Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

Everybody probably already knows that giallo means yellow in Italian. They used to churn out cheap thrillers on yellow paper, the same idea as pulp fiction. Well, this one is certainly a cut or two above average. It reminded me a lot of the Sam Pekinpah movie Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, which by the way came out at right about the same time, in that it tells the story of a pathetic loser who lives a life of small time crime but dreams about that one big score that will set him up for life. In this case the guy, a punk in Milan, Italy, decides to kidnap the only daughter of a rich businessman. There is also an obscure Marlon Brando movie called the Night of the Following Day, which I have heard a lot about but don't believe that I've actually seen, with a VERY similar plot Anyway, he puts together a remarkably well thought out plan, brings in some accomplices, and pulls it off. He does incredibly well at responding to unexpected setbacks and so forth. I found it to be somewhat annoyingly disjointed, however, in that he would seem to constantly bounce back and forth between a whiny screwup punk and cool-headed criminal mastermind. I found it difficult to understand how he can be both people at the same time? There are some very sadistic scenes that reminded me of Rob Zombie's movie the Devil's Rejects. Thirty years ago I probably would have been satisfied with the scenes in this movie but after seeing the Devil's Rejects (and thereby becoming admittedly jaded) I guess I just found these scenes to be too few and too abbreviated. Henry Silva plays a stalwart police inspector relentlessly pursuing the case who like Dirty Harry finds that the Law prevents him from doing a satisfactory job. I won't give away the exact ending but I found it to be too simplistic. In real life Henry Silva would have gone to the girl's rich father and explain that he knows who did it but can't do anything legally. Then the two of them would have approached some vicious gangsters and arranged for them to meet out some underworld justice. That would have been a perfect ending. For those people who are familiar with the Trinity movies the dubbed in English soundtrack has the punk protagonist with Trinity's voice and the judge at the end has Bambino's voice.

While I never felt that he was by any means worthless, the last thing I expected from Umberto Lenzi was a really high quality movie that just works all around! Solid, well made, with a great performance by Milian. A lot of excellent Italian genre movies are becoming available right now - this is one of the very best. I have new respect for the director.

So where are all of the gialli he made with Carroll Baker? And how about some more Italian action pictures? I don't really care for action films (well, not the rubbish they make these days, anyway), but these are real movies - with an emphasis on plot, character, some political edge and an actual sense of humanity (even at their most inhuman, as is the case here) that sets them apart from the sterile, soulless, formless, hyper-active video game inspired dreck that passes for entertainment as long as you've got plenty of Advil and no attention span. (Sollima's "Revolver" is great, too.)

SOMEBODY NEEDS TO COUGH UP MARTINO'S "THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS"!