Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the '70s

I managed to see this yesterday at the Day Of Crime festival in Manchester, and was blown away. Eurocrime is my favourite genre, but there's not much information available relating to it. Thank God then, that this documentary has been made and we can now see the genres stars and directors discussing all the crazy, funny, amazing stories about making these great films. It's a long doc, but it packs in so much information that the time just whizzes by! It's one of the best documentaries about film i've ever seen and REALLY needs to be more widely available for fans of the genre like myself!! Please make this available on DVD soon!!

In the 1970s, Italian genre cinema was pretty much fad oriented. Always looking to cheerfully (and decidedly shamelessly) rip off whatever genre was popular in America at the time, be they spaghetti westerns, sword & sandal epics, or hard-boiled and rather racy takes on gritty American cop films, such as The French Connection or Serpico, only of course being Italian, they put their own exploitative spin on things. These cop films were known as Polizioteschi films, or more popularly, Eurocrime.

Eurocrime! The Cop & Gangster Films That Ruled the '70s, explores the mentality behind this genre, the factors that played part, and the players themselves, with contributions from the likes of Fred The Hammer Williamson, John Saxon, Henry Silva, Franco Nero, Joe Dallesandro & Luc Merenda, as well as from the technical end, from Enzo G Castellari and Claudio Fragasso.

While not without its flaws- it could have been leaner (it clocks in at over two hours, with some of it coming across rather needless padding), and fails to get any contributions (although this is probably not the maker's fault ultimately, in fairness) from the likes of Fabio Testi, Tomas Milian and Umberto Lenzi, and unforgivably hardly even mentions Di Leo, who even I, a relative novice to the Eurocrime genre am aware of- it's still a well researched and often pretty funny documentary on a prolific for its time, but often overlooked genre of Italian exploitation, with some cool clips and an awesome '70s score throughout.

Any fan of Eurocrime flicks should definitely check this one out, as it's very probably the only documentary you'll ever see on the genre, and again while not without its flaws, is overall a decent, well made and researched effort, with lots of entertaining anecdotes.

8/10, very enjoyable doc, and recommended.

You get a real sense of the players, stars, and styles of the movies with loads of interviews and clips. Sure it doesn't talk to everyone and glosses over some people, but for an overview it's very well done and gets a lot across. At times it has a low production value, but it's not too obtrusive. You'll want to track down a lot of movies after watching it!

Everything you wanted to know about a genre you did not know existed. This is a fascinating look at the Eurocrime genre presented in a really entertaining way. A must watch.

Any fan of the 1970's Eurocrime genre will obviously enjoy this documentary, which features plenty of clips from this wonderful genre of (mostly) Italian films as well as interview clips from a lot of the major players like Franco Nero, Luc Merenda, Antonio Sabato, and director Enzo Castellari. I liked this doc a little better than some of the more recent ones though because instead of mixing in "fan-boy" interviews to handle the more in-depth analysis of the genre, the filmmakers actually did the heavy lifting themselves while wisely keeping the fan-boy gushing behind the scenes. Nor were there the typical pandering interviews of more well-known modern-day celebrities who may have been "influenced by" but really had nothing to do with the genre. (To be specific, the filmmakers didn't seek out Quentin Tarantino, who would served as BOTH a gushing fan-boy and a bit of celebrity pandering).

There is no denying the knowledge of some fan-boys like Tarantino, but this documentary still manages to impart a book-like knowledge of the genre by editing the player interviews into a kind of "power point" presentation. The documentary does a good job of explaining, for instance, the period and conditions where these movies were made, in a country which was at the time ridden with crime, corruption, violent mafiosi, and left-wing revolutionaries, but also one where people literally went to the movies 4-5 weeks on average and had an endless appetite for this kind of fare. You wouldn't think most of these movies would be any good given the rushed and impoverished conditions under which they were made, but they're actually MORE interesting on average than most of the over-produced Hollywood crapola you see these days, and it was no mistake that these cheap films also made up a lot of the America grindhouse filler that Tarantino et. al. spend so much time worshiping today.

I appreciated especially the interviews with the English dubbers like Michael Forrest and. I have personally said many bad things about these kind of guys over the years (especially when they managed to turn a serious Italian film into half-ass comedy), but they clearly had a difficult job and they took it a lot more seriously than perhaps I've really ever appreciated.

The only downside of this documentary is they missed a few of the major players like Tomas Milan (who I guess IS on the DVD extras), Barbara Bouchet, who really shouldn't have been that hard to find, and Fabio Testi. But I suppose that can't be helped. And obviously a lot people like director Fernand Di Leo are no longer with us. They do pay homage to Maurizio Merli (who is also dead) and Umberto Lenzi (who just refuses to do interviews with anybody), but I would have like to see more with Sergio Martino, who--whether he was available for an interview or not--was a lot more essential to the genre than Antonio Sabato or Joe Dallesandro. Still, these are minor quibbles. I would definitely recommend this overall.