Showing posts with label Enzo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Enzo. Show all posts

Street Law (1974): As Rome Burned, Nero Played Violence

Because of the 1973 Oil crisis during which the oil producing members of OPEC declared an embargo against the United States and its ally nations, economic troubles found their way to the shores of Italy. This lead to a major bump in the crime rate and many of the citizenry believing that crime was running unchecked. Tapping into this fear, Enzo Castellari brought to the public his 1974 film Il cittandino si ribella, known in the U.S. under the titles Vigilante II or Street Law. The film follows one man’s fight against the underworld, but it also serves as an examination of the political climate of Italy, a deconstruction of the law abiding citizen, and most importantly a kick ass action film from the director of classics like Inglorious Bastards Keoma,  and The Heroin Busters.

In a departure from his tough guy roles, Franco Nero plays Carlo Antonelli, the mild mannered head of an engineering firm. Carlo is making a deposit at a bank when three gunman burst in for a daring daylight robbery, and he is beaten and taken away as their hostage. Finally he is abandoned by the robbers in a shipping yard where the police find him barely clinging to consciousness. As Carlo recovers, he finds the police unable or unwilling to track down the culprits, and with no other choice, he takes the investigation into his own hands. This quickly leads to Carlo being the recipient to another beating. Taking a more academic tact, he scours back issues of the newspaper until he unravels a connection to the gang of thugs. Carlo blackmails the connection, Tommy (Giancarlo Prete), into helping him, but eventually the two become partners as they hatch an idea to force the underworld and the police into a war with the bank robbers stuck in the middle.

Throughout Street Law there are several occasions where you just want to reach into the screen, smack Franco Nero’s character, and ask him why he’s trying to get himself killed. Like  a cross between Peter Finch in Network when he was “mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore” and a precursor to Michael Douglas' character in Falling Down, Carlo is filled with rage, but he has no idea what to do with it. At first he thinks that he can go about it like the cops would, asking questions and following suspects, but he only gains any ground when he begins to think like a criminal, blackmailing Tommy into helping him against the underworld. The relationship between the two characters, Carlo, the law abiding citizen who is losing his moral perspective in the pursuit of revenge, and Tommy, the thief with his own personal code and a desire to leave his life of crime, are at the heart of the film. The script by screenwriter Arduino Maiuri and scenarist Masimo De Rita, who also wrote the early Charles Bronson films Violent City and Chino, really pulls together the personal relationship between the leads, the pulse pounding action of Castellari, and a reflection of many Italians in the early 1970’s into a film that both entertains and speaks to the audience.

Franco Nero’s character Carlo is the son of a man who spoke up against the fascists when they came into power, and one of his arguments when his girlfriend, the second billed Barbara Carrera who only appears briefly in the film, tries to talk some sense into him is that it is his duty to stand up against the injustice. This desire for the little guy who reaches his breaking point to seek revenge was also one of the main themes of another 1974 film, Death Wish, and it would be easy to compare the two films. Even though something was floating though the global zeitgeist to inspire two films with such similar themes, they share little in common due to the vast differences between the street gangs of New York and the institutionalized corruption and criminality of Italian society. Plus, the first Death Wish is a fairly slow moving film, but I doubt there are many Castellari productions that the same could be said about. From the opening frame and thanks to a driving score by the De Angeles Brothers, Street Law kicks off and it doesn’t let go until the final frame.

I could easily go on about how great the Nero, Castellari, and the De Angeles Brothers are, but I’ve talked about all four of these men exhaustively in the past. So I’ll just sum it up by saying that they all bring their top game to Street Law. If you are a fan of Euro-crime films or are just getting interested in the genre, then this is a great place to start. While you’ll find a great many car chases, fight fights, and shoot outs, there is a deeper level that the movie works on that makes it one of the best examples of the genre that I have seen. As an aside to any John Saxon fans out there, look out for a cameo from the Saxon as a dockworker. Plus, you don’t want to miss Nero’s inspirational speech at the end of the film that finishes with the promise of, “a place for snacks”. That in and of itself makes me want to fight against injustice, and I think I’ll do it the best way I know how. By letting people know they should see Street Law, I’m just trying to make the world a better place for us all to watch Italian cinema.

Bugg Rating

Keoma (1976): Life, Death, and Freedom in Castellari’s West

To the casual movie nerd, the name Enzo Castellari will bring up his film Inglorious Bastards and the accompanying Tarantino “remake”. To Italian film buffs, his name will bring up post-apocalyptic films like 1990: Bronx Warriors or Euro-crime films such as The Big Racket and Street Law. What I don’t see talked about nearly enough are his Westerns. In the beginning of his career he made several entries into the Spaghetti Western genre including Any Gun Can Play and Kill Them All and Come Back Alone. In the late ‘70’s, he returned to the genre with a pair of films starring Franco Nero, Cipolla Colt (1976) and Keoma. Made at the end of the Italian Western craze, Keoma was an experimental film for Castellari, and he has stated that it is his favorite.

When Keoma (Franco Nero) returns home from fighting the Civil War, he finds that a diabolical rancher named Caldwell (Donald O’Brian) has taken over the town. A plague has also hit the area, and Caldwell will not even allow the town doctor to get supplies to help the people. Instead, the rancher’s gunmen round up anyone suspected of having the disease and place them in a camp to die. Keoma comes across the gunman hauling a pregnant woman (Olga Karlatos) to the camp and rescues her from their clutches. This pits the half-Indian gunfighter against Caldwell and his whole gang including his three half brothers. With help from his father (William Berger) and a banjo playing farmhand (Woody Strode), Keoma will try to protect the pregnant woman and free the town while the specter of death stays close at hand.

The inspiration for Keoma is clearly Ingmar Bergman’s classic film The Seventh Seal though Castellari’s film takes great liberty with the storyline. Keoma replaces the errant knight who travels across plague ravaged countryside, and instead of a game of chess with death, the gunfighter is followed by an old woman who personifies the end of life. The script had several writers working on it including actor/writer George Eastman who turned in the original version of the script. Castellari wasn’t completely pleased with Eastman’s version, and along with writers Nico Ducci and Mino Roli, Castellari re-wrote the script each night for the next days filming. Remarkably, Keoma doesn’t feel piecemeal at all with a fully realized vision and theme. The film is a mediation on the preciousness of life, the inevitability of death, and the gift of freedom.

All of the characters are trying to be free in one way or another. Woody Strode’s George is now a free man thanks to the end of the Civil War, but he has become a drunk saying that he no longer had anything to look forward to. Keoma’s three brothers are seeking freedom from the shadow of their father who was a legendary gunman. The town doctor wants to care for his patients and save them from the deadly plague but doesn‘t have the freedom to do so. The pregnant woman, Lisa, wants to be free to bring her child into this world. Keoma himself is free from everything except the lingering presence of death, but he seeks to free the town from Caldwell. Not for his own personal gain or for glory, but rather because it is the right thing to do. None of this is expressly stated in the film, but it comes though in the performances and script without the need for opaque symbolism or murky exposition. Incidentally, the name Keoma means “far away” in Cherokee though it has been misinterpreted as meaning freedom.

Mentioning the performances brings me around to talking about one of my favorite actors, Franco Nero. Nero is no stranger to the genre having starred in Django and several other Westerns, but with his long hair and grizzled beard, he cuts a very different figure than I have seen him portray in the past. Nero, who also lent his voice to the English dubbing, gives a perfect performance that is the rock that the film is built upon. Woody Strode, who many may know from Once Upon a Time in the West, also turns in a solid performance that is heart wrenching. All three of the actors who played Keoma’s half brothers, Joshua Sinclair, Antonio Marsina, and Orso Maria Guerrini, make for good foils to the liberal thinking of their sibling, but Guerrini whose curly hair and mustache made him look like the Italian version of a young Donald Southerland. The lovely Olga Karlatos, who later appeared in Fulci’s Zombi 2 and Murder Rock, has little screen time as the pregnant widow in distress, but she does good work in a minor role.

When people criticize the film it is often because of the narrative soundtrack written by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis. Acting as a Greek chorus between the scenes, the songs do give some exposition of the inner feelings of the characters and move the plot along. Many viewers may find it distracting and perhaps laughable, but for me, it worked. It may not be the best score the De Angelis brothers worked on, but they took a chance that paid off to this viewer. One thing that I haven’t seen anyone downplay is the use of slow motion in the film. Clearly inspired by similar scenes in Sam Peckinpah’s films, Castellari ups the ante with a myriad of slow motion gun battles that really sell the violence in Keoma without going over the top. The director and cinematographer Aiace Parolin also captured some great John Ford-esque panoramic shots that transformed the hills of Italy into the American West.

I wasn’t expecting much when I decided to watch Keoma, but not only was I pleasantly surprised the film now sits on my shortlist of best Spaghetti Westerns of all time. From the meaningful storyline to the pulse pounding action sequences, Keoma delivers on all fronts. Some have called Enzo Castellari the greatest of the Italian action film directors, but he is surely capable of more than post-apocalyptic punks and loose cannon cops. If Keoma is any indication of the Westerns that he directed, you can be assured that this won’t be the last time you’ll see one on the Lair. So if you are a fan of tough guys with six shooters and willing to look a little deeper than the surface action, then Keoma is a film that you should definitely see.

Bugg Rating

Multi-Monday with Enzo's The Big Racket and Fulci's Perversion Story

This weekend I got a chance to check out a couple of great films, and I thought I would take Monday to give you folks a double dose of Italians. Both Enzo G. Castellari and Lucio Fulci are responsible for some of my favorite films like Street Law and Cat in the Brain, but they are also to blame for duds like Cold Eyes of Fear or The House of Clocks. So sitting down to watch two of their films back to back, I felt like I would be doing good to come out 50/50. Thankfully luck was with me this weekend so let’s get into the first of our two features.

Enzo G. Castellari returned to the Polizia film after a two year break with the Fabio Testi in The Big Racket(1976). I’ll make no bones about it, while many have dismissed Testi as a pretty boy, I never fail to enjoy his performances. In The Big Racket, Testi plays Inspector Nico Palmieri, who has been assigned to bust up a gang charging protection to local businesses. Things go badly from the start with the gang cornering the Inspector and pushing his car down a hill. From there, things get progressively worse and the Inspector’s investigation gets progressively more aggressive until he finally gets himself thrown off the force. Assembling a group from the people the mob has victimized, Palleieri leads them on a mission to stop the rackets once and for all.

Testi is as charismatic as usual, and most of the major action scenes revolve around him busting heads (and as often as not, getting jacked up as well). The fighting and gunfights are the highlight to this film, and Enzo captured them perfectly with just enough slow motion to sell some of the more outlandish moves. The best use of slow motion comes when Testi gets rolled down a hill in his car, and the camera stays with him all the way down as Fabio protects his pretty mug from flying glass and debris. This is only one example of the many great camera tricks and angles Castellari fits into this film.

The Big Racket also has a pretty well constructed plot that almost made me not notice the film’s 104 minute running time. Although it did get a bit draggy around the middle, the script never lets plot get in the way of a good explosion or two. Add to this a supporting cast featuring some pretty well developed characters, and it gives the revenge angle of the film quite a punch. I especially liked Renzo Palmer as the restaurateur gone unhinged killer, Death Wish actor Vincent Gardenia as a police informant, and Glauco Onoato as a skeet shooter who becomes a deadly silent assassin.

It all adds up to one of the best Italian crime flicks I’ve had the pleasure of checking out, and one I would recommend highly if you haven’t had a chance to delve into the genre. Plus with Tarantino’s Castellari inspired Inglorious Basterds coming to theaters, who doesn’t want to be the film geek who can tell all his friends about Enzo’s other films?

Bug Rating


Ten years before Lucio Fulci was getting zombies to put huge splinters into girl’s eyes, he was releasing a film that had much more in common with Hitchcock. Perversion Story a.k.a. One on Top of Another (1969) is the first Fulci film that barely contains any of the flourishes that Lucio would becomes known for, but worry not, there’s still a few quick zooms on eyes which retain the flavor. While the story seems to have Hitch’s Vertigo in mind, it ends up being full of some of the better twists that I’ve seen in a while.

George (Jean Sorrell) is a doctor. Unfortunately, he’s also deeply in debt, unhappily married, and a philanderer, but when his wife dies of a mysterious mix-up of medications, the doctor thinks he sees the end of the rainbow in the form of his wife’s million dollar life insurance payoff. Things don’t turn out easy as that when he meets up with a stripper who looks like a blond haired version of his dead wife. Soon George is obsessed, and his obsession leads him down a road where he gets sent to jail for his wife’s murder.

The name Lucio Fulci is not usually associated with the two words “cohesive storyline”, but in the case of Perversion Story, this time Lucio brings it. While some of the principal conceit seems to have been inspired by thrillers past, the rest of the film is full of enough new ideas that it barely comes to mind. Fulci does a good job letting the suspense build throughout, and by the end of the film, I was yelling at the screen for answers which I think is always the sign of a good flick.

Even though his plots are not always so cut and dry, Fulci is known for his eccentric camerawork. Like I said, you get little of the feel of his horror films, and instead the film is full of shots set up through clear floors, plenty of tricks with mirrors and windows, and a split screen shot that I really loved. The film has the feel of the swinging sixties, and the over-the-top fashions the ladies sport light up the screen. That is, when they bother to wear clothes. Marissa Mell, also seen in Bava’s Danger: Diabolik, spends a lot of her screen time in the buff and the film certainly does not suffer for it.

At the end of the day no amount of nakedness could be more impressive than the way the Perversion Story unfolds, and that is what I will take away from this film. It definitely lights a fire under my ass to check out Fulci’s other thrillers, and I’ll have to check them out soon. As for you guys, if you haven’t seen this one, I can’t recommend it enough. I’ve heard some people call this their favorite Fulci film, and while I’m not there yet (Zombie vs. Shark is still too good to give up), I can surely see their point.

Bugg Rating

Enzo Castellari's The Heroin Busters (1977)

It’s Monday folks and as usual I’m diggin’ in The Grab Bag once again. Seeing as Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds release is getting closer, I thought I’d sit down and take a look at the film Castellari put out directly before his original film Inglorious Bastards. If it was made today, people would say Enzo was ripping off Quentin, but all he did was merely make a film that fans of genre film like me, and you, and Quentin Tarantino can get our Politzia fix from. And that’s the strongest thing we should touch too, because you learn quite well that you don’t want to cross…
The Heroin Busters [Italian: Vie della droga, La] (1977) starring Fabio Testi, David Hemmings, Wolfangle Soldati, Sherry Buchanan, Directed by Enzo Castellari. 

The drug trade has spread all over the world, and Mike Hamilton of INTERPOL is determined to put a stop to it.  He's working with an undercover cop played by Fabio Testi whose name we never learn. The back of his jacket is emblazoned with the name 'Matt', but he is never called by that name, and in the credits to the film he is listed as playing Fabio. So, Testi himself has gone into deep cover in the drug trade, and he gets pulled into Hamilton's investigation when zealous customs officials bust Fabio but let a big time dealer through. When the cops do manage to get on the right target, the drug runner outsmarts them and gets away with the goods. 

After setting all of this kick ass action premise up, Castellari took a moment to include a little after school special into the film. We see some young teens try to buy some junk from Wolfgangle Soldati's character Gilo. Right in front of the impressionable duo, Gilo gets jumped and savagely beaten.  That's taking Scared Straight to the extreme! Well, of course, Gilo gets carted off to jail and ends up in a cell with our buddy Testi. It seems Testi is so serious about his cover that he's just going to stay in jail. So they make friends, and what do friends do but bust out of jail together. Fabio is looking to use Gilo as another way to the inside of the drug racket. 

It turns out that Gilo's girlfriend is some kind of dancer, and her choreographer, Mossimo,  is the big middleman in the operation. Testi strikes a deal with them. This is all going on while we also take in scenes of a junkie being "taken care of" by her mother, pot pushers depressed that "no one is into grass anymore", and shots of lesbian sex which may or may not have been a junkie's drug addled fantasy. Each of these separate story lines weave their way though the others. Some of them end up being quite short, and in the case of Gilo, much shorter than I would have liked. At a bit over the hour mark, Gilo in his desperation agrees to go on an armed robbery, and he gets killed for his trouble.

Gilo's dancer girlfriend gets put down by a hot shot before she can go to the cops. Mossimo and his boys watch over her as she overdoses. Upon seeing the what is going on, Leonardo Scavino's hashish dealer admonishes the killers and declaims, "You must believe me because I am one of them. We are all sons of bitches." The gang, naturally doesn't really care, and it's back to business as usual. Soon Testi is at the point where he is going to get found out, and makes his move. He puts a kink in their operation, but now, with his identity revealed, he becomes a hunted man. With both the police and the cops on his tale, Fabio races against time to stop the head of the drug ring from escaping, even if it means chasing on foot, on a motorcycle, or with a plane. 

The Heroin Busters was the perfect mix of actors, action, and acumen. Testi, the  legend, turns in another credible role as a badass, and coupled with the rumpled suit charisma of David Hemmings, the two make a pretty good team. The first third of the film is slow, but once Gilo's story gets going things pick up a bit. Then when the poor boy meets his fate, you are basically at the start of the last third of the film, the chase. I have rarely been more entertained by this lengthy an action sequence, but Castellari managed to keep you guessing with some interesting scenarios. All of the action is propelled by the styling of Goblin who turned out one of their better non-horror scores I have heard from them. This is one that sticks in the mind, and I'll be wanting the main theme on my iPod as soon as I can find it. 

Castellari and cinematographer Giovalli Bergamini would work together four more times after this film, including on Inglorious Bastards. One thing The Heroin Busters shares with IB are the well staged action set pieces, and while the WWII film would be able to do much bigger explosions than Busters, all the action is intense and believable. The real problem is contained right there. While the action seems very real world, the story has plot holes that just can't be explained. Fabio should have been a dead man long ago. The Smack dealers would not let him get by on his charms alone. 

This is a minor gripe though. Much like other Italian fare that I love, if you deliver style, some substance, and entertainment, then you're OK in my book. Enzo is far more than OK. A director who never fails to disappoint, and who always leaves you excited for the next one of his films. Castellari is a master at making the audience hang in there for what might happen next, and sometimes, what happens is a movie like The Heroin Busters. 

Bug Rating