The Heroin Busters

A splendid opening with shots of Hong Kong, Colombia, New York and Amsterdam of the drug journey but it ends on the streets of Rome and Fabio Testi the main man. He is in the film the whole time and I assume also his own stunts and he is great and David Hemmings is also fine, probably not doing his own stunts. The last twenty minutes are really wonderful, with planes as well although most of the time it is the drug and mafia crew on the streets. It is good but not anything like as good as Enzo G Castellari's first film of The Big Racket (1976) although it is nice to hear the music of Goblin.

This is just a fun movie. The acting is campy at parts but the action sequences are better than expected. We had a lot of fun watching this. There's a pointless out of the blue lesbian scene and "drug addict" acting of the caliber of an after school commercial.

I know it sounds like I'm taking digs at the film, but I'm not. Watch the trailer on the Blue Underground site... it might be on IMDb too... but the trailer was delicious enough to get me to rent it (just as the trailer for Street Law did that title). David Hemmings is great.

Basically... "fun" is the key point of this review. Fun.

8 out of 10

The always studly and the always charismatic Fabio Testi plays a character named Fabio here, a police detective working deep undercover in order to get the goods on the top dogs in a drug syndicate. He makes life a little weary for Hamilton (David Hemmings), an Interpol agent working on the same case. But he's still the kind of guy who *will* get the job done, taking on as many baddies as he can along the way.

Don't look for much more story than that in this topical Eurocrime action picture from Enzo G. Castellari ("The Inglorious Bastards"), although the pitiful state of an addict / pusher named Gilo (Wolfango Soldati) forms a subplot. The ladies are lovely (including Sherry Buchanan as Vera) and there's a bit of sex and nudity, but mostly what Castellari serves up is action, and it's executed with skill. The chases are particularly effective; the big finale with the planes is likewise impressive; Testi is in real life an accomplished pilot and did his own aerial stunts.

Hemmings offers a truly fun supporting performance as the exasperated Hamilton; Soldati earns a fair bit of sympathy as the pathetic Gilo. Other familiar faces to fans of Italian exploitation include Massimo Vanni ("Rats: Night of Terror"), Romano Puppo ("2019: After the Fall of New York"), and Joshua Sinclair ("1990: The Bronx Warriors"). Helping to make it all go down easily is a groovy, kick ass music score by the great progressive rock band Goblin. That theme that opens the movie is terrific!

There's no deep thinking required with this simplistic enough tale. It's just good old fashioned entertainment.

Seven out of 10.

This crime thriller tells the story of an undercover cop (Fabio Testi) who has to "play" a drug dealer so that the real dealers accept him as a member of their syndicate and he can come close to the big men at the top of the syndicate. As it is the problem with many genre films of its decade, the depiction of the drug dealers, their environments and the investigating methods of the undercover cop looks clichéd and hilariously out of date. Except for that, this is a highly entertaining, action packed film.

Fabio Testi never looks like a real drug dealer, but who cares, his acting is solid as ever. David Hemmings as the police inspector who knows about Testi's true identity brings English flair to the role with his sometimes almost exaggerated British accent. The supporting cast consists of many faces familiar from other Italian genre outings (e.g. the ruthless syndicate killer in Lucio Fulci's "Luca il Contrabbandiere" from 1981, also starring Testi in the lead role), and the score by the (at that time) Argento regulars "Goblin" just rocks. There are some quite original action sequences, especially the climax, in which director Enzo Girolami delivers a plane chase for once instead of a car chase (and this plane chase looks daring sometimes). Because the simple plot always pushes the action forward, the movie never becomes boring and delivers.

Certainly not Enzo Girolami's best film (his "La Polizia Incrimina, la Legge Assolve" is probably the best Italian crime film ever made), mainly because the story is never really convincing, but it's fast paced and will please every fan of Italian crime thrillers.

You can always rely on Enzo Castellari to knock things up a notch, and even though he had me worried (and a little confused) at the pacing of this one, it all leads up to major kick ass ending.

After the film seemingly randomly shifts between Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Colombia and New York, the film finally settles in Rome, as we see Fabio Testi getting busted for carrying drugs into the country. At the same time and in the same place, another guy who's just arrived from Amsterdam is tailed by cop David Hemmings, who gets duped by the dealers as big old Romano Puppo gets away with the goods.

Yep, Hemmings is hot headed, potty-mouthed cop out to take down a huge drug cartel, and he's the only guy who knows that Fabio Testi is an undercover cop. Things get pretty difficult for Testi as he works his way into the dealer's trust via a junky guy with his own sub plot, and nothing ends up going to plan as everything results in a huge chase at the end that uses feet, motorbikes, and finally, planes. I think there's a deep meaning to all this, and that is "If you deal drugs, Fabio Testi will shoot you."

You've got the usual Enzo back up crew here: Massimo Vanni (who does his 'riding a bike downstairs' bit), Joshua Sinclair as a suave dealer, Romano Puppo as another dealer, and even Enzo himself turns up to mug for the camera. Sherry Buchanan turns up as the junky guy's girlfriend, but she really just turns up to be naked for a minute or two.

I found it strange that there's an obvious stunt double doing even the most routine of stunts for Fabio, but then it's Fabio himself doing all that crazy crap with the planes later. I did burst out laughing when a guy pulled a particularly strange face when getting shot in slow motion.

It does seem however that Enzo is kind of making some sort of comment about the hippy life being dead and leading to horrible addiction, because the drug taking here is shown in all its glory and when you see a guy licking spilled heroin from a toilet seat, it doesn't exactly entice you to go take the stuff. Well done Enzo!