Emergency Squad
                  
     
Director:  Stelvio Massi
Year:  1974
Rating: 6.0
Country: Italy
Emergency Squad aka Squadra Volante is an Italian Poliziotteschi in Stelvio Massi's directorial debut. And it was a big hit. He had been a cinematographer for some years including a few Spaghetti Westerns such as a couple of the Sartana films. At this point directors and actors had shifted away from Westerns into crime. Massi was to go on and helm a number of the crime films over the next few years. This is a solid one though it doesn't generate all that much excitement or action. It is more of a slow crawl as it depicts first the crime and then the lengthy aftermath - both for the police and for the thieves as they step by step head for a collision. I can't quite see why this was a big hit - it feels very standard cops go after the crooks - perhaps it was the Cuban born Tomas Milian who had been a star in those Spaghetti Westerns and brought that same persona to these films. Here he is scruffy, has a don't give a fuck attitude with a cigar seemingly surgically inserted into his mouth.



A gang of five crooks cleverly use a film camera to make everyone watching thinking they are shooting a movie while they are actually shooting for real and kill a policeman and snatch 200 million lira. I think that comes to about $1.50. Well, probably more than that. They all seem to think they are set for life on it. They just have to get away with it. That is often the hard part. They are led by Marseilles (played by Gastone Moschin who was so great in Milano Calibro 9) and they hole up in his apartment with his ditzy girlfriend (Stefani Cassini - Suspira). Five guys in a small apartment for days is always a recipe for violence and it comes.



Meanwhile Interpol Agent Ravelli (Milian) has a suspicion that this gang may be the same ones who killed his wife five years previously in a robbery getaway. When the bullets from the two killings are corroborated he goes on a near lone manhunt. It gets interesting as these crooks have all their not so well laid out escape plans go bad - and Ravelli is right behind them - or in this case above them in a helicopter.  There is some strange nudity thrown in for exhibitors - a porno shoot, a strip club but really exploitive is when they take a family hostage and rip off the blouse of their teenage daughter exposing her breasts. It was kind of creepy. Doing it twice.