Monday, March 5, 2018

They Paid With Bullets: Chicago 1929 (1969)

This is a Spanish-Italian film on the 1920s gangster scene in Chicago, and quite possibly one of the oddest films I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot).

Country boy Frank (Guglielmo Spoletini) gets drawn into the gangster war taking place in Chicago by accident and joins the gang of slick (and quite mad) Erik (Peter Lee Lawrence) rising through the ranks and eventually challenging Erik for his gang and his gal.

It is all glorious madness, the story is quite flimsy and held together by very frequent gunfights with tommy guns (all very badly choreographed but undeniably exciting). The acting is curious, ranging between vague and terrible (not helped by the bad dubbing - the version I saw switched between English and German dubs a few times for some reason). The film is brilliant obviously.

Gangster moll Ingrid Schoeller steals the show with her mysterious cabaret routines, epic sexiness... and randomly playing around with a voodoo doll.