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

Free Hand for a Tough Cop (1976)

Notorious hood Brescianelli (Henry Silva) kidnaps a young girl with a kidney problem, and the eponymous tough cop, Antonio (Claudio Cassinelli), is given the titular free hand to track him down.  To that end, he busts former Brescianelli associate Sergio Marazzi (Tomas Milian), also known as Garbage Can/Monnezza, out of prison.  In turn, the duo enlists the help of three other hardened criminals, Calabrese (Biagio Pelligra), Vallelunga (Giuseppe Castellano), and Mario (Claudio Undari).  Time is running out.

Uneasy allies are nothing new in cinema, especially in the realm of Poliziotteschi.  Having them be cops and criminals is perhaps the clearest way of juxtaposing their differences and generating instant tension.  Likewise, it’s also the most expedient way of emphasizing their similarities.  Antonio is a cop in the Dirty Harry mold.  He was transferred to Sardinia because he’s so rough in performing his duties.  He’s brought back to Rome specifically for this case because he’s such a hardass.  The police can’t handle the situation playing strictly by the book.  In his first meeting with Monnezza, Antonio knocks the man out and kidnaps him.  Antonio is quick with his gun and his fists.  Procedure does not suit him.  He cajoles the trio of train robbers into helping him (he doesn’t tell them he’s a cop at first, and when he does, their commonalities make it almost a non-issue).  He allows a couple of jerks to rob a movie theater, with Vallelunga stating they’re “just kids having fun” (don’t worry, Antonio catches up to them later).  He also has no misgivings about letting Calabrese and his boys tote guns around Rome, shooting the place up and brutalizing everyone in their path.  At one point, Antonio leaves the sleazy Mario alone with a housekeeper, and the baddie is knee deep in raping her before Antonio stops him (and even this is practically accidental).  Further, he’s angrier with Mario for killing a person of interest than for attempting to rape an innocent woman.  Antonio is, in effect, the same as the crooks with whom he aligns himself.  Both sets are doing what they do, and they do it without hesitation, and what they do is basically the same (earn a living being thugs).  The only separation between guys like Antonio and worse criminals like Brescianelli is that Brescianelli is completely heartless.  Yes, all of them are willing to kill to get what they want, but only Brescianelli and his crew would stoop to endangering a child.  Everything else is fair game.

Monnezza is the outlier in the group.  He wants nothing to do with any of them, constantly complaining about the situation in which he finds himself.  Nevertheless, he’s also the hero of the piece, moreso than Antonio.  It’s Monnezza who finally finds the girl and prevents her death at Brescianelli’s hands.  Monnezza is a trickster character, a performer who lulls everyone around him into a state of ease.  His role as an actor is accentuated by his appearance or, I should say, appearances.  His hair is a massive afro, in combination with his scraggly beard, making him look like a bum.  He wears guy liner (or Milian just has incredibly dark, lush eyelashes), giving him a flamboyant air.  Monnezza also loves to appear in costume to deceive his enemies.  He dresses up like a telegram delivery boy, a priest, and a shepherd, to name just three, so he can either gain entry or information from people.  But underneath this, Monnezza is most assuredly a schemer and a man to be taken seriously.  After his brother is unsuccessfully targeted by Brescianelli, Monnezza pays a late night visit to the man who fingered him.  He plays a game with the guy, offering him two glasses of milk, one regular, one poisoned.  Yet even this is a pretense by Monnezza.  Outwardly playing the boisterous clown, he is shrewder than all the other characters in the film put together.

What I think marks Umberto Lenzi’s Free Hand for a Tough Cop (aka Il Trucido e lo Sbirro) as a superior Poliziotteschi is its self-consciousness.  People who don’t know better will think they have accidentally sat down for a Spaghetti Western, as the film opens with scenes from one (to the best of my knowledge, neither directed by Lenzi nor starring Milian, funny enough).  The film’s soundtrack even blares out a Spaghetti Western theme, and the title credits font is pure Spaghetti Western.  Only after a little over a minute of cowboys blazing hellbent for leather through Monument Valley are we shown that this is actually a film being shown to a bunch of convicts.  There is a shot of the film projector itself which holds for several seconds.  What Lenzi is saying, in other words, is that the crime story you’re about to watch is as much of a fantasy as the romantic, mythologized Old West of the cinema.  To that end, the characters and plot are generic (with the exception of Monnezza, the only one who understands that this is all a story, all bullshit, and unimportant except for his role to play in it).  By this time, audiences had seen enough Clint Eastwoods and Charles Bronsons and Maurizio Merlis to get the shoot first, ask questions later method of street justice with which this film is saturated.  This is also the reason why Silva’s Brescianelli is such a rattlesnake-mean son of a bitch.  The very act of casting Silva, having appeared in plenty of Eurocrime films by this point, is sufficient to flesh out anything and everything an audience needs to understand the character.  Free Hand for a Tough Cop is a puppet show, its genre being the stage, its characters the puppets.  But it’s Monnezza who pulls their strings, and it’s Lenzi who pulls Monnezza’s.

MVT:  The film’s self-awareness is its distinguishing factor.

Make or Break:  The full flavor of the film is captured within its opening minutes.  It is equal parts disorienting and engaging.

Score:  7.5/10

Death Occurred Last Night (1970)

Amanzio Berzaghi  (Raf Vallone) pleads with top cop Duca Lamberti (Frank Wolff) and Duca’s smartass subordinate Mascharanti (Gabriele Tinti) to find Amanzio’s missing daughter Donatella (Gill Bray/Gillian Bray).  Even though she’s twenty-five and well over the threshold of adulthood, she’s also mentally challenged and has the maturity level of a three-year-old.  Plus, Donatella’s a full-blown flirt who “loves doing anything men ask of her,” forcing her father to keep his apartment locked down like a fortress.  Now it’s a race to see who will find the culprits first and what will happen to them afterward.

Duccio Tessari’s Death Occurred Last Night (aka La Morte Risale A Ieri Sera) is a Eurocrime/Poliziotteschi film, but it hews slightly closer to an American Police Procedural in its general approach to the narrative.  The film isn’t action-packed like, say, The Big Racket or Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man.  It is very much a slow burn with a slow build, focusing on the banality of the day-to-day tasks of investigating a crime in Milan.  It is interesting, then, for how unexploitive the majority of the film is in terms of violence, how very exploitive it is in terms of sex.  The hookers shown all do their damnedest to put it all out there, and they drop their clothing like they would a used tissue.  There also seems to be a very conscious decision on the part of Tessari in the casting and depiction of Donatella.  Without being too indelicate or insensitive, she is closer in the looks department to a model than to someone most people would identify as mentally challenged.  She dresses in apparel designed to show off her womanly assets, and there is even a lingering shot of her trying to figure out how to put on her bra, which focuses almost exclusively on her breasts.  Further, as Amanzio describes the life he had with his daughter, the film gives off a very distinct whiff of incest.  This, thankfully, is never explored, and their relationship is nothing more than one of familial love, giving more power to this father’s anguish.

That said, I think the juxtaposition of the hookers with Donatella and their treatment by the filmmakers is relevant to one of the film’s themes, and it is one of objectification of women.  These women are essentially pieces of meat to be traded for money; their bodies their only value.  Were Donatella of sound mind, she may have been able to escape her captors or think her way out of her situation.  Because she can’t, she can only cry out for her father’s help.  Errera, the black hooker (essentially a double strike against her from her experience with Milanese society) whom Duca takes into his flat, understands her situation all too well, although she tries to play it as if she were in control of her life (“There’s no pimp behind me; I’m free”).  Nevertheless, later the truth will come out (“I’m still on the streets with a different pimp”), and it is this acknowledgement of her station that causes Herrera to go down a self-destructive path.  Additionally, it is another character’s desire to be wanted physically which plays a large part in the film’s resolution.  Yet this desire clearly rises from a place of loneliness and possibly from the consideration that it is physicality which defines beauty and worth.  This mindset would almost certainly emanate from the behavior of men in regards to hookers and the bodies of women like Donatella, who do not appear to have anything else to offer a person outside of their anatomy.

Beyond this is a debate on morality and the value of human life, and this is, intriguingly, played out not in the police activity with local pimp Salvatore (Gigi Rizzi) or the dealings with Amanzio, but in the scenes of Duca and his wife/girlfriend (Eva Renzi, whom I’ll refer to as his “lady,” since I couldn’t find a name given to the character either in the film’s subtitles or on IMDB) at home.  Duca is of the opinion that people are predominantly scum, and they are exploited by other people, who are equally scum-esque.  This first comes up when he visits his lady at her newspaper job and comments on the violent photos they use.  When she states that people are violent and they are merely reporting such, Duca retorts that he wants it to end, that in some way, by keeping these types of things in the public eye, they continue to be propagated.  Despite this cynical, world-weary view of life, Duca tries desperately to cling to a sliver of hope.  He plays guitar and sings while at home.  He is a giving romantic with his lady.  This also explains why he takes Errera into his home.  Ostensibly, it’s so she won’t be harmed by anyone or harm herself before he can find Donatella.  Yet, as the film plays out, his and his lady’s conversations with her tend to revolve around her inability to recognize her value as a human being.  In spite of this, neither one can stop the hooker’s self-harming tendencies.  This presents us with the central question of the film, and to my mind, it’s not the obvious one of who has the correct perspective on life; Duca or Errera.  Rather, I like to think that it takes for granted a pessimistic attitude toward mankind and instead asks “why should we care?”  Clearly, we can only answer such questions for ourselves, but I think that Tessari’s confidence in his audience’s ability to parse out this conundrum is what ultimately makes this film as strong as it is.

Another way this film differs from other Eurocrime films, at least to my reckoning, is in the stylistic techniques Tessari employs.  The sequences where Amanzio recounts Donatella’s kidnapping and their life before that are strung together in fractured time.  The editing leaps back and forth, with very little to anchor the viewer as to when the events take place.  When we flashback to sequences of the Berzaghis’ happiness, it is accompanied by an oddly rowdy lounge-tinged song, further reinforcing the idea that even when times were good, they were still filled with disarray and a sense of anxiety.  In all of this, the full exposition of the story is given while simultaneously cultivating a stark sense of chaos, mirroring Amanzio’s mental state and desperation.  As Duca and Mascharanti search the city, many of the scenes which we would expect to be loaded with banter or with Procedural dialogue are edited with music rather than any diegetic sound.  What they say in the course of their routines is inconsequential.  In fact, the audience could likely recite it all for them with little effort, because their dialogue in these scenes is not the point of the film.  The kidnapping investigation is merely the context for the content of a deeper conversation Tessari wants his audience to contemplate.  It shades the film as something of an odd duck at first glance, but once the veneer of genre is stripped away, what remains is a philosophical quandary which may have a simple end but hardly by simple means.

MVT:  Wolff does a very nice job of playing a man at odds with his existence.  He cares, but he can’t really show it in public.  He is frustrated by the world he encounters, but he believes it can be changed.  All encapsulated by an actor with a truly shrewd and withering glare.

Make Or Break:  Without divulging anything, the ending of this film is outstanding.  It satisfies while also putting a period on the end of sentence which is still a question.  The more I think on this film, the more affected I become by it and its final frame.

Score:  7.25

Live Like A Cop Die Like A Man (1976)

The neckerchief is fashion’s way of saying, “Sure, I put enough thought into my clothes to accent my outfit with something around my neck, but I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to learn how to tie a double Windsor knot.”  Achievers (both under and over) have sported neckerchiefs for years (but mostly in the 1970s).  The late, great Charles Nelson Reilly varied his Match Game outfits between neckerchief-centric and captain’s-hat-centric (and has even been known to chuck in the double whammy of both at once, much, I’m sure, to Gene Rayburn’s chagrin).  Fred (of Scooby Doo fame) strutted his stuff in the face of faux fiends and pseudo specters whilst engaging in the fine art of neckerchiefery (okay, I made that word up), and we all know this haute couture accessory was the real reason that Daphne was into him (hell, she even sported one of her own like they were twins or something).  It even forms the focal point and most distinguished feature (aside from the disturbingly short shorts) of the uniforms for the Boy Scouts Of America.  The inevitable question then becomes why has this always-fashionable length of cloth gone out of fashion?  Best guess?  Like so many things people thought were “far out” in the 70s, the power of hindsight and sobriety brought into clear focus just how lean its actual merits were (plus people needed more money for coke in the 1980s).  At least it would seem that way to the uneducated, but we know better, don’t we, gentle reader?  

Alfredo (Marc Porel) and Antonio (Ray Lovelock) are policemen who work in a special forces unit under the gruff but kind of unctuous superintendant (Adolfo Celi).  Their mission?  Chase criminals, murder them (rather publicly) with impunity, and stick their dongs in anything with a vagina.  After a fellow officer (Marino Masé) is brutally gunned down by the henchmen of Roberto (aka Bibi) Pasquini (Roberto Salvatori), the lads make it their sworn task to terrorize and take down the crime lord and his minions.  And stick their dongs in anything with a vagina during any lulls.

Ruggero Deodato is best known the world over for the incendiary quasi-shockumentary Cannibal Holocaust.  However, Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man (aka Uomini Si Nasce Poliziotti Si Muore, aka The Terminators) is proof-positive that the director was equally adept at the poliziotteschi subgenre (think Dirty Harry in Italy).  My understanding is that films like this one were a reaction against the escalating violence in Italy (and certainly around the world, to be fair).  Audiences wanted a certain type of sanitized street justice to help them deal with their feelings over their perceived lack of control and security.  By that same token, however, movies focused on career criminals were (and are) equally popular, yet these were typically more about the rise and fall of a criminal than a glorification of the lifestyle.  

As much as we like to watch the bad guys get offed without the messy complications and uncertainties inherent in a trial, there is a strong sociopathic vibe coming off Alfredo and Antonio.  Their expressions when killing (and they are killing these guys; it’s not like they were chasing them, and the baddies accidentally ran into a brick wall or somesuch) are either stony-eyed or eerily satisfied.  The leads are almost bloodthirsty in their pursuit of criminals, and they are not above a bit of torture and testicular trauma to get the answers they need.  And yet, the two also seem to be in a state of arrested development.  They room together and appear to have the exact same schedule/routine every day.  They do the sort of idiotic shit kids with BB guns and dirtbikes would do, but these two use real ammo.  The dynamic duo are also two of the most brazenly horny young men ever put on screen.  They ritually harass the superintendant’s secretary (Silvia Dionisio), asking with which of them she would like to have sex.  She, of course, succeeds in making them even hornier for her by saying she would have both of them and then a couple more men.  While searching Pasquini’s sister’s (Silvia’s younger sister Sofia Dionisio) apartment, the cops (literally) tag team the woman, who is apparently the 70s interpretation of a nymphomaniac.  But it’s the earnestness with which Alfredo and Antonio act that allows the audience to forgive some of their boorishness.  They never pretend to be anything than what they are, they don’t put on airs, and they don’t make excuses.  Plus, they kill bad guys, and that goes a long way.

Like so many of this type of film, it has a vignette sensibility in its structure.  Long stretches of the runtime seem to not deal at all with the conflict between Pasquini and his cronies and our leads.  Rather random, violent crimes just happen, our demoniac doublet arrive on the scene and kill everything in their path.  That these rather long sequences are not linked to the main story in any way other than that they involve our protagonists causes the mid-sections of the film (and those like it) to sag.  Granted, there’s enough violence and action to maintain a sense of excitement and tension, but as far as pacing goes, it’s horrid.  Funny enough, this is one of the eurocrime/poliziotteschi subgenres’ more charming attributes.  It may not be quality plotting, but it does give an air of authenticity (sometimes) to these films.  After all, as Allen Saunders so famously said, “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”  And this sense of verisimilitude is given a big assist in Deodato’s documentary style of filmmaking.  Handheld and dynamic camerawork combine in many of the action scenes (particularly the opening bike chase, which I found reminiscent of the acclaimed chase from William Friedkin’s The French Connection).  Filmmakers of today, please take note: Even with a wealth of handheld shots, this film never induces nausea, headaches, or both.  There’s a correct way to use cinematic techniques and there’s an incorrect way (not to say experimentation is bad, but failure is failure in any language).  This is the correct way, and the quality in the filmmaking makes for a damn good (if fairly deranged and sanguinary) buddy cop movie everyone should check out at least once.

MVT:  Deodato’s television commercial work taught him to work both quickly and with distinction, and these skills really shine through in this film.  Only a few years before making stomachs turn and audience’s feel like they needed a shower after watching his work, he put his stamp on a genre which far too often is little more than strictly generic.

Make Or Break:  The opening scene is not only a cracking good action sequence; it also sets up the stakes and levels at which the inhabitants of the film’s world are playing.  The criminals are not above dragging a woman along a sidewalk and stomping her already-dead face to get her valuables.  And the cops are not above causing thousands in property damage while pursuing them and summarily executing the criminals once the chasing is done.  

Score:  7.25/10             

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