Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976): Fight Like a Brave

I know it was just back at the beginning of last month I covered a film by Ruggero Deodato, but thanks to Big Willie of The Gentlemen’s Guide to Midnite Cinema, I finally got my hands on a copy of Deodato’s polizia Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (Uomini si nasce poliziotti si muore). So since I’m kicking off my seasonal series, Spring Into Action, what better way to kick it off than with a little Euro-crime action, and boy, does Live Like a Cop deliver. It delivers chase scenes, misogynistic commentary, knock down brawls, intense violence, and some of the most homo-erotic moments I’ve seen outside of professional wrestling. If you don’t believe me all you have to do is scroll down and take a look at the picture of Ray Lovelock in his pink undies, and you will no longer have any doubt.

Deodato’s entry into the Polizia genre provides the genre hopping director with another stab at a trend. Nestled between his erotic thriller Wave of Lust (1975) and 1977’s Jungle Holocaust, Live Like a Cop was born from a script by noted Euro-crime director Fernando Di Leo. By the late Seventies, Di Leo had moved on to directing crime films of a lighter strain such as Loaded Guns and Nick the Sting. The script for Live Like A Cop, though lightly touched by a comedic element, was far more violent and mean spirited than the films Di Leo was directing at the time, but it was right in Deodato’s wheelhouse.

Dark haired Fred (Marc Porel) and the blond Tony (Ray Lovelock) are members of a super secret police squad intent to prevent crimes predicted by a massive (though never seen) computer. The duo, picked for their ability to think like criminals, have a unique take no prisoners style of policing, and they are not beyond blowing up cars, shooting criminals on the street, or worse to stop crime in Rome. This ultimately pits them against crime boss Roberto Pasquini (Renato Salvatori), and the pair of loose cannons will have to fight, chase, and blow away anyone who stands in their way if they want to bring him down. Oh, and they’ll probably find time to share a lovely lady or two, but it’s all in a days work for these cops.

As the film begins and you see Porel driving a motorcycle with Lovelock riding bitch, don’t try and hold back your laughter; you’ll only hurt yourself. Just sit back and enjoy of the most sexually confused movie not directed by Ken Russell. The scene quickly turns butch as the pair take off on a breakneck chase through urban Rome (happily on separate bikes) after a woman is violently dragged to her death. Yes, this is still a Deodato film so expect to see the red stuff flow quite a bit though not nearly to the extent of films like his Jungle Trilogy or even Lenzi’s Violent Naples. None of the bloody violence is gratuitous, but not to worry, because Deodato made gratuitous use of nearly everything else. The main thing that has to be mentioned is that after the numerous, and seemingly blatant, homosexual overtones the film generally follows them up with a string of misogynistic statements or actions. I’m not sure if it was supposed to strike a balance, if Di Leo handed Deodato a script more laden with jokes than the director might have realized, or if time and cultural differences make this film seem more schizophrenic than it actually is.

Porel and Lovelock’s characters come off like a mix between Starsky and Hutch and the 13 year old boys who loved Starsky and Hutch. I enjoyed watching both of them give solid charismatic performances, but I spent most of my time rolling my eyes at their “loose cannon” actions and the audacious way they treat women. I hate to keep coming back to that, but even for an Italian film, it was pretty raw. Now the female character who takes the brunt of it, the police captain’s secretary Norma played by Silvia Dionisio, gives as good (if not better) than she gets, but I think it still bears mentioning. It took me a while to get into Live Like a Cop because the two leads were essentially unlikable, but eventually the charismatic charm of the actors shined through and won me over.

The only other performances worth picking out were Adolfo Celi as the pair’s long suffering captain and Renato Salvatori as the villainous Pasquini. Celi never becomes the Lethal Weapon style captain that you wish he would become, but instead he exhibits a kind of “you crazy kids” attitude to the partners when they return from blowing up 20 cars. Renato Salvatori was nearly 20 years removed from his career making turn in Mario Monicrlli’s 1958 film Big Deal on Madonna Street (I soliti ignoti), but the solid character actor makes the most of his role as Pasquini. He has limited screen time, but Salvatori makes for a slimy, powerful villain for the lawless lawmen to peruse.

There are several areas where this film could be found lacking, and I have to take some time to talk about them. The plot kind of meanders along with very little exposition as to who characters are or what is going on, and the screenplay never congeals into a fully connected storyline. The rivalry with the crime boss is brought in much too late, and over half the film features Frank and Tony busting small time hoods and looking like they might kiss any second. One thing that usually always stands out in a Polizia is the music, but in the case of Ubaldo Continiello’s reserved score, that is not the case. There were several times in the film I wondered why the score wasn’t kicking in only to have it show up lightly in other segments. None of the themes could be described as pulse pounding, and for a film with a couple of good chase scenes, that is nearly unforgivable. I don’t have anything great to say about the cinematic styling of director of photography Guglielmo Mancori. While stylish and exciting at moments, the action scenes are the only thing that pops while the rest of the film looks flat and needed more movement. Moncori would go on to work on Fulci’s Manhattan Baby, another film that suffered from flat visuals.

On the whole, I’m glad to have seen the film, but found it to be only slightly better than average compared to other films of its ilk. Deodato made several one-offs, a single erotic thriller, one western, an adventure film, but he only seemed to be able to hit a stride when his films took him out of the city and deep into the jungle. Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man will be interesting to Deodato and Euro-crime fans, and it is definitely worth tracking down. As long as you keep your hopes down and your eyes up so you don’t catch any unwanted glances at Lovelock’s pink underwear, then this film should provide more than enough to enjoy.

Bugg Rating 

Unfortunately I can't embed the German Trailer that I found, but you can click HERE to check it out on You Tube. In it's place rather than put the cruddy clip from the film that I could embed, I decided to link the song that inspired tonight's subtitle, The Red Hot Chili Peppers with "Fight Like A Brave".

Cut and Run [Inferno in diretta] (1985): Mr. Deodato Goes Back to the Jungle

If there’s one Italian director who can make people wary of his films just by having his name attached to them, them it’s Ruggero Deodato. I’ll admit that it took me quite some time to sit down with Cannibal Holocaust, and films like House on the Edge of the Park and Jungle Holocaust have been known to have as many (if not more) detractors than fans. Even his more innocuous fare like Raiders of Atlantis could scare people off, but that’s more a quality issue than anything (for more on that check out Episode IV of Sinful Cinema). When you enter into a Deodato film, you know there’s a good chance you’ll get extreme gore, rampant misogyny, animal violence, and the exploitation of native peoples. That’s just not some folk’s cup of tea and honestly, it’s not mine either. Yet I continue to watch his films because, for the most part, they are generally better than they have any right to be.

The movie I looked at for today is Inferno in diretta or, as it’s commonly known, Cut and Run (although the literal translation seems to be something to the effect of Directed in Hell). As Deodato states in the intro to the film included on the Anchor Bay disk, Cut and Run was the product of the many requests he got for a sequel to Cannibal Holocaust, and it completes the unofficial Jungle Trilogy that began with Jungle Holocaust. The only similarity between Cut and Run and the two Holocaust films is the jungle setting and the appearance of a camera crew. Other than that, there is no connection between the two films, and they barely seem like the product of the same director even though only five years separate the two films.

Cut and Run stars Lisa Blount as cable news journalist Fran Hudson. After getting a scoop on a drug-fueled massacre, she and her cameraman Mark (Leonard Mann) investigate the scene to get some shocking footage. While she’s poking around she finds a picture of Tommy (Willie Ames), her boss’ long missing son. After showing her boss the picture, he dispatches her to the Amazon jungle to find Tommy and report on anything she finds. She arrives in the midst of a drug war, and soon Fran, Mark, and Tommy are struggling to survive in the jungle. When Bob Allo (Richard Lynch), a former devotee of Jim Jones, captures them, they find that the true danger in the jungle may not be the natives at all.

From the first scene of the film where Michael Berryman, of The Hills Have Eyes fame, leads a band of natives to lay waste to a drug manufacturing camp, Deodato puts his stamp on the film. Unfortunately, within the first four minutes of the film, there’s a pointless gang rape of two women who are staked down and their heads are then severed. Later on in the film, there is an implied rape perpetrated in the same fashion, but it’s not as if it becomes a major plot point. It seems the opening was there solely for Deodato to pronounce that the maker of Cannibal Holocaust was back. There is one other rape in the film featuring Valentina Forte, Deodato’s girlfriend at the time. (I just can’t imagine why those two didn’t work out.) Thankfully, after that, the misogyny takes a backseat to gore, including a great scene of a man being torn in half, and attacks by the natives on our heroes.

Speaking of our heroes (and villains), Cut and Run did have a very strange cast. From the bit parts to the starring roles, there are familiar faces at almost every turn in this film. Lisa Blount, who plays Fran, should be recognizable to anyone who is a Carpenter fan from her role in Prince of Darkness, and Leonard Mann, who played the shrink in Silent Night, Deadly Night III, shows up here as Fran’s cameraman Mark. It doesn’t stop there though. As I mentioned earlier Michael Berryman makes an appearance as an assassin, Eric Le Salle, later of ER fame, appears as an informant pimp, Karen Black cashes a check as a TV exec, and John Steiner (Tenebre, Violent Rome) pops up as the leader of the drug manufacturers.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Willie Ames of Charles in Charles and Eight is Enough fame. I don’t know how he ended up in this film, but the future star of Bibleman probably doesn’t put this on his résumé anymore. I can’t see him impressing other former child stars turned religious zealots (Kirk Cameron I’m looking at you.) by letting them know he worked with a the same man who had to go to court to prove he didn’t kill his cast. Last but not least, Richard Lynch makes a big impression as the Jim Jones cult leader, but unfortunately, his Colonel Kurtz-esque performance is all too short. This is kind of the big problem with the film. The characters that are interspersing, namely Lynch and Berryman, get the least screen time while the other characters plod though the movie sans character development or personality.

One thing that I can say for this film is how great it looks. Cinematographer Alberto Spagoli, who also worked on Bava’s Shock and Castellari’s Shark, really impresses here. The jungle footage is stunningly photographed, and except for a few insert shots, the whole film is very well shot. Especially in light of mess that was his pervious film, Raiders of Atlantis, Cut and Run is quite possibly the best-looking film Deodato ever made. It’s just unfortunate that the visual flair so outshined the material that it was depicting. There is one last thing that makes Cut and Run stand out, and that is the soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti, formally of Goblin. While so many of the synthy scores that came out of early ‘80’s Italy verge on annoying, Simonetti managed to create an exciting, driving score that carries the film through some of the duller moments.

If you’re a Ruggero Deodato fan, then Cut and Run is a film that should be on your shortlist of films to see, and, overall, compared to many of his other films, Deodato reigns in some of his more graphic impulses. I could have done without the needless rape and misogyny, but as I said earlier, when you’re dealing with Ruggero then that’s kind of the status quo. While Cut and Run is an extremely good-looking film, it didn’t have the realized vision of Cannibal Holocaust or House at the Edge of the Park. In the end, I think this is one strictly for fans of ‘80’s Italian cinema, Deodato, or people who like dialog like this, “Think positive, look in two years calculators will be down to $9.95 apiece.” I know that made me feel much better about life in general.

Bugg Rating