Oh dear! You know you've fallen pretty far down the Euro-crime rabbit hole when you're seeking out, watching, or (worse yet) reviewing ultra-obscure movies like this one.
Maurizio Merli plays an Italo-American Journalist uncovering a major corruption scandal having to do with Spanish oil imports with Hugo Stiglitz as his trusty camera friend. Things get complicated when secretive rich widow Nadiuska (CONAN THE BARBARIAN's mother) confides in him some secret details behind an assassination which leads to some fisticuffs, rape, and revenge involving Merli's girlfriend.
This lurid and downbeat film doesn't really have much action and Gianni Siragusa's staging and direction never really rises to even the level of Fernando Di Leo. However it does feature a lot of interesting shots of early 80's Madrid with a lot of the same locations, props, music, and actors from NIGHTMARE CITY. Hell, I'd wager that both movies were made simultaneously. Even the same ambulance appears in both movies! Stelvio Cipriani's score hits most of the same notes including another goofy disco song during a pointless striptease sequence in a sleazy nightclub.
There's a higher than average nudity level in the movie, mainly on the part of Merli's (quite beautiful) girlfriend Lili Carati who gets awfully violated by greasy henchmen led by the ubiquitous Manolo Zarzo and the even more ubiquitous (and un-billed) Riccardo Petrazzi. Maybe this was Petrazzi's revenge for the two fatal shootings he'd received from Merli earlier in THE CYNIC THE RAT AND THE FIST and ROMA A MANO ARMATA? I can only imagine.
Fans of Francisco Rabal will be delighted to hear his actual voice used in dubbing the Spanish language version of this film, which is all I've been able to locate so far.
