The Climber 1975

A New York immigrant working as a cigarette smuggler in Naples gets fucked over my his boss and flees to Rome to lick his wounds. There he works his way into the local rackets and returns to Naples with his own gang to even old scores




This is a hard one to track down, lacking the commercial appeal of a proper dvd release for companies with no Franco Nero or Henry Silva to pull in the punters. This film stars Joe Dallesandro and Euro vixen Stefania Casini and that's as big stars as you're going to get. It was Joe that pulled me to this, he stared in some other Eurocrimes around this time but this is the only one that I am aware of that is a strict gangster yarn. Usually he played some sort of rampant thug in films like Savage Three. Here he is a little more subdued, going for a lot of moody James Dean type posing and riding a motorcycle through dock yards and twisting streets whilst his shirt strains at the seams.

For those that don't know 'ol Joe was a New York hustler turned model and was part of Andy Worhol's pack. His crotch adorns 'Sticky Fingers' by the Stones and Lou Reed took the piss out of him more than once. Yet Dallesandro has a stone cold presence in this film, looking the part as a greedy, reckless young thug.

The film crafted around Joe was directed by Pasquale Squitieri a man whose output time has maybe passed by. A shame really. He made a career mixing mainly period and political films with the odd genre piece here and there. He much favoured mob sagas rather than police caper films and this shows in his other movies that're much more rural and historical in nature such as the Iron Prefect. He has a definite spin on the genre, I would go as far to say that he adopts some realist traditions for segments of this flick. Whilst Joe carries about his work, the camera takes in drab housing with pointed close ups of haggard faces and drab housewives. There is one sequence in particular that stands out where Joe is driving his car and there and children running after him, with the camera deliberately taking in the faces and reactions of the street kids as Joe putters his sleek roadster through their neighbourhood.

Elsewhere though this is a sordid gangster yarn with some brutal violence and a killer soundtrack. The action quotient is maybe lower than some may expect but this is a crime film rather than an action film. Joe's gang does include some bikers and a bad arse sharpshooter so you get some stunts along with some nifty squibs, the best being a clash with rival gangsters in a narrow street along with a gun battle in a quarry. Welded onto this is a furious mix of strings, hard rock and soft funk pop. Really a superb eclectic soundtrack for what is a fairly unknown film, there's one furious guitar break that sounds like Kyuss going supernova. Really splendid stuff.

The ending is quiet, a powerful little moment in a genre usually reserved for cinematic outrage and vice, set to soft music and the beach at night, it's Kitano a couple of decades early.

I really llked this movie but unfortunately the only print out there is a vhsrip with burnt in subtitles. My copy had some sound sync issues towards the end also. Due to the print quality and the fact its probably slow going for novices I'd really just recommend this for seasoned eurocrimers.

Violent Rome 1975

Inpector Betti (Maurizio Merli) rides a cop car through a hellish vision of 70s Rome where you can't even get a bus or go to the supermarket without being shot, mugged or raped. Or all of the above. Disgusted by the rampant crime, Betti seeks justice his own way but finds his methods out of sync with the powers that be.

If that plot sounds brief that is because this is a film with barely any plot. Instead crime stuff happens which Betti reacts to. Once one crime is solved, another comes along. Episodic is a term that about covers Violent Rome.

Directed without much flair by Marino Girolami, this was one of the flicks that helped Merli hit the big time as one of the go to people for Eurocrime. Merli has his detractors but I like the guy, but he is better in other films. Here he just sort of glowers and frowns. The Italian dub is a little stiff, the english dub actually works better as Betti actually conveys some emotion whereas in Italian he is very monotone. Some solid character actors appear, John Steiner as a modish bank robber and Richard Conte as a lawyer turned vigilante. Again the dub works better as part of Steiner's charm is his own voice. He's also not around for very long alas.

Action wise, Violent Rome mostly delivers with a stupendous car chase in the middle and some savage beatings elsewhere. There are some gunfights but these are ruined by choppy editing, including a shoot out at a bank where it's not very clear who shot whom.

If I sound negative I don't mean to be. Violent Rome is a trash romp with sleaze, violence and right wing speeches by the bucket load. It slows occassionally for betti to argue with one of his many bosses but then it is careening onto the next shock sequence.

Also features two really bad dummies, including one riding a bike and Ray Lovelock as a really whingy undercover cop. Also if you can figure out the weird ending you are a better person than me.

B level Eurocrime but does everything it says on the tin.

Almost Human 1974

For some this is one of the summits of Eurocrime and it is a good place to start as any. Like when you want to check out a band, you may aswell buy their greatest hits rather than the last album they released that nobody liked.

So, Almost Human more or less hits all the prerequisites of Italian crime cinema of the 70s. There is sex. violence, fast cars, lots of guns and Tomas Milian. Tomas Milian is an actor who started small in Spaghetti Westerns before hitting it big in Eurocrime flicks, ending up fronting his own series of comedy cop flicks as a daft policeman on a bike. These are as shit as they sound.

Almost Human concerns a hapless low level hood for hire Giulio Sacchi who seeks the big time as quickly as he can get there after one beat down too many by his erstwhile fellow gangsters. Breaking off, he forms his own little gang and catches a glimmer of possible wealth by snatching the daughter of a wealthy billionaire who his girlfriend works for. Along the way, he and his men steal, murder, sexually abuse and butcher a household whilst rocketing on booze and pills. This carnage sets copper Inspector Grandi, played by Henry Silva. Silva is the kind of cop that fuck up Judge Dredd for having mud on his shoes in a police parade.

Silva is usually the gangster and here he seems to relish the hero part, he has an easy going swagger with just a little aura of menace rather than his usual nuclear in ya face fuck you approach. Milian on the other hand is a manic thunderbolt, writhing and twitching with tics and blasts of his machine gun, loving his dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

This is one dirty movie. Literally, the house abuse sequence is genuinely unpleasant, bordering on the grotesque but it works as the movie's director Umberto Lenzi never allows Sacchi to become a hero. From the first scene he is painted as a rat who only goes further down the sewage pipe as the film progresses.

Like a Jim Thompson protagonist his road to hell can only end in one place.

As already mentioned, Umberto Lenzi directed this film, along with at least another nine crime movies. He is definately one of the top men of the game. There were other more cerebal directors but few could manage Lenzi's skill with pace, filth and outrage. To me his output is as close as Eurocrime came to the sleaze and action of a cheap US paperback, the kind with a guy with a gun with a loose woman drapped over his arm but with a fiat in the background and a bottle of J and B in his fist.

Fuck me, Almost Human is a damn fine romp. Available on a now out of print region 1 dvd.

Viva Eurocrime!

It's high time for Eurocrime.

Who am I? I'm a 29 year old Scots bum with a half arsed career in writing reviews on bad Hong Kong movies. What I'm concerned with here is amassing a few reviews on Eurocrime movies, good and bad from mainly the 1970s and 80s.

Eurocrime is mainly associated with Italian cinema of this period, especially the 1970s but there were other additions to the genre, from France, Germany, Sweden and even the UK which produced a couple of films I think fit into the sweaty genre.

What is eurocrime though?

Eurocrime is for the most part the ideals and images of the US crime thrillers post Bonnie And Clyde tossed into a blender and mixed with olive oil, moustaches and Fiats to create a really sleazy cinematic stew. More than just dirty cops and urban vigilantes Eurocrime is home to mad killers, rapists, heisters, drug runners and people smugglers aswell as the odd tale of simple sordid murder.

Get the picture?

I could warble on but I'll let the reviews speak for themselves.