This Italian cops and killers film is a
blow torch to the face. It was Umberto Lenzi's entre into the Poliziotteschi
genre after having done just about everything else - Spaghetti Westerns, spy,
Peplum and Giallo. He isn't shy with this one diving into a morass of psycho
violence and sexual sleaziness from the start. He hires Tomas Milian and
Henry Silva to play opposite one another but not as I expected. Silva plays
the dedicated Inspector while Milian is a creepy deranged force of evil.
It was Milian's first film in the genre as well and both he and Lenzi were
to go on to many more. Silva too of course but usually as a killer. It took
me a while to realize that Milian was playing Giulio behind the sunglasses
and his scary laugh and distorted face at times. After this terrific performance,
I am surprised he wasn't typecast as an insane killer and rapist. It is a
tour de force of depravity.
Giulio is the getaway driver in a bank
heist but when a cop gets nosy, he shoots him dead on the street and he and
the gang go on a merry chase with the cops behind them. When they escape,
the other men beat the crap out of Giulio for killing a cop. They should
have just killed him. The beating seems to have unhinged him even more and
he tells his girlfriend (Anita Stringberg) that he has plans to make a lot
of money. Enough to retire on. He loops in two losers (Ray Lovelock, Gino
Santercole) for his plan. Initially, the two of them seem to be simply petty
thieves but as time goes on the insanity and blood lust seems to be contagious.
They kidnap the daughter (Laura Belli)
of a wealthy industrialist and the killing and weird depravity begins - stringing
up naked people and machine gunning them after forcing them to perform oral
sex. Inspector Grandi (Silva) is on the case and he plays it very straight.
We don't see the seething Silva until near the end. There is a lot of talent
all around this film - Ernesto Gastaldi wrote the script, Luciano Martino
produced it, Federico Zanni is the cinematographer and Ennio Morricone provided
the score. It is raw and nasty and mean.
