Euro Crime Poster Gallery [Part 2]

La Polizia ha le Mani Legate aka Killer Cop (Luciano Ercoli, 1975) - Italian Poster

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Morte Sospetta di una Minorenna aka Suspected Death of a Minor (Sergio Martino, 1975) - Italian Poster

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Mark Colspice Ancora aka Mark Strikes Again (Stelvio Massi, 1976) - Italian Poster

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Il Grande Racket aka The Big Racket (Enzo G. Castellari, 1976) - Italian Poster

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Euro Crime Poster Gallery [Part 1]

A Ciascuno il Suo aka We Still Kill the Old Way (Elio Petri, 1967) - US Poster

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Il Giorno Della Civetta aka The Day of the Owl aka Mafia (Damiano Damiani, 1968) - Italian Poster

US Poster

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Gli Intoccabili aka Machine Gun McCain (Giuliano Montaldo, 1968) - US Poster

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Rome: Armed to the Teeth (1976)

Dir: UMBERTO LENZI
Country: ITALY

AKA:
Roma a mano armata
Assault with a Deadly Weapon
Brutal Justice
The Tough Ones

In recent months I’ve had the opportunity to scrutinise in more detail the long and varied career of Italian director Umberto Lenzi. My relationship with Lenzi’s films have been fraught and negative at the best of times, but I have to confess to finding myself mellowing towards his work with each passing obscurity that crosses my desk. After all Lenzi has directed over sixty films and only one of them was called Cannibal Ferox (1981). The prevailing consensus has it that Lenzi’s career can be divided into two distinct camps. In the first are his many contributions to the giallo and poliziotesschi cycles, which are fondly recalled, and generally considered half decent. In the second camp is everything else! From what I have seen so far that seems to be a fair assessment. But the overriding problem I have with Lenzi’s films still remains; namely that Lenzi himself is never the best thing about his films. His 1976 poliziotesschi flick Rome: Armed to the Teeth is a very good working example of this. Without a doubt the most distinctive aspect of this production is its cast. The film is led by Maurizio Merli (much maligned in some quarters, but I’ve always found him to be an appealing actor), who by this point was a veteran of the cycle, and could do the tough guy cop routine in his sleep. The supporting cast includes excellent turns from Tomas Milian, Arthur Kennedy, Ivan Rassimov, and Giampiero Albertini and these performances serve to offset Merli’s lack of dimension. The films second most distinctive feature is the superb musical contribution of Franco Micalizzi, and then maybe…and it’s a big maybe, we might put the direction of Lenzi third.

How to Kill a Judge (1976)

Dir: DAMIANO DAMIANI
Country: ITALY

AKA:
Perche si uccide un magistrato

Damiano Damiani’s How to Kill a Judge is a low key thriller that sits uneasily within the poliziotteschi cycle to which it has been consigned. It is almost totally devoid of action set pieces, and is remarkably bloodless for a 1970’s Italian crime flick. Compared to the high octane thrills and spills of Enzo G. Castellari or Fernando Di Leo this is a sedentary affair that at times comes perilously close to total inertia. Damiani who co-wrote the screenplay with Enrico Ribulsi was clearly intent on making a very serious film in which social and political imperatives are far more important than the conventions of the cycle. In fact at times Damiani goes out of his way to frustrate generic expectations. This is in order to maintain the clarity of the films political purpose, a purpose which might otherwise have been undermined by a proliferation of stunts and gunfire. Damiani was no stranger to appropriating the conventions of a genre in order to pedal an ideological point of view. His western A Bullet for the General (1966) flaunts its leftist credentials, but importantly retains a high entertainment factor. His earlier poliziotteschi Confessions of a Police Commissioner to the District Attorney (1971) likewise retains its entertainment factor without compromising its ideological vision. How to Kill a Judge however is so entangled within its socio/political message that at times it forgets to be entertaining.

Contraband (1980)

Dir: LUCIO FULCI
Country: ITALY

AKA:
Luca il contrabbandiere
The Smuggler
The Naples Connection

Contraband was Italian writer/director Lucio Fulci’s only entry into the bitter and cynical terrain of the poliziotteschi. The films status as a departure for Fulci is indicated by the fact that it was made in between Zombi 2 (1979) and City of the Living Dead (1980), and at a time when the poliziotteschi cycle itself was on the decline. With Fulci’s incredibly competent approach to a myriad of genres it seems almost inconceivable now that he didn’t direct a crime picture at the height of the genre’s popularity in 1970’s Italy. One can only assume that either the cycle didn’t interest Fulci from a written point of view, or that no suitable project came to his attention. Either way the result of this is that Contraband has steadily built itself a reputation as a cult curiosity in Fulci’s filmography. Its position has not been helped by substandard and patchwork distribution. Zombi 2 was the most successful film in Fulci’s long and illustrious career, but the film that followed it sank without a trace into a murky distribution limbo. Fortunately this was redressed with the release of Contraband in an uncut form on DVD by American distributor Blue Underground in 2004.

The Heroin Busters (1977)

Dir: ENZO G. CASTELLARI
Country: ITALY

AKA:
La vie della droga
Drug Street

The Heroin Busters was director Enzo G. Castellari’s fourth poliziotteschi flick after High Crime (1973), Street Law (1974), and The Big Racket (1976). By now Castellari was as firmly associated with adrenaline pumping contemporary set thrillers as he was with the dust and bloodshed of the Euro-western. The difference between his westerns and poliziotteschi efforts was purely cosmetic. All of these films follow the narrative structures of the western and The Heroin Busters is no exception. This particular title has a reputation for being the weak link in Castellari’s 1970’s poliziotteschi quartet, but I find it to be the most entertaining and enjoyable. It has a certain hyper-stylised excessiveness that is lacking in the other three, and whilst this might be used as a criticism by some, I find the absurdity of The Heroin Busters to be one of its charms. It has a certain operatic ebullience that distances it from the gritty aesthetics of High Crime and lacks the hard edged cynicism and despair of Street Law and The Big Racket. In short this film is a lot of fun, and it is clear the filmmakers had a lot of fun putting it together.

The Big Racket (1976)

Dir: ENZO G. CASTELLARI
Country: ITALY

AKA:
Il grande racket

The Big Racket was director Enzo G. Castellari’s third poliziotteschi thriller after the tremendous commercial success of High Crime (1973) and Street Law (1974). These two films were marked by high octane chase and action sequences, remarkable stunts, and imperiously charismatic lead performances by Franco Nero. In many ways both films were a fascistic celebration of rampant machismo and unchecked masculinity. A perfect case study for the concurrent feminism of the day. Suffice it to say The Big Racket continues Castellari’s macho ethos. The only female characters being a vile masculinised thug who is more at home kicking the shit out of honest businessmen than burning her bra, and a schoolgirl who commits suicide after being raped. Yes, we are once again in the polarised social firmament that marks the writing of Massimo De Rita and Arduino Maluri. Instead of Nero’s bristling moustache and piercing blue eyes we have the dark and swarthy casualness of Fabio Testi. Testi lacks Nero’s charisma, and seems to struggle with the burden of being the films moral centre. He is on much firmer ground playing the laid back undercover cop in Castellari’s fourth poliziotteschi The Heroin Busters (1977). In that film Testi is quite magnificent, but he seems ill at ease with the character of Inspector Nico Palmieri, and at times his performance is stilted and unconvincing.

Street Law (1974)

Dir: ENZO G. CASTELLARI
Country: ITALY

AKA:
Il cittadino si ribella
Vigilante II
The Citizen Rebels
The Anonymous Avenger

Like most filmmakers working in the environment of popular Italian cinema between the mid 1960’s to the mid 1980’s Enzo G. Castellari found switching from one genre to another an easy task. It was made easy to him because the only difference between his westerns, crime thrillers, war movies, and post-apocalyptic science-fiction adventures was iconography and setting. At their heart almost all of Castellari’s films are westerns. It was rare for him to step out of the terrain of the action movie, and the narrative structures associated with westerns. When he did the results were almost always unspectacular, as his only giallo production Cold Eyes of Fear (1971) proves. Street Law was Castellari’s second bite at the poliziotteschi cherry after High Crime (1973) which also featured Franco Nero in the lead and is often overlooked due to its unavailability. It is in fact marginally superior to Street Law. But where Street Law does succeed is in its high degree of polish and the precision of its stunt work and action set pieces. High Crime can be seen as something of a dress rehearsal One that has descended into the murky abyss of a distribution limbo. Street Law’s prominence and longer lasting appeal is almost certainly due to is closeness to Death Wish (1974) and the torn from the tabloid hysteria that informs the opening montage.

Revolver (1973)

Dir: SERGIO SOLLIMA
Country: ITALY/FRANCE/WEST GERMANY

aka:
Blood in the Streets
In the Name of Love

To date The Celluloid Highway has yet to travel down the road of the Poliziotteschi, but I’m happy to correct that now with one of the major films of that sub-genre. It is instructive to note the different attitude that popular Italian culture has with the concept of genre. Genre as it is applied to cinema is largely speaking a Hollywood construct that aids in the marketing and differentiation of its product. Popular Italian forms of cinematic entertainment have a much more fluid relationship with each other. In the case of Poliziotteschi and Gialli for example we find a great deal of cross pollination and a mutual cynicism about both behaviour in a capitalist system, and the authorities that govern the system. The Italians prefer to use the term filone, viewing these films as popular cycles rather than discreet self contained genres. This may seem a peripheral point, but it requires the scholar to adjust one’s thinking when it comes approaching these films. These films were seen as cycles within popular cinema, and narrative rules and conventions of form are far more open to the interpretative imagination of a filmmaker. So whilst American cinema was undergoing a period of generic revisionism in the late 1960’s and 1970’s, this was always an inbuilt quality of these Italian film cycles.