They Paid with Bullets

I guess the title clues you in - this is a Eurocrime film set in Chicago during Prohibition, with many a Spaghetti Western actor in a zoot suit with white spats. Peter Lee Lawrence plays Erik, a hoodlum controlling part of the city. A petty war starts up when some of Erik's goons get machine gunned while transporting hooch into the city, and that shipment is saved thankfully by drifter Frank, who is added quickly to the ranks.

Frank likes what he sees when he gets an eyeful of Erik's girlfriend (doing the trot or God knows what dance they did back then - electric boogaloo or whatever). Frank also helps track down the guys who attacked Erik's shipment, which leads to many folk getting bloodily machine gunned as we're introduced to the rest of the mobsters in Chicago. Like Irish, a guy who doesn't look remotely Irish, and some other guys. There's also a Mr Big who wants to bring them all together into one huge gang, which Erik isn't too happy with. Better bust out those machine guns again!

Even though there's not a single likeable character within the whole film, there's still wall to wall bloody violence and many a gun battle as the police and the various gangs take on each other. There's also some early nudie action that I wasn't expecting. The only character with any kind of depth is Peter Lee Lawrence as the messed up Erik, who is mentally unbalanced, likes to play with dolls, and isn't that great in a gun fight. The guy who plays Frank mainly cracks his knuckles and smokes.

I liked the 'the end....?' type ending though, gave me a chuckle as I sat in my rocker, cane in one hand, brandy in the other.