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.