Season for Assassins (1975)

Within the Italian poliziottesco genre, there was a sub-genre of “youth gone wild” films.  These films would typically portray the Italian youth as entitled, violent sociopaths who committed crimes out of sheer boredom.  Savage Three, Like Rabid Dogs, and Young, Violent, Dangerous are all examples of this sub-genre.  Season for Assassins is another such film, but in this film’s case there’s more focus on the loved ones of the young criminals and how their lives are impacted by the selfish acts of said criminals.

Season for Assassins focuses on the life of a young petty-thief named Pierro, played by Joe Dallessandro.  Pierro has aspirations of becoming a criminal kingpin by working his way up from the bottom of the underworld.  He and his hooligan friends are shown pulling off burglaries for small sums of money, when of course they’re not riding around Rome terrorizing those who get in their path.  The opening plays out much like the opening of A Clockwork Orange, but that’s as far as the comparisons go.  Gradually, different characters in Pierro’s life are introduced.  We learn that Pierro is a father to a newborn and that he has a wife named Rossana.  Rossana is a former prostitute who is now committed to being a mother, even though Pierro is neglecting both her and the child.  We are also introduced to Pierro’s family priest, Father Eugenio, who has faith in the young man and attempts to help Pierro stay on the straight and narrow, despite Pierro constantly brushing him off.  Finally, a third significant character enters Pierro’s personal life, a naïve, young girl named Sandra, who Pierro strikes up a romantic relationship with.  These three characters will all eventually be negatively impacted by Pierro’s selfish and destructive lifestyle.  In one particular case, the impact is fatal.

While Pierro is going around wreaking havoc, a very jaded and disgruntled police captain, played by screen legend Martin Balsam, is nipping at the heels of Pierro and hoping to finally set the right trap that catches the hoodlum.  Balsam’s character is supposed to act as the counterpoint to Father Eugenio.  Where Eugenio sees hope for the young man, Balsam sees a thug and lost cause who will inevitably hurt and/or kill several people before he gets himself killed or caught.  I suppose another parallel could be drawn from this and A Clockwork Orange in terms of the debate over whether or not criminals can truly be reformed.  Unfortunately, this question is handled rather clumsily in Season for Assassins.

It’s commendable that director Marcello Andrei attempts to construct emotional depth within the characters of his piece, but most of them still come off as one dimensional.  With the Pierro character, specifically, there’s a scene where he’s shown to be physically ill by the violent actions that he allows to occur against one of his loved ones.  However, this is the only moment in the movie where the character seems to show any remorse or humanity.  We are never given Pierro’s backstory to have a better understanding of how he got to this point in his life and potentially feel some empathy for the character.  Another problematic aspect to the film is that Andrei can’t seem to decide if he’s making a melodrama or an exploitation film.  The scenes between Pierro and his young mistress, Sandra, bounce from being honest and genuinely dramatic one minute to being sleazy and exploitative the next.  It makes for a very uneven viewing experience.

Despite these flaws, Season for Assassins is certainly worth seeking out for the hardcore Eurocrime fans.  Joe Dallessandro brings a sadistic charm to the Pierro character, which is entertaining to watch.  The character may be one note but Dallessandro plays that note well here.  Balsam’s portrayal of the grizzled, old police captain brings some class and legitimacy to the picture.  And Andrei peppers in enough violence and action to keep things interesting throughout the runtime, even if it is 10 to 15 minutes too long.  Season for Assassins isn’t going to show you something you haven’t seen before from the crime drama, but you could definitely do much worse from this ever broad genre of film.

MVT: Joe Dallessandro

Make or Break Scene: Bumper car scene – Attack on the young couple

Score: 6.5/10

Fango Bollente (The Savage Three) 1975 

There is an air of unique pulpishness to the Poliziotteschi genre. Determined super cops and mafia shenanigans make for one of the most fascinating and exciting sub-genres in cinema. But there is a flipside to this genre. One that delves into the human psyche and of the time politics.

Fango Bollente (The Savage Three) poses two questions. Are we a product of our time or is it human nature to commit acts of violence? Vittorio Salerno attempts to answer these with a truly fantastic film.

Ovidio (Joe Dallesandro) leads a trio of everyday blue collar workers who live on a hair trigger outside of their working lives. Stress at work and the expectations of society is what charges the trio's hate. An all too familiar story. One simple act of road rage sets a bloody and violent series of events into motion. Inciting crowd violence at Football matches, carjackings, murders and rape are a part of the day to day reprehensible behaviour of the gang. But with Salerno’s equistic direction the film never crosses over into sleazy territory (For that see the the 1976 film Violence for Kicks)

Dallesandro, deep into his Poliziotteschi run, excels as the uniquely handsome and charming Ovidio and thanks to his performance has managed to elevate Fango into the upper echelons of great Polizio films.

The films visuals should not go understated. Thanks to a superb restoration by Camera Obscura, Fango can finally be seen in the way it was meant to be. The highlight of the film being the set piece including the murder of a truck driver. A scene shot in slow motion manages to capture the pure hatred in the crime.

A highlight of any Poliziotteschi is the music and not without merit the film is scored by the incredibly underrated Franco Campanino. A fantastic theme that plays out to a great showdown between the law and Ovidio at the end of the film.

MVT: Dallesandro is fantastic in his role as the dashingly dangerous Ovidio.

Make or break: The Football riot. One simple act of violence sends hundreds into a rage

Score: 8/10

A Hyena in the Safe (1968)

Comic book, cartoon, and now film character Harley Quinn had a pair of hyenas as pets (though they didn’t make an appearance in the Suicide Squad movie; more’s the pity).  They’re names were Bud and Lou (get it?), and they obeyed her as dutifully as any lap dog might.  I thought they were a great choice for her character, not least because I always had a thing for hyenas.  I don’t know what it is, but, outside of having Bionic Bigfoot as a bestie, a hyena would be my second choice (at least when I was a lad).  Odd, really, since there’s so much else about the animals that puts me off.  They stink.  Sure, they have a jaw that can deliver five hundred pounds of pressure per square inch, but they’re also scavengers; hardly the most auspicious of traits.  They always look like they have mange (hey, maybe they do).  Then there’s that laugh, that shrill cry that would get on my nerves no end if I had to listen to it daily.  Come to think of it, what the hell did I ever think made these beasts so attractive?  Unironically, there is no hyena, literal or figurative, in Cesare Canevari’s A Hyena in the Safe (aka Una Iena in Cassaforte).  Considering all the other ultra-hip flourishes in the film, I’m more than a little surprised by this decision.

Six criminals from all over (Germany, Spain, France, Italy, England, and Tangier) converge on a mansion.  The group has reunited to open the safe full of diamonds that they stole from a bank in Amsterdam, and each of these louts has one of the six keys needed to open the safe.  Tensions rise, and things get just a little weird when one of them can’t find his key.

Canevari showcases a wicked hand for stylistic touches from start to finish.  As Klaus’ (Stan O’Gadwin) car pulls up to the estate, his headlights start off in the distance and stop immediately in front of the camera.  He fires up a butt in complete darkness, the only light the cherry on the cigarette.  Carina (Karina Kar) comes on the scene, and as she walks through the pitch-black night, she is suddenly illuminated by Klaus’ headlights.  Later, her legs take center frame in the foreground, moving to reveal Anna (Maria Luisa Geisberger), the ringleader.  Mirrors and such are used deftly throughout the film.  Junkie Albert (Sandro Pizzochero) goes into withdrawal, and the camera angles and cutting reflect his torment, twisting and turning like his insides.  Everyone is dressed up like they’re going to a carnival (though they never attend it, there is one going on out in the streets, but I believe these people would have dressed the same no matter what).  The word “Fine” sits in a corner of the screen for the last few minutes of the film, out of focus, a large, yellow blob drawing your attention until it’s actually time for the credits to roll.  The thing about all of this is that this movie is far longer on style than it is on sense.  Sometimes this is okay, even fitting, but here I just found myself being confused much of the time.

This disarray, I’m beginning to think, is intentional, not incompetence.  First off, the film was made in the Psychedelic Sixties, when chaotic editing and non sequiturs were a common practice in line with the youth counterculture of the day (heavily influenced by the burgeoning drug culture of which Albert has become a victim).  As such, this movie fits in nicely with any given episode of Laugh-In or The Banana Splits or just about any other filmic or televised media that tried to be in touch with the youngsters.  I think you get the idea.

 Second off, the plot is a cat’s cradle of internecine manipulations, with everyone trying to fuck over everyone else, and duplicity is the byword of the day.  Juan (Ben Salvador) puts the moves on Albert’s gal Jeanine (Cristina Gaioni), who may or may not have lifted the key off Albert.  Anna tries to align herself with Juan against Steve (Dmitri Nabokov), then it turns out she is really in cahoots with Steve.  And it goes on from there.  The point is, the way the film is constructed, we can rarely trust what we are seeing because of the information skipped between scenes.  We are left in the same state of doubt and suspicion because we are adrift in the story the same as the film’s characters.  This is only reinforced by the constant extreme closeups of everyone’s eyes.  They accuse, they stare disaffectedly, they lust, they suspect, often all at the same time.  And we can trust none of them.  This leads to the CCTV that watches all of the characters and through which we will observe a standoff between two of them late in the runtime.  

Third off, I think the film may ultimately be a portrayal of one of the character’s descent into Hell and madness.  The film is loaded from stem to stern with oddly sinister touches, and one of the film’s final beats has this particular character go insane in a phantasmagoric onslaught of images.  It’s the culmination of the queasy mélange of incidents that begins with the avarice of all the characters and moves swiftly downhill from there.

There is also an uneasy playfulness in the film, most singularly captured by the Burt Bacharach-ian score that persistently pummels the audience’s ears (like, say, a hyena’s cries?).  Think of the main title theme to the 1967 Casino Royale, and you have an idea (even though I quite like that song, hearing it every couple of minutes becomes tedious).  It distracts and even detracts from the film’s innately tense premise.  Furthermore, there is the character of Callaghan (Otto Tinard), an odd, older man in a bowler hat who just sort of meanders through the movie.  At one moment in the film, a character states in direct address, “We’ve arrived at the last scene, and only you and I remain to act it out.”  There is also a variety of deathtraps and gadgetry that would be perfectly at home in a James Bond or a James Bond knockoff film of the day, including, but not limited to, an electrified garage door, a crypt that opens to reveal a lair of sorts, a room that floods with water, etcetera.  If anything, it’s these elements that take the film down from the heights it could have achieved more than its anarchic editing does.  A Hyena in the Safe is one of those films worth seeing more as an oddity than as any sort of required viewing.

MVT:  The film has style to spare, and it spares nothing in its style.

Make or Break:  I think that the second or third time you hear the film’s score, you’ll know whether or not you can endure it for the film’s remainder.

Score:  6.5/10        

Killer Cop (1975)

Matteo (Claudio Cassinelli) is an Italian cop muddling his way through the daily routine of chasing down drug smugglers and general scofflaws.  However, his life takes a turn for the dramatic when a hotel lobby is bombed by scag fiend Franco (Bruno Zanin) and his cohorts, Rocco (Paolo Poiret) and Falena (Valeria D’Obici).  

It is difficult to discuss Luciano Ercoli’s Killer Cop (aka La Polizia Ha Le Mani Legate) without talking a little bit about the political climate in Italy at the time of its production.  I also feel it is necessary to state that I’m in no way an expert on the particulars of this point in the nation’s history except for extreme generalities, so I’ll paste together what I think is enough to give you an idea (from some admittedly hastily assembled internet research, so take it for what it is).  This is because the film doesn’t deal with the usual nefarious criminal element we’re used to seeing in many Eurocrime films (which are still reflective of the time, just not quite like this).  This one deals with domestic terrorism.  Now, the Seventies in Italy are often referred to as the Years of Lead due to the massive amount of bombings and shootings perpetrated by activists on both the right and the left.  No one was spared, be they factory workers, police officers, students, or politicians.  The culprits were just as diverse as the victims with affiliations from communist to fascist and everything in between (and probably a few outside of all of them).  Supposedly, this film’s plot was inspired by the 1969 bombing of the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura headquarters (known as the Piazza Fontana Bombing), but from what I gathered the explosion is the only actual link between truth and fiction.  

In mid-Twentieth Century Italy, one almost needs a score card to keep track of the factions, their ideologies, and their activities, and one would still likely wind up with one hell of a tangle of threads to navigate.  Though one really has to wonder at what point is the line crossed between politics and bloodshed, especially in one’s own backyard?  What I mean is, when does a person go from being an activist to simply being a killer?  While this question does intrigue me, it doesn’t seem to intrigue the filmmakers, because it is taken as given that this is the atmosphere in which these characters live.  This is the Italy with which Matteo and company regularly deal.  Ergo, it requires no explanation to an audience, and for people unfamiliar with this aspect of the country’s past, it can be a bit confusing.  Even blame for the hotel bombing is nebulous, with characters on a tram blaming “the Reds,” “the fascists,” and “the anarchists,” by turns.  Since no one can pin down who did the deed, their purpose goes out the window.  It’s just another act of brutality to the common person, the actors inconsequential since there seems to be no overt discussion about the incidents after they occur (except in their narrative role).  The incidents themselves are the sum total of the perpetrators’ statements.  We assume that Franco, Rocco, and Falena are leftist militants, simply from their home.  Rocco and Falena are shown briefly watching a news report about the bombing.  Their apartment is small, their attitude casual, bohemian in some respects (as we’ve been taught to identify through film watching).  Again, we are given no introduction to the characters, and the scene doesn’t linger long enough to fill in any details.  It’s only after the very young Franco appears at this apartment that we understand that the three are in collaboration.  Meanwhile, Papaya (Sara Sperati), Matteo’s confidential informant and casual lay, is a weed-smoking college student.  She passes rumors and intelligence to him, but she is somewhat reluctant, considering herself on the side of the left-leaning students rather than the right-leaning police.  It’s an indication of the obstacles a cop like Matteo has to overcome to seek justice, as well as being indicative of the society on a whole.  

Despite their being the hands though, the bombers are not masterminds of any stripe.  At the time, there was the notion in Italy of a “strategy of tension” being played on the country.  This refers to the theory that there were nefarious forces at work behind the scenes, fomenting violence to their own ends.  Since communism was growing in popularity in Italy, naturally Western forces (read: the United States) would want this tamped down.  After all, this was at the height of the Cold War.  It makes sense, then, that agencies like the CIA and so forth would use whatever methods they needed to in order to keep Italy capitalist.  That said, while I know of no concrete evidence this was actually done in Italy, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if it had been, but still…  The puppet masters behind the bombing are not identified to the viewers.  Their minions are, to be sure.  But the actual power brokers pulling the strings are enigmatic.  They are shown in single shot scenes, their faces never revealed (with the exception of their assassin played by Giovanni Cianfriglia), though they also make no real effort to remain in the shadows of the frame.  

Two of the main characters wear eyeglasses, and for me this is a statement that the general populace (left and right) cannot see the truth (though one is also clearly more myopic than the other).  And still the villains’ motivations remain ambiguous.  They state that only a pylon was supposed to be blown up as a protest.  Why?  For the right?  For the left?  We’re never told, and therein lies the interesting bit.  The bosses use the leftist students to do their dirty work.  The fact that they claim no credit (even though it was a botched job to begin with) or speak at all in terms of their movement’s purpose implies that there is none outside of the anarchy created for their own ends (maybe they’re just anarchists?).  This is further reinforced by how they deal with the fallout, and it’s hinted that this was the plan either way.

Yet in the midst of all these maneuverings, there are still honest men.  Aside from the aforementioned Matteo and Luigi, there is Minty (Arthur Kennedy), the gruff but earnest judge in charge of the investigation.  He is a no-bullshit, all-business type of guy, and he doesn’t play politics or suffer fools.  Naturally, this irks those who do, and even despite Minty’s strict adherence to the law, it’s shown that he is still blocked and duped by these exterior/extraneous forces.  This is not to say that he is gullible enough to be completely hornswoggled but certainly just enough to be frustrated by his partial failures.  Still, we get the feeling that he has been here before, and he will be here again.  In a way, this mirrors Matteo and his very on-the-nose love for Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.  Nonetheless, the “white whale” he and Minty pursue is one worth chasing.  This is not merely a quest for vengeance.  This is a search for justice.  That this is ultimately confounded to some degree echoes the vexation of the country and its people, subjected to forces beyond their control, unable to conquer them, but resigned to their roles alongside them.

MVT:  The story is not what you would expect from this genre.  It is not action-packed, but it is extremely compelling from the opening to the ending.  That there are elisions of time and exposition in the narrative may cause confusion, but (at least for me) it makes sense by the end (mostly).

Make Or Break:  The hotel bombing is the standout.  It is clearly done on a small budget, but each of its cuts achieves a nice sense of verisimilitude and sustained horror.  The wide shot at its culmination sums up all that needs saying as well as providing the through line that will touch the characters’ lives for the rest of the film.

Score:  7.25/10