Dir: STELVIO MASSI
Country: ITALY
AKA:
Mark il poliziotto
Blood, Sweat and Fear
Mark of the Cop
The
big three directors who inhabit the murky, tough, and violent world of the Italian
‘Euro-crime’ cycle are Fernando Di Leo, Umberto Lenzi, and Stelvio Massi. It
seems that history has been the kindest to Di Leo, who has selected titles
available in high definition and is generally regarded as an important
filmmaker in the landscape of popular Italian cinema. Fairing slightly worse is
Umberto Lenzi, and this is almost entirely due to his risible cannibal
escapades rather than his solid, if unexceptional, entries in the ‘Euro-crime’
and ‘Giallo’ cycles. Due to the vagaries of distribution the filmography of
Massi is the least explored of the three, and as a result Massi is not
discussed anywhere near as prolifically as the other two men. Although all
three filmmakers owe debts of gratitude to the Hollywood films that inspired
them, perhaps Massi most of all showed his influences a little too freely. This
can be seen most keenly in his 1975 thriller Mark the Narc which is one of the most rigorous pastiches of the
first two films to feature Clint Eastwood as San Francisco detective Harry
Callaghan.
