Shadows in an Empty Room

With a great cast featuring Stuart Whitman, John Saxon, Martin Landau, AND Tisa Farrow this film glides with the greatest of ease. STRANGE SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM is sort of a cross between the Italian crime/police potboiler and your average giallo thriller. An interesting and fun blend it is. I'd rather not give too much of the film away since it's better going into it knowing next to nothing. Let's just say there's murder, mystery, car chases, blood, funky 70s music, karate-kicking drag queens, and of course your all-star cast! Have fun.

There are 2 respected movies in the euro police movies that always shine above all the other great ones, the first one is in Fernando De Leo "La Mala Ordina", Part of his Milan trilogy films, with his extreme and fast paced chase that never let go and just keeps on going till the last brutal finish. The second one is blazing magnum's, which can be a very good lesson to all the action directors out there planing to do a one good chase sequence. There are 2 chases here, one in the beginning which is short but very efficient , and the second at the end, which you must see to believe, it got everything in it and more. I do urge you, the fans of this type of cinema to grab Blazing Magnumes if only for the chases that prove that you can do a bad acting movie with a simple thriller script, that still got some hard hitting sequences that shine overall. I can't finish without mentioning that the music is also a masterpiece in itself and it is always there at the right moment. If only Dark Sky/NoShame/Blue Underground or any other respected label will do us a favor and release a collector edition DVD, that would be fantastic!

Until rugged cop Stuart Whitman makes full use of his Dirty Harry tool, you've got to wait until the very end of the movie. Along the way, you get your money's worth – a lineup of veteran Hollywood actors having fun poliziottesco style, a sex shop scene high on the 70s sleaze-o- meter, karate killer transvestites, Mia Farrow's sister as a blind girl, the stunning beauty of H'wood actress Gayle Hunnicutt, the admirable tits of Québécois Adjani lookalike Carole Laure, the creative use of a curling iron, plus a quite spectacular car chase in the streets of Montreal, expertly executed by legendary stunt coordinator Rémy Julienne (The Italian Job, six Bond movies, a dozen Belmondo action flicks). Of course Blazing Magnum is just a ripoff, but a highly entertaining one, in its molto-trasho-appeal unquestionably superior to each and every 70s Clint Eastwood vigilante vehicle. Gritty six stars, the seventh being for Armando Trovaioli's groovster soundtrack: That ain't Montreal, it's Funkytown.

I agree with Sol2118's commentary : the chase car is close in effectiveness with those of Friedkin and Peter Yates'titles that he mentioned, and I would add also the amazing one in THE SEVEN UP [Police pursuance 7] (USA 1973) directed by Philip d'Antoni with Roy Scheider and Tony Lo Bianco. Besides, this Shakespearian plot including a murdered T.V. as "dea/deus ex machine" is directly connected with the great tradition of Film Noir. And it is Alberto de Martino under the pen-name of Martin Herbert who have done it ! In Canada, starring an incredible cast. This is enough to understand that this movie is mixing the best of both worlds : Italian "poliziotti" thriller and U.S. thrillers, at their most violent and deep backgrounds. The bank attack is amazing regarding the art of graphic cut - editing work - of violence on the screen. The final is also extraordinary. The rhythm itself of the movie is very strange and original : quite onirical sometimes and not only because there is a "flash-back" sequence shot as a nightmare. Between 44 magnum caliber and TV gang hardboiled encounter, Stuart Whitman plays a cool & sad character, a quite tragic one since it is a brother looking for his sister's murderer and learning that his sister was not at all an Angel sister (as Lautréamont said about Man in LES CHANTS DE MALDOROR), finally unveiling the darker from the dark. And as usual, of such a little masterpiece, no VHS and no DVD available worldwide except maybe the French VHS titled BLAZING MAGNUM in spite of the fact that the movie was released in France under the exploitation title of SPECIAL MAGNUM. And I agree also with the latest comment : there was, for sure, lower show on theaters than that one when it was released ! DVD soon : please !!

If you as a 1970s filmmaker wanted to spike your latest release, you'd add a wild street chase with all the trimmings, all of which have since become cliches - extras jumping out of the way, close calls with baby buggies, speeding through alleys, ramming stacks of boxes, weaving around stopped buses, becoming airborne on downgrades - but 25 years ago, this was high melodrama, and including such a sequence was sure to sell tickets. And I too sat spellbound through the "Bullitt" and "The French Connection" street-action scenes. But this much-lesser-known film ranks right up there in masterful car-crash choreography. The chase scenes are absolutely stunning.....though the rest of the whodunit plot is rather ordinary, almost like a made-for-television film. (An unforgettable title, though!) If you dig the action genre, seek out "Strange Shadows in an Empty Room".