Tisa Farrow etc. this one stands out from the pack despite some slow bits and monotony. AKA STRANGE SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM and .44 SPECIAL

Known in Spanish as THE LAW OF THE MAGNUM:

Known in Italian as A SPECIAL MAGNUM FOR TONY SAITTA:

STUNT SQUAD (1977)

  This was originally titled THE POLICE ARE DEFEATED in Italy before being renamed STUNT SQUAD in other countries and this title is way more fitting. STUNT SQUAD is a kind of goofy title and it's not that type of film at all. It's pretty much a straight up police vs. crime syndicate flick and yes there is a special motorcycle squad that's formed that do some jumps and shoot their guns while riding but that's not really the main focus of the film. An extortion ring terrorizing the city vs. the cops is the basic outline. A couple of public telephones are blown up taking out businesses that don't pay protection money with them, a guy gets castrated by a straight razor and lots of people are taught what "eating lead" means. Pretty spectacular ending with the common folks rising up against the head of the criminal scumbags. Plays out ina  fairly standard fashion but worth a look if Eurocrime is your bag.   

 The police chief here is played by Marcel Bozzufi who is best known as the main bad guy in THE FRENCH CONNECTION.

KILLER COP (1975)

  Everything is played super serious in this Italian poliziotteschi film except they throw in this one bumbling goofy-ass cop supporting character(Franco Fabrizi). It's not really enough to ruin the movie or anything but it always strikes me as an odd choice for a film like this which was based on an actual tragedy where terrorists set bombs off around Italy in 1969. The film itself also doesn't offer much in terms of action, has a fairly confusing plot, has a bit of a slow pace for a lot of it and never lives up to the exciting DIRTY HARRY-ish title it was tagged with in certain countries(the original, less exploitative title is THE POLICE HAVE THEIR HANDS TIED), which doesn't make it a favorite of mine. Still an amazing soundtrack, top acting(Arthur Kennedy in particular) and great production values make it worth a look for Eurocrime fans. 

                                                  Funky soundtrack!:

THE BIG RACKET (1976)

  I've been watching a lot of these Italian crime action(poliziotteschi) flicks recently and this one really stands out as one of the big highlights. It's clearly in that DIRTY HARRY vein of a cop taking the law into his own hands but ratcheted up to 11 in terms of violence. Multiple rapes, including a girl who's supposed to be underage, occur, a lady is burned alive and just about the rest of the entire cast is riddled with bullets before everything is done. This one is definitely up there with one of my favorite Enzo G. Castellari jams and star Fabio Testi is about as bad-ass as I've ever seen him. Check it out if you can handle the Euro-violence. 

STREET LAW (1972)

 Franco Nero does his Charles Bronson bit in this vigilante epic. Of course DEATH WISH only came out at the beginning of this same year, so I'm not sure how much of an inspiration it was in this getting made or not. Either way it stands on it's own as a fast-moving Eurotrash action/revenge flick. The bank-robbing villains here never get as rapey as you might expect but they do appear to believe in equal-opportunity brutality towards anyone who gets in their way.  You get death by construction vehicle, car chases and lots of bullet holes in various people. Maybe the most macho role Franco has been in and that's saying a lot!

GANG WAR IN MILAN (1973)

 Well, like the title says this one is about two warring mobster gangs. One is a prostitution racket headed up by Antonio Sabato and the other is a group of drug dealers led by a Frenchman(Philippe Leroy, who also appears in the superior Eurocrime flick MILANO CALIBRO 9). Lots of back and forth attacks happen; whores get acid thrown in their face, breast get sliced, a guy gets his balls electrified and various hits get carried out. It all gets a bit repetitive by the end, which does seem a bit long with it's 100 minute run time(some versions out there sadly cut out about 4 minutes of the more graphic stuff). Director Umberto Lenzi went on to make some better flicks in this genre as well as his more well-known horror and cannibal classic sickies. AKA BURNING CITY

LIVE LIKE A COP, DIE LIKE A MAN (1976)

 If you ever watched the 70's T.V. series STARSKY AND HUTCH and thought to yourself "what this show needs is some of that good old ultra-violence" then this might be the movie for you. Director Ruggero Deodato, along with fellow great Italian director Fernando Di Leo doing the the writing, brings us two DIRTY HARRY-type characters who have no problem acting just like the scummy criminals they are tasked with dealing with as part of a special anti-crime force.  You see such violent atrocities as a lady getting her head bashed in just to snatch her purse, a poor seeing-eye dog run down by a motorcycle and more typical mafia hi-jinks including a guy getting his eyeball plucked out for being a tattle-tale. On our "heroes" side we get them breaking criminals necks, executing hostage-takers and gunning down bank robbers before they even get to commit their crimes. A pretty nihilistic film that I assume is supposed to make liberal-types cry but I ain't no expert on Italian politics of the 1970's. All I know is it makes for one of the best action-filled Eurocrime cop-dramas I've seen in a long time.
 Re-titled in Hong Kong as THE SUMMERTIME KILLER PART 2 making this a sequel to the 1972 Christopher Mitchum movie where he seeks revenge on the mob whilst riding his motorcycle.




                                        Lovely hand-painted African movie poster!:

German poster(which translates to something inexplicable like ICE COLD TYPES ON HOT OVENS??):

I'd like to imagine that thrash metal legends Venom were influenced by this films title:

RULERS OF THE CITY (1976)

  This one is a sort-of mix of a gangster flick, an action movie and a touch of kung-fu on the side. Of course it's mainly a mobster movie with Jack Palance as MISTER SCARFACE (which is also the more common title of this). Who heads of a crime organization that goes up against one headed by Edmund Purdom. Palance is not actually the star though, even though he has top-billing. Our main character (Harry Baer) is a young mobster who goes around collecting money and throwing flying kicks when he has to. I would probably rate this film higher if it had more Palance in it or if it wasn't directed by Fernando Di Leo, whose "Milano trilogy" is an example of some of the best Eurocrime films out there so I expected more. Also it gets a bit too action-y in spots which may not be a bad thing if you just want to see a somewhat silly action flick. AKA THE BIG BOSS and BLOOD AND BULLETS

THE SMILING MANIACS (1975)

 I've seen 1971's CONFESSIONS OF A POLICE CAPTAIN a couple of times now and it's slowly become one of my favorite Eurotrash mafia/crime dramas. This effort from a couple of years later stars two of the same fellows from that epic, Franco Nero and Martin Balsam, and some of the synopsis' I've read of this make it sound awfully similar. In some ways it is, Nero plays a very similar character though Balsam this time trades in his police chief role for that of the head of a crime family and really isn't in the movie a whole lot. The movie mostly focuses on corruption within the justice system and unfortunately is mostly filled with endless talky-talk scenes with very little of anything exciting happening. There is one scene, that I guess gave the English-dubbers their title, where a gal is raped by a couple of goofy fellas or "smiling maniacs" if you will but in the version I've seen even that bit isn't all that graphic or crazy. The original Italian title of this translates as  CORRUPTION IN A PALACE OF JUSTICE and that is way more fitting since this is really a way more dull version of Nero & Franco's later excellent team-up and that other name is super misleading.

The soundtrack is sometimes the best thing about these Eurocrime flicks:

GRAND SLAM (1967)

 While this is a pretty typical heist movie there's a few things that make it stand out to me. One is Klaus Kinski as a German criminal. Kinski can really make any movie he's in a little better just by being his insane self. The second is the ending. I'm not an expert on American heist films from this time I imagine the Italians(and in this case the Germans and the Spanish) get a little bleaker in their "crime doesn't pay" analogies, here being more of a "crime kills you dead" motif. There is at the same time also a bit of humor thrown in which I think really separates the European movies of the 60's from the darker tone the 70's brought on. This was also interesting to me since it's probably the oldest example of a Eurocrime film I've seen and while it does seem very old-timey and creaky in spots, and it's run time feels quite long at just over 2 hours, I think the pay off finale made it worth the watch. It also helped that I saw this in a theater on a 16mm print in scope as opposed to some crappy full-screen version. It should also be noted that the rest of the cast, including Janet Leigh and Edward G. Robinson, are pretty great here also.

THE KILLERS ARE OUR GUESTS (1974)

 This Italian crime film concerns a doctor and his wife who get some unwelcome guests in the form of a group of murderous jewel thieves. Rape, murder, lesbianism, cuckolding and double-crossing ensues. The first bit of this film is actually sorta reminiscent of RESERVOIR DOGS where one of the bandits gets shot and thrown in the backseat of a getaway car which then necessitates the need for a doctor. Luigi Pistilli plays the main cop on the trail of our gang and he looks about as bad-ass as I've ever seen him with some Wolverine-sideburn/mutton-chops. The film ends up with some crazy plot-twists which are always my favorite parts in Eurocrime movies like this. I see this is labeled as a giallo in a few places and although it does have a sorta-giallo-esque title and possibly a similar atmosphere in a few places from the way it was shot, it's totally not that kind of thriller.

IL BOSS (1973)

 The final chapter in director Fernando Di Leo's mafia trilogy which includes MILANO CALIBER 9 and MANHUNT and just like those films this one is pretty awesome. It stars Henry Silva in what has to be his greatest role ever. From what I've seen of his movies Silva is always cast as the crazy villain playing second fiddle to some action hero or whatnot. In this he's our main character but he's also a completely psychopathic hit-man making his way up through the ranks of the mob. So while we don't really cheer him on we can at least understand his motivations for surviving in the violent world that he exists in. Before the credits even role we get Silva using a rocket-launcher to take out a whole crew of guys in a theater watching some dirty movies. From there the film is loaded with double-crosses, hits, a nymphomaniac gal and lots of explosive action. Gianni "Sartana" Garko is also very good here as a corrupt cop. They also set this up for a sequel which, unfortunately, I don't think ever happened.
 From what I've read Di Leo used newspaper accounts of actual organized crime scenes for some of the murder scenes in this which seems like a pretty ballsy thing to do.
AKA THE BOSS, WIPEOUT! and MURDER INFERNO(coolest disco-sounding title ever!).

This trailer mixes all 3 movies together:

THE MANHUNT (1972)

 This is the 2nd part of Fernando Di Leo's Italian mafia trilogy which includes MILANO CALIBER 9 and THE BOSS. This is a trilogy in theme only since these films aren't really connected plot-wise. Mario Adorf plays our main character here and he's a small-time pimp who becomes a scapegoat for a heroin deal gone bad. He's really good going around giving headbutts to anyone who fucks with him and it's kinda like the reverse of his sleazy low-life role in CALIBER 9. Henry Silva and Woody Strode play two hit-men who are on his trail for most of the movie. If you're at all a fan of eurocrime-type films you need to check out these Di Leo films since they're really the best examples of this genre. AKA BLACK KINGPIN, THE ITALIAN CONNECTION, MANHUNT IN THE CITY, HIRED TO KILL and HITMEN.
 There's also an Umbeto Lenzi crime flick called MANHUNT which also stars Henry Silva but in that one he's in the hero role.

 Released in America by AIP:

THE KIDNAP SYNDICATE (1975)

Fernando Di Leo directs this crime-drama about a guy who's son is kidnapped. While it's technically a Eurocrime film it's really more of a revenge story focusing on one man's quest for justice more so than with the mob or anything like that. The story is similar to the one in Kurosawa's film HIGH AND LOW and though I've yet to see that one I imagine this is done a bit more gritty. It's got your standard car chase scenes, gun-fights and a crazy prog-rock soundtrack complete with wild flute-playing. While this isn't my favorite Di Leo flick(some of the plot-twists don't make a lot of sense) it's still done well enough and has enough emotional impact to make it worth a watch.

AKA DIRTY DEAL(the music in this preview is way more 80's than anything in the actual movie itself):

BIG GUNS: TONY ARZENTA (1973)

  A mob hit-man(played by famous French actor Alain Delon) wants to retire and finds out there's no way out of the mafia then ends up on the wrong side of his former colleagues. After his wife and kid are bumped off it becomes more of a personal revenge film. It never really gets too graphically violent outside of the expected gunshot wounds but there is a guy who gets crushed to death in a car and women are generally treated very shabbily in many scenes. There are also a bunch of very well-done car chases/crashes.
 This is a pretty good example of a top-notch euro-crime film. It hits all the classic notes; assassinations, double-crossings, etc. and is worth a look if you dig these type of movies that were clearly trying to cash in on THE GODFATHER but doing it in a cool trashy way. AKA NO WAY OUT

WOMEN IN CELL BLOCK 7 (1973)

 This starts out as an Italian mobster/crime flick then turns into a women-in-prison thing and then it kinda jumps back and forth between the two throughout the rest of the run-time. I can't say I ever got totally into the story-line that was going on but I thought it was pretty cool how they at least tried to do something different here by blending two sub-genres together. You get the expected female nudity, cat-fights, lesbianism and shower scenes in the prison bits and on the mafia side of things you get some car chases and a guy burned alive among the killing and mayhem. Not the best or worst and fairly generic overall but maybe worth checking out if you've seen everything else and need more 70's sleaze in your life. Personally I much prefer Jess Franco's similarly titled WOMEN IN CELL BLOCK 9.
 This was released in a cut version titled LOVE AND DEATH IN A WOMEN'S PRISON.

Available on a steamy triple-feature DVD set along with ESCAPE FROM HELL and THE HOT BOX:

MEAN FRANK AND CRAZY TONY (1973)

 Lee Van Cleef, outside of his more well known western persona, plays a mafia big-shot here. Tony Lo Bianco plays Crazy Tony and this film is a cool Italian crimesploitation flick that, of course, focuses on these two characters and their wacky adventures. It really straddles the line between comedy(with Tony's over-the-top idolization of Frank and some crazy car-chases and whatnot) and action flick(with Van Cleef's tough-guy bad-ass mobster character) and there's even a little horror element with some driller-killer action going on. A good film to check out if you dig the Italian crime thing. AKA POWER KILL, FRANK AND TONY and ESCAPE FROM DEATH ROW




The ESCAPE retitled/re-edited version came out after ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and was devised to confuse the public into thinking it had something to do with that film:

CONVOY BUSTERS (1978)

  I'm not exactly sure how accurate this film is but apparently in Italy in the 70's police officers could just beat the shit out of people while they questioned them. Must have been a crazy time and place to be a cop. Then again I imagine if cameras weren't everywhere these days things wouldn't be much different now.
 There were some decent Eurocrime/police-action/DIRTY HARRY-rip-off movies made in Italy throughout the 70's but I found this one kind of un-engaging. Maurizio Merli from A MAN CALLED BLADE stars here as a bad-ass cop and Olga Karlatos from ZOMBIE shows up. There's some decent shoot outs, adequately violent deaths including a slit-throat right at the beginning and ridiculous over-the-top police action but I couldn't help but feel like I would get just as much entertainment value out of watching an old STARSKY & HUTCH episode as viewing this. Check it out if it's your thing but I didn't really find anything special about this one except that the DVD put out by NOSHAME looks really sweet.

SUPER BITCH (1973)

 This is an Italian/British mafia-filled crimesploitation flick starring a bunch of people I'm not too familiar with. There are some cool elements to this film but unfortunately not enough to actually recommend this to anyone outside of hardcore Eurotrash completists. On the plus side you get some bloody mafia hits with lots of bullet holes and splatter. There's a great crime family that is sort of a mix of the Manson family and Ma Barker's gang led by a badass older lady named Mama The Turk. If these folks had been the main focus of the film it may have been an all time classic. They run over Mick Jagger-look-alikes, they kidnap pretty women and torture them with hippy ballads and are just generally a fun gang of nuts to watch. On the downside most of the movie focuses on this slick undercover cop guy who plays all the different crime factions against each other and I found his scenes really dull and a little confusing to boot. Also the title misleads us into thinking there will be a strong female Pam Grier-type character but there isn't. So while I wouldn't give this a strong endorsement I will say check it out if you have a lot of patience for a movie that makes you wait quite a while for the good stuff. AKA MAFIA JUNCTION and BLUE MOVIE BLACKMAIL