The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist Original Title: Il cinico, I’infame, il violento Directed by: Umberto Lenzi Italy, 1977 Poliziotteschi, 100min Distributed by: Alpha Digital
Of all the genre’s that Umberto Lenzi tried his directing skills in, I feel that the Poliziotteschi flicks are among his finest. Obviously there are several brilliant entries of his to be found on the other sphere’s – Cannibal Ferox 1981, Nightmare City 1980, The Oasis of Fear 1971, Seven Bloodstained Orchids 1972 and Eyeball 1975 to name a few, but it’s the Poliziotteschi that I find myself returning to and rediscovering with a new passion that wasn’t there the first time around. The Tomas Milian pieces, like Almost Human 1974, Rome; Armed to the Teeth 1976 and The Rat the Cynic and the Fist, stand out and have against all odds stood up to the tests of time.
The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist is a fantastic piece of Italian genre cinema where the title possibly refers to Sergio Leone’s splendid spaghetti western The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 1966 and saying that, there’s more to the movie than just a cryptic title. Maurizio Merli is obvious the Fist as he slugs his way through the antagonists of the film, then there’s Tomas Milian in one of his finest performances ever, as Luigi “the Chinaman” Maietto, without a doubt the cynic of the piece, leaving John Saxon as the rat, or rather the Infamous as the original titles call him. Some stuff just get’s lost in translation doesn’t it.
Performances are tight, and well acted, Merli is great in this sequel to Lenzi’s previous piece Rome: Armed to the Teeth, which also sees Merli in the role of Inspector Tanzi. But the movie definitely belongs to Tomas Milian in a performance that out shines both Merli and Saxon by yards. He owns this piece with his sneering, sinister criminal who just oozes cynicism towards the law officials, the mob Boss Frank Di Maggio and even towards his once cohorts that he eliminates on his struggle towards the top of the food chain.
As usual, here’s a quick fix on the movie to remind you, or wake your interest for the film: Leonardo Tanzi, once Rome’s most feared police inspector has handed in his badge and now works as an editor of murder mystery novellas. (Watch the scene closely and you’ll see that its Gialli books he’s working with) When he learns that upcoming criminal Luigi “The Chinaman” Maietto has been released from the pen, he’s not so surprised to find his own obituary waiting for him under his door when he returns home. Shortly there after Maietto’s hit men make their entry [Bruno Corazzari and Claudio Undari], and after taking a few shots at Tanzi, they leave him for dead. Once a cop, always a cop is the pathos that Tanzi lives by, and after his former boss, Commissioner Astalli [Renzo Palmer] forces him into hiding so that they can lure the guilty by claiming that the legendary Tanzi is dead, Tanzi becomes a one man vigilante working outside the law. Obviously Tanzi doesn’t hide from anyone, and pretty soon he gets himself involved in rescuing a colleagues young sister from the hands of a pornographer who keeps his models/prostitutes on a strict diet of smack. (Bo A. VibeniusThriller - A Cruel Pictureanyone?) Herein also lies the connection to Maietto.
Trying his damndest to move in on American mobster Frank Di Maggio’s [Saxon] turf, Maietto is pushing the good old “Protection” racket, which obviously clashes with Di Maggio’s interests and Tanzi’s morale values. Slowly but surely the three opposing parts twist and grind their way through a grid of double crossing, enforcing violence, cunning heists and sadistic actions towards a climax, a climax that comes with a splendid blaze of glory as the three leads finally stand face to face.
What I feel makes this piece quite entertaining is that there are so many rifts and conflicts on both sides of the law. There are the conflicts on the criminal side, Di Maggio vs. the newcomer Maietto, and there’s certain tension between Tanzi and commissioner Astalli, which gives a deeper dimension to both the characters and the narrative. It’s an amazingly entertaining ride which I already said stands out among both the genre and Lenzi’s work.
Along the way there’s some great supporting cast performances by Bruno Corazzari, Claudio Undari, and the man who is almost everything worth watching Fulcio Mingozzi makes yet another short appearance. It’s a pretty male dominated movie, as nearly no women hold any specific role in the plot, other than scared victims for Merli to rescue and save, although Gabriella Lepori does have a bit of importance as she brings the narrative to an important junction, and connects the pornographer’s mischief to the racket Maietto has going.
Now there’s no way to discuss this movie without mentioning the great Ernesto Gastaldi. Ernesto Gastaldi’s name in the screenwriting credits is enough to make me want to watch the movie. If you are a regular reader, you will now that I can rant on about on his resume – Bitto Albertini’s Human Cobras 1971 and all those great Sergio Martino, Luciano Ercoli and Lenzi movies to name a few names - and there’s no doubt that Gastaldi is among the greatest of the Italian screenwriters. He frequently manages to bring depth, and complexity to the characters that so usually are mere generic personality. Just take a look at what he did to Maurizio Merli’s character police detective Leonardo Tanzi in the two movies of that series. In the second of the films, The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist, he injures the lead character, Tanzi, early on in the movie only to have him rubbing his sore wound over and over again. It also works as an instrument to give the character some personality and bring him down to a human level. He is vulnerable, but still doesn’t back down from busting up a few criminals despite his injuries, even if his actions make him sore. It’s something that action hero’s seldom consider as they move from one scene of severe damage to full fledged ass kicking without any side effects in the next scene. If you pay attention to the names of the writers in the opening titles, you will also spot Dardano Sachetti among the writers. With movies like Dario Argento’sCat o’ Nine Tails 1971, Mario Bava’sA Bay of Blood 1971, almost everyone of Lucio Fulci’s classics, Murder to the Tune of Seven Black Notes 1977, Zombie 1979, City of the Living Dead 1980 and the others, Antonio Margheriti’sCannibal Apocalypse 1980 and many many more, it’s no understatement that Sachetti is quite possibly the greatest of them all, and with the two giants of Italian screenwriting working off a Sauro Scavolini story, on the same movie, there’s no more reason to hesitate about this one. The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist is a must see movie with an excellent script, great actors, and a terrific entry into the Poliziotteschi genre.
Franco Micalizzi’s score is excellent, and holds some strong reminders of Stelvio Cipriani’s scores for movies within the genre, although with Micalizzi’s unique fully orchestrated funk jazz umph to it. For some strange reason the Soundtrack is available under the name Violence… Once again Eugenio Alabiso’s editing is tight and ferocious, adding to the rapid pacing of the scenes, and thanks to the widescreen presentation that I recall wasn’t there in the previous vhs version I used to have of this magnificent movie, Federico Zanni’s excellent cinematography come to it’s right. Certain scenes could actually be lifted from this movie to show cinematography students the power of composition and value added to a scene by simple effects as framing the shot in the right way.
The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist is a definitive statement to the craftsmanship of Umberto Lenzi, a guy who easily get’s lost as a second rate director among the many cheesier of his movies, especially the later ones, but this one is a gem and proves that Lenzi really had the knack for putting forth tight action movies that still work perfectly to this day.
Image:
Widescreen 16:9
Audio:
Dolby Digital Mono, English Dubbed version, which will give you a few laughs with the voice Saxon has been given.
Extras:
Nothing special, just the original theatrical trailer.
What Have They Done to Your Daughters? Original Title: La polizia chiede aiuto Directed by Massimo Dallamano Poliziotteschi / Giallo, 1974 Italy, 90min Distributed by: Shameless Screen Entertainment.
Story: Vittoria Stori, a district attorney and Police Inspector Silvestri team up to break a mysterious case concerning a young woman, who at first appeares to have taken her own life. But the autopsy shows foul play and pretty soon their leads bust open up a fiendish ring of teenage prostitution lead by men in high positions of society. And if that wasn’t bad enough, a homicidal maniac appears to be one step in front of them, doing his best to eradicate all the witnesses and sending death threats to Stori trying to force her away from the case…
Me: What Have They Done to Your Daughters? is a fine piece of genre cinema from Massimo Dallamano, perhaps best known for his classic Giallo What Have You Done To Solange?Dallamano was a fantastic director who unfortunately made only a dozen movies in his short career as a director, just less than twenty years, before dying in a car crash in 1976. Although in his short time as a director of fine movies, he really did give us some amazing ones and was no stranger to crossing and mixing genres be it Sexploitation flicks, Gialli, Gothic horrors, or his fantastic Poliziotteschi movies. But Dallamano was not only a director of great movies; he actually started his career as respected cinematographer who shot many of the great westerns including the two first Dollars installments for Sergio Leone.
What Have They Done to Your Daughters? is no exception to his splendid track record. It is a really great movie that has stood the test of time well. In many ways it is so much more satisfying than much of the contemporary movies that I waste valuable time watching.
The movie starts with police officials busting into an apartment only to find a young woman, an apparent suicide, hanged naked from the ceiling. From the start it looks like a routine case, a young woman who took her life after discovering that she was pregnant. (Here’s the reoccurring “illegal abortion” theme previously explored byDallamano in Solange) But pretty soon the autopsy shows her neck and vertebrae are all bust up wrong for a suicide. She must have been murdered somewhere else and then placed in the attic apartment. Someone has had a hand in her death and the police soon start to piece the bits and pieces of evidence together leading them on a wild goose chase that eventually takes them to the top of the corridors of power. And where many have previously felt that this movie has a sudden lame anti-climactic ending, I feel that it’s quite a fitting ending, especially for being set in the seventies. Year ago there was much respect for the superiors and you never dare to raise a question to those sat with the power. In modern society today we see businessmen and politicians fall from grace each and every day, but back then it wasn’t as common and in some way the nihilistic ending is fitting for the movie. Despite all their hard work they still just can’t get to the real criminals.
What makes What Have They Done to Your Daughters? such an entertaining movie, apart from top notch acting and stunning photography by Franco Delli Colli, is the great combination of Poliziotteschi and Giallo that Dallamano uses throughout the movie. After setting up a conventional Poliziotteschi where clues are searched for, matched and then going after their suspects, gory deaths a fantastic mutilated corpses scene that is really good and definitely one of the best I have seen on screen in ages. No cheap effects here it’s all remarkable stuff. And this combo which started in his previous movie What Have They Done to Solange?, also inspired several other directors to blend the two genres such as Sergio Martino’s excellent The Suspicious Death of a Minor scripted by maestro Ernesto Gastaldi, and Alberto Negrin’s Red Rings of Fear that both play off the underage prostitution Giallo/Polizioteschi angle. Great movies indeed.
After setting up the crime and detective works scenarios, Dallamano throws in a masked, leather wearing killer stalking the district attorney Vittoria Stori [Giovanna Ralli]with a meat cleaver in traditional Giallo style. This gives some of that wonderful stalk and slash sequences that make the Giallo so loveable, and then there is a brilliant car chase sequence that goes on for ages, but feels like a few minutes because it’s so well composed. Inspector Silvestri [Claudio Casinelli] almost has his main suspect within his reach but the killer escapes and takes off on a motorcycle with Silvestri in hot pursuit blasting down small back streets (which is always a joy to see as it probably explains why they always have those damned small cars in Italian Poliziotteschi) before taking to the off road and speeding to safety through a train tunnel. Leaving Silvestri fuming as he once again just by inches misses his man. And this is the way the movie plays out all the way through, Silvestri hot on the heels and just by a fraction missing the suspects as the plot twists and turns towards the finale.
Apart from the great narrative, What have they done to your daughters also has a fantastic score by Stelvio Cipriani, the masterful composer that I feel is easily on par with Morricone's versatillity and tremendous amount of varied genre scores. Featured on several compilation albums the title track to La polizia chiede aiuto is also featured on the great compilation CD The Sound of LOVE + DEATH that can be found as part of the now out of print Luciano Ercoli 3disc box set released by NoSHAME films a few years back. A really fabulous CD that definitely showcases the great music of this equally fantastic composer, Stelvio Cipriani, and has been part of my Cinezilla playlist on my iPod for the last two years. (I have even got my kids singing along to Franco Micalizzi’s title tack to Umberto Lenzi’sNapoli Violenta this summer so the passing on of parental interests is going fine so far.)
What Have They Done to your Daughters? Is a fantastic little gem that engaged me profoundly, as district attorney Stori and Inspector Silvestri try to bust the ring of child molesters. It’s an impressive and solid tale that on several occasions even outshines some of the more known movies of the genre, and I actually feel that this one may even be better than the more know What Have They Done to Solage? Thanks to the guys at Shameless Screen Entertainment it’s finally available on DVD once again and you get the English dub, so no more falling behind trying to keep up with the Italian dialogue with out subtitles of the Mondo Home Entertainment release of 2005 and the early 2000 Redemption release. The only down side to this release is that I would have preferred to have the Italian dialogue with optional English subs, but you can’t get everything you ask for and just a English dub is fine because this is one of hundred of Italian movies that Nick Alexander worked on the dubbing with, which always signifies a decent well worked dialogue.
Image: 16x9 Anamorphic Widescreen
Audio: English Dialouge, 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo
Extras: Trailers for Tonino Valerii’sMy Dear Killer, Aldo Lado’sNight Train Murders, Sergio Martino’sTorso, Corrado Farina’sBaba Yaga (which Shamless painstakingly restored to HIS vision of the movie, not the butchered version available previously), Ruggero Deodato’sPhantom of Death , Lucio Fulci’sBlack Cat and the theatrical trailer for What Have They Done to Your Daughters?