Catch a cool and sleazy slice of early 1970s Italy in this engaging crime drama involving the disappearance of a beautiful but mentally disabled young woman (Gillian Bray). She has apparently been dragged into the world of Milanese vice and policemen Frank Wolff and Gabriele Tinti have no choice but to trawl the city's brothels...
It is a dark film ultimately, a story with no happy ending. Poignant in depicting a father's (Raf Vallone) loss though without being gratuitous (well not too much anyway). It is unstinting in it's depiction of prostitution as a true dead end and a brutal sadistic life.
The film meanders at times but any flaws in the film are easily forgivable. Despite the often grim nature of the story the film is just so effortlessly cool. If you like late 60s / early 70s style and groovy music then you'll love this film. I did.
Quite simply the weirdest James Mason film I've ever seen. He plays an Interpol agent in this European co-production hunting down a rogue assassin who is killing heroin pushers. Well that sounds straight forward enough.
The thing is the film is rather eccentric, and suggests that copious amounts of recreational stimulants may have been involved in it's production...
The scenes in Pakistan especially involving Jean Seberg and Stephen Boyd score highly on the strange-o-meter. Especially as the latter wanders through Pakistani villages dressed head to toe in leather and no one bats an eyelid.
The film is odd and pretty surreal, and also very violent. Some of the action scenes are pretty good, especially the car-bike chase. But ultimately the film makes little sense and has rather a stereotyped view of life in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Definitely a film of it's time.
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.
This film is very confusing, the title implies it is set in the year 3000 but somehow 1970s cars are still running - along with advanced bionic children. It is yet another European Mad Max inspired movie set in a post apocalypse wasteland i.e. Italian or Spanish countryside.
The plot is very heavily inspired by Mad Max 2, complete with a tanker chase across the desert. There are gangs of marauders and lots and lots of violence. The film is pretty low budget with little story sense, bizarre dialogue and a singular lack of anything you might consider acting.
However despite all of that it is strangely compelling and remarkably enjoyable perhaps because it is so strange. The action scenes are pretty decent with some very good stunts. There is also plenty of unintentional hilarity especially with some of the dialogue.
It's also the only film i can think of where a robot child is got drunk on beer while someone tries to fix his arm.
After the apocalypse the few starving survivors of mankind will apparently battle for survival in the desert wastes in battered old cars covered in spikes and weapons. Now it's not Mad Max but a very passable Italian film obviously inspired by it.
The plot is basic to say the least, a band of helmeted maniacs called The Templars seek to wipe out all other survivors on Earth. To stop them: our hero Giancarlo Prete (who is an ex-member of this group) and some friends.
Well the plot (which is a bit of a rip off of Mad Max 2 if we are going to be honest) is fairly irrelevant with a film like this. The most important question is: what is the action like? Well it is good, often very good in fact, despite the obviously tiny budget. The film consists of a number of bloody set pieces with people blown up, decapitated by exploding arrows, burned alive and run over. It is very violent indeed but also has a great deal of camp fun. And has a car with a giant corkscrew.
One thing to note about this horrific vision of the future is that its set in 2019...
