Exploito All’Italiana: Night Train Murders (Aldo Lado, 1975)

In the course of writing previous reviews for this ‘Exploito All’Italiana’ thread, I’ve made frequent references to “the great Italian rip-off machine” and suchlike, but how are we supposed to respond on occasions when this “machine” upsets our patronising critical notions by delivering a “rip off” that is actually considerably better than the source film it is imitating…?

In qualifying this assertion, I should probably admit straight away that, influential and epochal though it may be, I’m not a fan of Wes Craven’s ‘The Last House On The Left’ (1972). If that means I have to hand in my badge at the front desk and surrender my right to pass judgement on exploitation movies, then so be it, but what can I say? When cinema gets down to the ‘Last House..’ level of nastiness, I’m basically just too nice for this game, and, unless there’s some reassuringly legit good filmic artistry to go along with the sleaze, I’m bailing out.

Which, conveniently, is exactly where Aldo Lado comes in, with his film ‘L'ultimo Treno Della Notte’ (‘Last Stop on the Night Train’, aka ‘Don't Ride on Late Night Trains’, ‘Torture Train’ and ‘Xmas Massacre’, but best known in the English speaking world simply as ‘Night Train Murders’), which hit Italian screens in April 1975.

As you might well expect given the thoughts expressed in the preceding paragraphs, I have previously tended to avoid Italy’s attempts to cash-in on ‘Last House On the Left’ like the proverbial plague, and ‘Late Night Trains’ is, undeniably, an imitation of ‘Last House..’.  In terms of plot synopsis in fact, the two films are virtually identical, with Lado adding little to Craven’s minimal rape/murder/revenge scenario beyond the addition of a train.

(Of course, Lado may well have claimed he was taking his inspiration from Inger Bergman’s ‘Virgin Spring’ (1960) – the original source for ‘Last House..’ – but no prizes for guessing whether it was Bergman or Craven’s box office that the producers had in mind when they took this particular project to market.)(1)

Thank heavens then that Aldo Lado was far from your typical exploito-sleaze merchant. In fact, he is a director I am increasingly inclined to regard as some kind of unheralded savant of Italian genre cinema, at least on the basis of the three films by him I have seen to date. His two gialli (1971’s ‘Short Night of the Glass Dolls’ and 1972’s ‘Who Saw Her Die?’) are among the best, and most unconventional, films that genre has to offer, and as such, it was Lado’s name (along with admiring comments from several critical voices whose opinions I value) that finally convinced me to take a deep breath and press play on ‘Night Train Murders’.

And, without wishing to sound too pompous about it, I’m very glad I did, because, as it turns out, this is a far more challenging and rewarding film than its subject matter, promotional material and unsavoury reputation would ever have led me to expect.

Certainly, there is little in the film’s lengthy opening sequence – a tightly edited montage of footage of the bustling, pre-Christmas shopping streets of Munich, set to Demis Roussos’s exuberantly good-natured pop hit ‘A Flower is All You Need’ – to suggest that we’re about to take a stumble into bleak video nasty territory. Instead, it is happy merely to function as a lively and extremely skillful slice of visual storytelling, ensuring that, by the time they’ve boarded a train bound for Italy (heading back home for a family Christmas), we already feel as if we know our ostensible protagonists Margaret (Irene Miracle, who later appeared in Argento’s ‘Inferno’) and Lisa (Laura D’Angelo, who didn’t) pretty well.

Likewise, quick cutaways to the exploits of the characters we will subsequently know only as ‘Blackie’ (Flavio Bucci, who surprisingly went on to play Daniel the blind pianist in ‘Suspiria’ just two years later) and ‘Curly’ (Gianfranco De Grassi) – two teenage ne’erdowells who duck onto the train sans tickets to avoid pursuit from the local police – make as feel as if we’ve got their number too.

The two boys are live wire juvenile delinquents with a skeevy, junkie-ish look to them, capable of dumb and violent behaviour (rolling a drunken Santa Claus for small change, stealing an elderly lady’s fur coat), but – crucially – they are definitely not cold-blooded killers at this stage.

As the overcrowded commuter train departs from the station and the characters within it begin to interact, it soon becomes clear that, whatever qualms he may have had about helming a ‘Last House..’ rip-off, Lado definitely brought his A-game to this production. His direction here is extremely confident, drawing convincingly naturalistic performances from the young cast. Gábor Pogány’s photography meanwhile demonstrates a keen eye for stylish framing and visual beauty whilst remaining similarly grounded in naturalism, and the film keeps up a punchy, deliberate editing rhythm that ensures we’re soon deeply engrossed in the travails of our various characters, even though, on the surface of it, nothing terribly interesting has even happened to them yet.

In other words, this is basically just a really well made film, hitting a level of dramatic realism and technical acumen far above the norm for a mid-‘70s Italian genre flick… which of course only serves to make the depredations that eventually engulf our characters all the more difficult to swallow.

Needless to say, things soon get a bit unruly in the corridors of the train, as the two juvies beat up a ticket inspector in full view of a shocked family group, and – rather unexpectedly – their adventures get a bit kinky too, as Blackie corners a slightly older woman wearing a funeral veil in the toilet, and - in a moment of madness upon which the fate of all our characters turns - the nameless woman (played by Macha Méril, best known as the ill-fated psychic in ‘Deep Red’) decides to enthusiastically reciprocate his lewd advances, instigating one of the more uncomfortable (in both senses of the word) bouts of consensual sex that the cinema has to offer.

After this, a spirit of anarchy and misrule is very much abroad on the train, and, as strongly as Lado may assert his disgust at bourgeois hypocrisy elsewhere in the film, it is definitely not a nice spirit. It is no surprise that Margaret and Lisa feel pretty relieved when, as the train sits delayed at the next station, they realise they can shorten their journey by hopping across the tracks to take a different, overnight service back to Italy and, perhaps more importantly, can get away from those scary boys in the process.

It is here, as the two girls negotiate the ill-lit, wood-panelled compartments of the largely empty second train, that Lado flips the switch from the naturalism of the preceding scenes to a foreboding, quasi-expressionistic horror movie approach reminiscent of his earlier ‘Short Night of the Glass Dolls’. And of course, it comes as absolutely no surprise when, after settling down in apparent safety to enjoy the contents of their picnic hamper, the girls hear the by-now familiar sound of Curly’s harmonica echoing through the corridors.

What is more surprising – and represents ‘Night Train Murders’ most interesting deviation from the ‘Last House..’ template – is that the woman in the veil has not only accompanied the two boys onto the new train, but has effectively taken charge of their activities, egging her two new droogs on towards more extreme acts than they would likely have ever committed if left to their own devices, having apparently decided to ditch whatever her prior Christmas plans were in favour of some opportunistic sexual sadism.

Though European genre cinema offers more than its fair share of vamps, dominatrixes, sapphic prison warders and assorted other flavours of female predator, the subtlety with which Méril approaches her role here renders her a uniquely ambiguous and unsettling character. Avoiding any melodramatic over-playing or conventionally ‘monstrous’ gestures, she represents an outwardly anonymous, respectable citizen who can turn on a dime as the weight of suppressed desires and frustrations apparently rush to her head, before assuming the mask of innocent respectability once more as soon as it comes time to face the consequences of the crimes she has instigated.

In thematic terms, Lado seems keen here to explore the notion of the middle-class, adult world holding eventual responsibility for the violence and degradation that the younger generation (and, by implication, the more vulnerable/disenfranchised segments of society as a whole) inflicts upon itself. He expresses this idea pretty bluntly by cross-cutting between the terrifying ordeal the girls are experiencing on the train and a Christmas Eve party held by Lisa’s parents back in Verona – a grim affair in which marital infidelity, alcoholism and fatuous pronouncements about the breakdown of law and order seem to be the order of the day.

Arguably however, the director’s point is better made through Méril’s character, the calm, well-spoken adult who oversees the outrages the young people commit upon each other in the locked train compartment just as surely as state power manipulates Alex and his gang in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (clearly another key touchstone for the rapeier end of Italio-exploitation in this era).

Inevitably, it is the extended ordeal in the train compartment that forms the dark heart of ‘Night Train Murders’, and Lado and his collaborators build a suitably nightmarish atmosphere for what transpires, as dim bulbs shining through curtained windows project a sickeningly artificial blue/purple light that gives the compartment the theatrical, otherworldly feel of a space in which anything as possible, and in which conventional morality has entirely ceased to apply.

We won’t dwell here on the details of what transpires, but needless to say, it’s all as excruciating as you might fear, with the girls’ mute terror made horrifyingly palpable as they find themselves trapped in a kind of quasi-public S&M ritual from which no safe word will set them free.

To Lado’s credit however, he entirely avoids the titillating gore/slasher approach that many of his peers in Euro-horror might have favoured, instead ensuring that the indignities inflicted upon the victims remain grotesquely, almost pathetically, mundane – more in keeping, one imagines, with the conduct of an actual sexual assault than the stylised spectacle of some misogynistic Argento / Hitchcock fantasia.

When the first death occurs, it is random, unplanned, quick and nasty. With their latent psychopathy brought to the surface by Méril’s manipulation, the boys simply got carried away, and now everyone is in big trouble.

As viewers, we have borne witness to, and to some extent been carried along with, the flow of these terrible events, and, as the bodies of Lisa and Margaret are eventually ejected from the train window like so much human garbage, their belongings and Christmas shopping scattered alongside them on the bleak, nocturnal hillside, you’ll be liable to feel the shadow of some black spider crawling across your soul. It’s horrible, but it is precisely what the filmmakers intended.

After that, there’s nowhere really that ‘Night Train Murders’ can go, artistically speaking. But still, the final act must play out as promised. The killers must intersect with the waiting parents at the station, the truth must be discovered, and empty, soul-withering revenge must, eventually, be meted out. The “WHO ARE THE REAL MONSTERS HERE?” banner must be raised, and a black curtain of full spectrum misanthropy must be drawn down over proceedings.

As Lado simmers things down more to the level of a competently executed exploito-thriller for this final act, it is all dreadfully unpleasant, but regardless – it is the blue-lit horrors of the train compartment that will live on in your memory as Roussos’s absurdly inappropriate ballad returns to plead for peace and understanding over the end credits.

In the end, there’s not much of a helpful message anyone can take home from this atrocity exhibition, beyond perhaps the practical advice gamely offered by whichever foreign distributor came up with the idea of calling it ‘Don’t Ride on Late Night Trains’. Merry Christmas, everybody.

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(1) By way of further clarifying ‘Night Train..’s status as a ‘Last House..’ rip-off, You will of course note the slight similarity of original release Italian title (‘Last Stop..’), and,  rather more shamelessly, that the film was even foisted upon American viewers at various points in time as both ‘Last House: Part 2’ and ‘The New House on the Left’. Hedging its bets genre-wise, the latter release even featured an (admittedly very cool) poster illustration that appears to depict one of the girls on the train being attacked by ‘Blind Dead’-esque hooded zombies!

Exploito All’Italiana: Mad Dog Killer (Sergio Grieco, 1977)

Arriving towards the tail-end of the poliziotteschi’s ‘golden age’ in October 1977, the premise of Sergio Grieco’s ‘La Belva Col Mitra’ (which google tells me this translates literally as ‘The Beast With a Uterus’ – surely some mistake!?) most closely resembles that of Umberto Lenzi’s seminal ‘Almost Human’ (1974), telling as it does the unedifying tale of Nanni Vitali (Helmut Berger), a remorseless, adrenalin-crazed psychopath who has just broken out of prison with the help of his loyal gang of thugs, and  of Inspector Santini (Richard Harrison), the dogged cop who is hot on his trail.

Despite adopting this ‘Dirty Harry’-derived “cop vs psycho” framework however, ‘Mad Dog Killer’ (let’s just call it that and avoid the whole ‘uterus’ business) never really gets the engine running as either a police procedural or an action movie, with Grieco instead spinning the wheel in a different direction entirely. (1)

Clearly this was a pretty rushed, slap-dash production, and Grieco’s direction often feels pretty amateurish. Editing is ragged, continuity between shots is all over the place, and DP Vittorio Bernini’s framing and photography is the very definition of ‘perfunctory’, all of which suggests that this crew had little desire to compete in the high stakes game of ‘70s crime movies.

To highlight one of the movie’s more glaring technical shortcomings - we expect exterior shots during car chase sequences to be undercranked in films like this in order to create the illusion of speed, but how are we supposed to react to a movie that apparently can’t be bothered to re-adjust to the correct speed for interior car shots, thus lending the vehicles’ occupants the twitchy, insane mannerisms of hummingbirds?

Or, to put it another way, can you imagine the sheer amount of non-fuck-giving it takes to shoot footage like this and keep it in the final cut of your commercially released crime movie? Even Jess Franco – who was occasionally known to fake slow-motion by getting his actors to move slowly – must surely salute Grieco’s audacity here.

If questioned on the matter, I’d imagine Grieco’s answer would likely have been that there was no time to re-shoot, and anyway, it looks wild, so gives a fuck? Such is the punk-ass ideology that seems to prevail throughout ‘Mad Dog Killer’, and, once you get into the spirit of things, it’s difficult to deny that it suits the film’s unpalatable subject matter pretty well.

More problematically however, this approach also serves to make a nonsense of what should be one of the movie’s pivotal set-piece scenes, in which Berger’s gang carry out a raid on the factory where Marisa Mell’s character’s father works as a security guard, unaware that Harrison’s cops await them in hiding. It’s the perfect set-up for an absolutely storming, off-the-hook action sequence, but unfortunately things are conceived and staged in such a nonsensical manner that it falls completely flat, with logic, character motivations and physical geography all so woefully skewed that viewers are simply left confused, rather than enthralled.

You’d think a guy who spent most of the ‘50s and ‘60s making pirate and spy movies would be able to keep a better handle on things, but again, Grieco’s spirit whispers in my ear, who gives a fuck? I mean, this clearly wasn’t the kind of thing they were going for here anyway.

What they were going for, in a word, is *nastiness* - pure, nails-down-the-blackboard post-‘Last House On The Left’ grindhouse sadism. And, on that score, ‘Mad Dog Killer’ delivers in spades, subjecting us to a sweaty, gasoline-choked ordeal somewhat in the vein of Mario Bava’s ‘Rabid Dogs’ or Pasquale Festa Campanile’s Hitch Hike (if, admittedly, at rather the other end of the scale of cinematic competence).

As such, the movie’s REAL calling card sequence (or at least, one of two, along with the astonishing finale), occurs right out of the gate, as Berger and his gang kidnap the informer who got him put away in the first place and his wife (Giuliana, played by Marisa Mell), and drive them to an isolated quarry. Once there, Vitali has his men beat the informer to the point of death and bury him alive, pouring corrosive quick-lime over his barely conscious body. After forcing her to bear witness to this, Vitali then proceeds to rape Giuliana in the dust, an act he performs with the casual, emotionally numb brutality of a man carrying out a distasteful, but expected, duty.

Pretty vicious stuff by anyone’s standards, it was likely this scene that was primarily responsible for gaining ‘Mad Dog Killer’ an honourable mention in Section # 3 of the infamous DPP ‘Video Nasties’ list in the UK (making it one of very few crime films to achieve this dubious distinction), and indeed it sets the tone pretty well for the gruelling, mindless violence-packed rampage that comprises the remainder of the movie.

‘Mad Dog Killer’s main asset in pursuing its sundry outrages against taste and decency of course is Helmut Berger himself, who lends a startlingly intense performance to this haggard wreck of a movie. Potted online biographies of Berger would tend to suggest that the actor was at a particularly low ebb at this point following the death of his partner/patron Luchino Visconti in 1976, and it seems reasonable to assume that he channelled at least some of his grief and frustration into what was, at the time, a relatively rare foray into commercial/genre cinema on a CV dominated by more high-minded arthouse fare.

Berger was, of course, a fairly unsettling presence even at the best of times (Visconti famously stated that he was attracted to him as his perfect image of a “demonic, insane and sexually perverted man”), and he seems to have taken the opportunity with this role to take the more sinister aspects of his screen persona to fairly ludicrous extremes, oozing psychopathic menace with the kind of slavering glee rarely seen since the days of Todd Slaughter.

I’m sure there must be tales to tell about Berger’s conduct and state of mind whilst making this film, but I don’t know any of them, so I’ll limit myself to simply observing that he looks as if he’s having the time of his life whenever he is called upon to commit acts of torture, casual brutality and sexual assault, conveying a sense of misanthropic, death-trip fatalism that feels disturbingly authentic, even as he mugs and stares and chews up the scenery like a pro.

Meanwhile, you’d be hard-pressed to find a greater contrast to this approach to acting than that provided by Berger’s opposite number here, Richard Harrison. Appearing a few years after his second wind as a spaghetti western regular had come to an end, and a few years before he accepted Godfrey Ho’s fateful call on the Garfield phone for ‘Ninja Terminator’ and it’s endless cut’n’paste sequels, Harrison must be the least confidence-inspiring avenging cop in poliziotteschi history. Sweaty, red-faced, with thinning hair plastered across his forehead, Inspector Santini looks like a shaky ex-alcoholic trying very hard to stay on the wagon, who really doesn’t need this shit in his life.

Convention dictates that Harrison must triumph in the end, but, pitched against the hulk-like hyperactivity of Berger, we certainly don’t fancy his chances, and, given this movie’s taste for cynical, gratuitous mayhem, the sundry innocents whose fate lies in Santini’s hands should consider themselves pretty much fucked, whether figuratively or otherwise.

Which brings us, I suppose, to poor old Marisa Mell. Where did it all go wrong? Her fans may disagree, but it’s always seemed to me that, after her defining role as a paragon of voluptuous ‘60s loveliness in ‘Danger! Diabolik’ (1968), it was a steep downhill curve all the way for Ms Mell. As you might well imagine, she is subjected to a hell of a rough time in this one, and, if she puts in good performance, that could just be due to the fact that her key note of brutalised, pouting resentment accurately reflects her off-screen attitude toward having to appear in this movie in the first place, as much as it does the travails of her character.

Ultimately, for all its technical drawbacks and unhinged, exploitative cruelty, it’s difficult not to admire a movie like ‘Mad Dog Killer’ on some level. Mirroring the attitude of its anti-hero/antagonist, it is a film that gets by on pure, mad-cap energy, thundering across your screen with zero concern for either quality control or human empathy – a ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ movie that will likely draw you into its own airless realm of spittle-flecked intensity whether you like it or not.

The final showdown, in which Harrison inevitably goes mano-a-mano with Berger against the backdrop of an abandoned warehouse, is genuinely impressive stuff, viciously ratcheting up the tension as Berger agonisingly takes a knife to the torso of his teenage hostage (Santini’s estranged daughter) and lustily paws the young male punk who has ill-advisedly teamed up with him, precipitating a beyond-macho, might-is-right finale that effectively delivers on the only possible way a desperate story like this can end.

Essential viewing for all Helmut Berger fans (though Richard Harrison or Marissa Mell fans might want to think twice), ‘Mad Dog Killer’ ranks as one of grittiest exploitation head-kicks that Italian cinema has to offer. If you find yourself in the right mood to take the kind of punishment it’s doling out, it’s well worth a look, for Berger’s extraordinary performance if nothing else.

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(1)To clarify this title business - it actually takes but a few seconds of googling to confirm that this movie has frequently been released in English as ‘Beast with a Gun’, which presumably reflects the true meaning of the Italian title, but I’ve kept the ‘uterus’ stuff in the main text because it’s funny, and kind of interesting. Please consult your nearest Italian speaker for more info on the no doubt fascinating derivation and usage of the word “mitra”. Other English AKAs for this movie by the way include: ‘Street Killers’, ‘Mad Dog’, ‘The Human Beast’, ‘Ferocious’ and – apparently - ‘Wild Beasts with Machine Guns’.

Exploito All’Italiana: Hitch-Hike(Pasquale Festa Campanile, 1977)

(Original Title: ‘Autostop Rosso Sangue’.)

You know this one of course. An Italian-shot / American-set three-hander in which Franco Nero plays a boorish Italian journalist and Corinne Clery his long-suffering wife. We meet the couple mid-way through an especially cantankerous caravanning/hunting holiday in a not-quite-right looking Arizona, and, when they ill-advisedly offer a lift to fugitive bank robber and all-round psychopath David Hess, the spirit (if not the precise detail) of what follows can be most eloquently expressed by the awkwardly collaged cover of this Raro DVD edition.

So.. yeah. Basically, Campanile’s film rose far, far above my (relatively low) expectations, swiftly revealing itself to be a brutally effective, edge-of-seat kidnap/survival thriller in which the outrageous outbursts of violence and psychological handbrake turns necessary to keep such a tale rolling are handled with enough gravitas to ensure the tone remains serious as cancer throughout, creating a “literally anything could happen next” atmosphere that ratchets the tension mercilessly.

When it comes to critical writing (particularly on the subject of horror or crime movies), it has long been a cliché for reviewers to try to explain their dislike for a particular authorial voice by falling back some variation of the old “when every character is completely dislikeable, why should we care what happens to them?” argument. Perhaps I’ve even used this once or twice here myself over the years, I don’t recall, but anyway – following in the footsteps of any number of talented writers and filmmakers who have provided persuasive answers to that hypothetical question, ‘Hitch-Hike’ offers a stark lesson in just how shallow and wrong-headed such a judgmental approach to story-telling can be.

As such, let the record state that every character with a speaking part in ‘Hitch Hike’ is an absolute bastard, plain and simple. The only sympathetic emotion either Nero or Hess are liable to extract from an audience is one of pity, and even then, their constant, self-centered whining gets old pretty quick. Clery meanwhile is so steely she doesn’t even have that much going for her, shrugging off the assorted indignities she suffers through with an expressionless acceptance that suggests she’s angling to push both of her ugly suitors straight off the edge of a precipice as soon as is humanly possible.

When, as here, though, the writing and performances are strong enough to force you to walk a mile or two in the characters’ shoes, well... who gives a damn for your conception of whether or not you “like” them? If you’re looking to spend some time with people whose company you’d enjoy at a dinner party, you’re in the wrong genre here right from the outset, let’s face it.

Watching ‘Hitch Hike’ in its American dub – which is really the best option, given that we get Hess as nature intended and Nero dubbing himself in heavily accented English (which makes perfect sense, given that his character is an Italian tourist) – Clery’s performance inevitably suffers as the only dubbed member of the central trio, but to be honest she’d probably make the least impression in any language. You’d be hard-pressed to find any film more comprehensively disdainful of the demands of the Bechdel test than this one, and, devious though Clery’s character may be, we’re in the darkest heart of ‘70s machismo here, and it’s the tragic dance between Nero and Hess that really commands our attention – two deeply pathetic, animalistic losers, practically frothing at the mouth to try to grasp alpha-male status from the other, straining at the leash to take each other down, with the woman serving as a combined prize, servant and all-purpose hate object.

Nero in particular gives a fantastic performance, dragging the reprehensive thought processes of a man a less imaginative film might simply have pegged as our ‘hero’ into full view and letting them sizzle and melt in the sunlight, whilst Hess – true to form – gives us a leering human monster to rival Al Lettieri in ‘The Getaway’, Andrew Robinson in ‘Dirty Harry’ or Tomas Milian in ‘Almost Human’, even as he openly mocks the off-the-peg “I came from a broken home / society made me do it” self-justifications offered by those characters, opining at one point that he had a perfectly happy childhood and supportive family, but turned to the dark side because… well, you fill in the blanks. (We’ll get the ghost of Michael Winner to mark your answers after the show.)

Taken out of context, the scene in which Hess eventually rapes Clery whilst her husband watches tied to a chair (you’re watching a movie with Hess in, so you know he’s got to do his thing, right?), would be difficult to even sit through. But, coming at the point in the film at which it does, with the black-hearted, calculating intent of all three characters writ large upon their faces, the ‘big event’ takes on an entirely different complexion. As director, Campanile deserves huge kudos for presenting this scene less as the titillating act of gratuitous abuse most of his peers would have settled for, and more as a kind of hideous, inevitable ritual through which all three parties are angling toward their own, mutually exclusive goals. Like so many bits of business in ‘Hitch Hike’, it’s the kind of scene that sticks in your mind after viewing, encouraging you to start picking at its emotional residue like a dried scab, against your better judgment. Nasty, but irresistible.

Actually, Campanile and his collaborators excel all round here. Though ‘Hitch-Hike’ rarely gets stylistically flashy, as an efficient piece of dramatic film-making in the ‘70s crime idiom, it pretty much nails it. Character interactions are text-book exemplars of bug-eyed, whisky-soaked tension (you can almost feel the spirit burn at the back of your throat), whilst the film’s action sequences are surprisingly elaborate and often pretty awesome, incorporating wild-ass, verge-of-disaster stunt work and Peckinpah-esque cross-cutting that pretty much embodies everything you’ve ever loved about low budget ‘70s action cinema.

Running an unexpectedly lengthy 105 minutes, the film’s final act may induce a certain amount of head-scratching as the story continues to ramble on for a good fifteen minutes after what seems to be its natural conclusion, but I suppose they just figured, hey, we’ve got our movie-making mojo working so good here, let’s just keep on rolling (there’s that spirit of generosity I mentioned in the previous post in full effect)… and when we do eventually reach the final pay-off, you’ll get the point loud and clear.

Accomplished as it may be in technical terms, ‘Hitch Hike’ exhibits absolutely no traces of self-conscious artistry or social responsibility, and frankly a story this relentlessly hard-boiled is better off without them. It’s as if an Umberto Lenzi movie crashed head-first into a Jim Thompson novel leaving bullet casings and panties scattered across the asphalt, and it doesn’t need no fuckin’ auteur theory getting in the way.

Though it is often pegged as a poor cousin to Mario Bava’s broadly similar ‘Rabid Dogs’ (1975), I’ve got to admit that, in my heart of hearts, I think ‘Hitch Hike’ is the better of the two films. It’s a harrowing, high octane floor-punch of a movie, and if you’ve managed to side-step it thus far in your cinematic career, now is as good a time as any to take it on the chin and see if you’re still standing when the credits roll. [Spits out blood and teeth before staggering off toward the next review.]

(PRO TIP: For a great double bill, why not try this one out alongside Luigi Bazzoni’s style-is-the-substance giallo masterpiece ‘The Fifth Cord’ (1971)? Two very different varieties of Italian filmmaking, united by their shared status in the rarefied sub-genre of “movies in which Franco Nero has his Hemingway-esque macho self-image systematically destroyed whilst he stares out at the world with big, sad eyes”.)