L'amico del padrino

Keep in mind that watching this film is like eating a packet of Cheese and Onion crisps and you'll do alright. It's enjoyable enough when you watch it, but afterwards you won't really be analysing things.

Richard Harrison is a troubled man, not that you'd be able to tell from his stony face. He's a Vietnam vet, and he's also suffering from severe flashbacks of his twelfth birthday, where his mother and father got gunned down by the Mob and is sister raped. I'm not sure how this resulted in him working for the Mob, or even why they killed his parents at all, but let's go with the flow.

Harrison has a nifty way of killing folks: He's an expert in poison gas and keeps it contained in a zippo lighter. We first see him hooking up with the girlfriend of a Mafioso and after a lengthy sex scene, Harrison kills the Mob guy who was sleeping in the same room (I told you not to think too much about all this). Harrison lives on an island near Istanbul with his girlfriend Krista Nell. Nell thinks that Harrison is going to take her way, but when he ditches her for another kill job, she dumps him in a barrage of cuss words. Harrison isn't bothered mind you, because Erika Blanc has turned up on the island, and she's giving him the glad eye.

Harrison has a Vietnam buddy who is also a hitman and the whole mess seems to involve them working for different bosses and double crossing each other without killing each other. Or something like that. Let me break it down for you: First half of the film = Harrison bumping off mob bosses mixed with sex scenes. Second half of the film = Harrison trying do one last job while taking on waves of bad guys. It did the job for me.

Richard Harrison isn't going to go down in history as the greatest actor ever, but he's not bad as an action hero. This film has enough nudity and violence to keep you entertained, like a nudity and violence flavoured packet of crisps.

For a film made by Egyptian/Italian hack director Frank Agramma (who graced the world with the likes of "Queen Kong" and "Dawn of the Mummy")this is is a veritable masterpiece, even though as a violent Italian police thriller it is only a little better than middling. Expatriate American actor Richard Harrison plays a mob hit-man with a troubled past(he witnessed his father being murdered and his mother being fatally raped by mafiosi on the day of his 12th birthday party). He is stationed in Istanbul doing jobs for the unseen "godfather" when he is approached by a treacherous friend who gets him involved in drugs and a mob war, all the while plotting to take over his spot in the mafia hierarchy. Like a lot of these Italian films, and very unlike the Hollywood ones, this movie has a very morally ambiguous tone and decidedly cynical ending.

This movie is very similar to an earlier film, "The Long Arm of the Godfather". Both films feature the voluptuous Erika Blanc, but here she's pretty much reduced to a part of the scenery. She's teamed up, however, with Krista Nell in kind of a one-two punch of vintage "Euro-babes", and for Nell this might have been one of her best roles ever, playing a free-spirited mob moll "Layla" who meets a tragic end.

The movie was a Turkish co-production and features a lot of attractive Istanbul locations that would have done the local tourist board proud (although Blanc and Nell probably would have caused a riot running around Istanbul dressed like they are this movie). It's not a great movie by a long shot, but it's a mildly pleasant way to waste 90 minutes, I guess.

Cheap crime thriller from an Italian-Turkish co-production! In order to minimize costs, the Italian film industry occasionally filmed in Istanbul, Turkey. The Yesilcam studios there were the heart of a film industry that was at times the third largest in the world in the 1970s.

Sandals film hero Richard HARRISON plays a cold-snout mafia hitman who handles business in Istanbul for the Godfather. He murders with a gas hidden in the lighter. The guy is so bold that he sleeps with a mafia rival's voluptuous mistress (Krista NELL) in the bedroom and then takes out her drunk guy in the living room. But the killer suffers from childhood trauma and is still looking for the murderer who wiped out his entire family. When he meets an ex-girlfriend (Erika BLANC) again, events come to a head...

Lots of sleaze, sexiness to the point of despair and lots of local Istanbul color! Not an earth-shattering film, but a real sleaze of a gangster flick!

But a warning to all animal lovers: There is a violent scene in which an animal is slaughtered immediately. Not nice at all!