Urban Gauntlets

One thing that gets lost amid all this quarantine is that major cities are seething hellholes. That's probably where I'm particularly drawn into the sort of neo noir films, where a hapless protagonist tries their best, but it seems the entire cities (usually NYC) are against them in every way. So, let's take a closer look at three of such examples.

 

Killing of a Chinese Bookie (USA, 1976)
Director: John Cassavetes

In the sweaty seventies, John Cassavetes was making his own minimalist art in between shoots of major big-budget Hollywood epics. He bled his own situation into his films, like here where an owner of a burlesque house (Ben Gazzara) strives to make art out of making middle-aged men horny.

He's also a gambling addict that gets into trouble with the local mob. The only way out is to do a favor, which in turn might suck out the last of humanity out of him. These kinds of films are basically tragedies about the failure of the American dream. The plucky underdogs dream of being big, but always have to face some harsh realities, and in the end, violence as well. Cassavetes didn't really like violence in films, so it's shot very discreetly, but the realities it causes changes the tone of the entire film. 

Unlike the two other films in this list, this one is set in Los Angeles. It can be seen in the greater emphasis on cars, distances, and heat eminating from the entire film. Cassavetes as a director usually had a very limited color palette to his films, this one also looks like the film was overexposed in the sun, even though it's mostly set during the night.

The film is mostly talk and no action. One shouldn't expect it to even have a climax of sort. Cassavetes is interested in the implications of the situation more than anything. The entire thing also works as a metaphor for the corruption of the power of money. How far are you willing to sell your soul?

★★★★

After Hours (USA, 1985)
Dir. Martin Scorsese

 

It used to be thought that the 1980's weren't really that good for the director Martin Scorsese. I beg to differ, I find he did some great work that riffed on ideas and themes he had set up in the previous decade. After Hours is one of his rare more comedic movies. But in fact, it's a thorough New York movie that sees the city, yuppified since the days of Taxi Driver, as dangerous as ever.

A hapless office worker (Griffin Dunne) is a regular young man but takes a few steps out of his comfort zone as he's looking for love. Out in the middle of the night in a weird part of the town alone and with no money seems to attract him to oddballs and authorities that don't mean him well and are out to get him. The neon-lit, cold and smoky New York never looked better but at the same time, more terrifying.

The film is emphatethic towards everyone who's down and out in the Big Apple, even if it casts most of the characters of the city with major mental issues and cynicism. But the key is that circumstantial setbacks can pile up and minor things like losing a $20 bill may cause a chain-reaction that only adds to the plight of the outcasts. It's a film that also gets to the heart of the loneliness felt in cities, even if there are plenty of people around. 

Scorsese has borrowed from Woody Allen a distrust of the city's intellectual and artistic class and mercilessly mocks it. He also manages to sneak in some of his personal obsessions, from late-night diners to talking about film classics to the mix as well, making this one of the movies surely influencing a young Quentin Tarantino. The only major problem with the movie is that it hits so close to truth it's not that funny as a comedy, but hey, you can't always have everything.

★★★★

Uncut Gems  (USA, 2019)
Dirs. Benny & Josh Safdie

The latest one, and the one that particularly inspired this writing comes from the arthouse cinema production house A24 and has Scorsese and Cassavetes in particular as influences. The seediness in the previous ones is now contrasted with more modern sports centers and auction houses. But even if it's not done in the open any more, the threat of violence looms even stronger behind every scene.

Lando Calrissian -styled gems dealer Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is at once a sleazy little rat, and a fast-talking trickster you can't help but to like even if his self-destructive adrenaline addiction is putting not only himself, but his his family and friends on harm's way. Ratner is about to make a huge sell on a particularly beautiful opal, which puts him in a position and mindset to make increasingly dangerous bets on sports. The movie follows as Ratner ups the ante again and again, always surviving by the skin of his neck, until finally the bets become way too big to handle.

For the fast-paced modern audiences, the movie is fast-cut and has plenty of side-plots going on at all times. The effect may be anxiety-inducing for some viewers, but the film also warrants repeat viewings if one is interested in seeing the strings of plotlines getting pulled. Given the chance, Sandler can be a great character actor, so it's a bit sad he didn't get the rcognition he deserved from this which will surely make him go back to making very half-assed comedies with no effort. But such are the joys and victories that the film presents, too. They are fleeting, and something much worse is yet to come soon enough.

 ★★★★ 1/2

Three laughs: Ebola Syndrome

 

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

 

Three laughs case file #32:  
Ebola Syndrome (Yi boh lai beng duk, Hongkong, 1996)
Director: Herman Yau

Has there been a pandemic going on long enough that we might have a bit of a black-hearted laugh about it? I recently had my Covid tested, and even that experience was enough for me to want to have a laugh at this shitty disease's expense. Or perhaps at the assholes who spread it because of no regard for public safety.

Today's film tells the story of one such individual. It is also a notoriously nasty and outrageous film, that could only have been made in liberal Hongkong in the 1990's. They used to have this CAT III rating that allowed directors to truly push boundaries, which resulted for a lot of erotica, but also some very out-there movies.

Herman Yau's Ebola Syndrome is nasty in every sense of the word. It has a kind of racist approach to the disease spreading in Africa at the time, showing natives therein being just primitive tribespeople. The film's main character Kai (Anthony Wong) is one of the nastiest bastards in all of cinema history. A brutal sociopath, misogynist, rapist and murderer, he is a Triad henchman on the run from his bosses to Africa, where he catches a disease. He returns home to become a cannibal chef at a burger joint (in a move parodying the more straight-faced The Untold Story).

The film itself pushes the viewer's buttons and provokes at every turn. The approach is something akin to Troma movies, but made with a better budget and sense of cinematic shots. Yau is not a bad director, but he approaches the sort of nihilistic edgyness that was hip in the 90's, but a bit tiresome now. Ebola Syndrome doesn't apologize for anything, it is a throughly slimy and mean-spirited movie, and proud of it. And, for certain sorts of viewer, also very funny. Viewer discretion is adviced.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The film's opening scene sees Kai having sex with his bosses' wife and getting caught in the act. The boss orders the sniveling underling under a golden shower, which shows quickly on what kind the film's sense of humour is. Nevertheless, the shlubby-looking Kai soon reveals that he is more cunning and ruthless than appears, and brutally murders everyone else in the room.

2. The film's racism could almost be seen a parody of some old-school shockers, such as Italian cannibal movies. The shocking conditions in Africa, for instance, show pig corpses intended for food being stored in broad daylight next to human corpses. Needless to say, they get churn into hamburgers anyway. Both pigs and corpses.

3. But dead people in a bun are not the most disgusting thing the film serves. Later on, we see Kai listening in on some next-door love-making while relieving himself on a piece of meat. Of course the same piece gets then thrown into a pan and served to customers. If this movie teaches something, it's taking distance and remembering at least some resemblance of hygiene.

Three laughs: American Kickboxer 2

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

 
Three laughs case file #31:  
American Kickboxer 2 (USA, Philippines, 1993)
Director: Jenö Hodi

Let's kick two flies with one stone. Since we've been very interested both in bargain-bin VHS action movies and foreign movies from around the world, here we have a cheapo actioner that's been done in the lovely Philippines. American Kickboxer 2 has nothing to do with the first film in the franchise, as the case with sequels always should be.

It's a dumb-as-rocks -kind of film that also has its tongue firmly in cheek. Nevertheless, it has a borderline soap opera kind of plot. The film concerns a rich family's small daughter getting kidnapped by a SWAT team in a helicopter. As the parents can't go to the cops, Lillian (Kathy Shower) makes a shocking revealation to her husband Howard (Police Academy's Tackleberry, David Graf): he's not the father of the girl, it could either be his violent ex-husband David (Evan Lurie) or the girl be a result of a casual fling with a local playboy Mike Clark (Dale Cook). Luckily, both of them are cops, martial artists and men of action. Not so luckily, they despise each other and the situation they are put in.

The film's actors are hilarious to watch as Cook can barely act and just stumbles around stupidly, and Lurie is so off-puttingly aggressive it's impossible to feel any sympathy for either of them. But then, they get into bar fights, shootouts, prison riots and even an underground fighting ring around every corner. As a travel commercial for the Philippines, it really doesn't work. But as far as B-grade action movies go, this one is a keeper.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. As we're somewhat copying the buddy cop -format from movies like Lethal Weapon, one thing the film needs is a Joe Pesci -like comic relief. Or rather, not. When the main characters first meet they immediately hate each other, and start to fight at a McDonald's parking lot. Maxin Ross, a local club owner, plays a weaselly guy that has an objection since the beat-down is happening on the hood of his car. He runs his mouth a bit, but is mercifully kicked in the head soon enough.

2. The main characters bickering to the point of fisticuffs is a running gag throughout the film. My favorite scene comes when, just as another of their fights is about to start, they suddenly duck out from a drive-by shooting. As Lurie thanks Cook for saving of his life, Cook smugly retorts there's no debt since they saved each other. But Lurie just takes this as a realization nothing is stopping him from sucker-punching his partner to the face. As Cook falls, he also hits his head to a steel door behing him. But then we immediately cut to the next scene where he's walking around as if nothing happened. This is basically a Tom & Jerry cartoon with real actors.

3. It turns out that our dynamic duo has a secret ally infitrated in the criminal leagues, a guy who's a dead ringer to the director Peter Jackson in a beret. He makes his infiltration in a memorable way. As everyone is distracted by watching the captured heroes fight each other to the death, he goes to put two cockroaches from a jar to a guard's leg. As the roaches run up his trouser leg, the guerd is distracted for a moment and then klonked in the head. Smooth.

Three laughs: Killer Elephants

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart. 

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #29:
Killer Elephants a.k.a. Rumbling the Elephant (Thailand, 1976)
Director: Kom Akkadej

Low-budget action movies, particularly fromn foreign countries area n interesting pool to dive into, since they come from a place of having to  try harder to entertain the audience than their big-budgeted bretheren. That's why every once in a while something emerges that delivers outrageous action and no filler throughout their run-time.

Case in point is Killer Elephants, a Thai movie starring the local film star Sombat Metanee. It may not have the outstanding martial arts action that many Thai films since the 2000s have boasted, but it makes up for them in big stunts, big elephants and a big heart. It's basically a western film with a ruthless criminal gang terrorizing a small town, until a mysterious stranger comes to put them in line. Using a lot of violence and a group of elephants, of course.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. One thing I love most about these sort of exotic thriller movies is the way their action really looks dangerous. It might have been a horror to make, but the explosions are much more satisfying when it doesn't seem they have been made in a supervised and sterilized environment with professional stuntmen. This film doesn't really waste time, and the very opening scene is of a car chase through a jungle road with bad guys dropping oil drumson the road from a pick-up truck, and then shoot at them to explode the car of the pursuing hero.

2. Although the film offers plenty of old-school action thrills with car stunts and explosions, the money shot is of course the elephants and their use in these scenes. Luckily, it doesn't seem like elpehants have been put to any real danger in making the film, rather it seems they enjoy being able to wreck shit up. The first such scene comes early on as  the police comes to confront the villainous Elephant Gang on a bridge. The baddies don't take no shit from the pigs, and command their steeds to throw police cars into the river.

3. Mostly the elephants don't kill anyone though, they are mostly used to scare people and perhaps demolish a village. I have to highlight one comedic scene, though, where a defeated little runt tries to cheese off. A bull elephant has surrounded him, and he klonks his head on its dong. Childish? Maybe yes, but you won't get anything like that on any other movie.

O is For Organized Crime

I haven't really honored an alphabetical order so far with our look into Italian genre cinema anyway, so let's just jump straight into O, shall we? There's a sub-sub genre of poliziottesci movies that focuses more on the underworld and various criminal gangs than the ruthless police chasing them. It was spawned mostly by the success of The Godfather films in the early 1970's, even though Italians were making films such as these before them as well. After all, the criminal clans and the pursuit to bring them to justice were all over the society at that time.

For blogging purposes, it would stand to reason to balance the last post with a look at some of the more notable of these. 

Sicilian Clan (France/Italy, 1969)
Director: Henri Verneuil

It's interesting to watch this Franco/Italian production today, as it was made in a time before the really hard-boiled 1970's crime movies kicked off. That's why, even though the name, it's not really a realistic depiction of organized crime by any means, but rather a tale of some gentleman thieves and their criminal family.

The film's most exciting scene comes right at the beginning, as we are introduced to jewel thief Roger Sartret (Alain Delon), who manages to escape from police custody from a moving vehicle. The Sicilian mafia, lead by Vittorio (Jean Gabin) help him out as he had learned information in jail that could help them pull off a major heist. Things are complicated as Vittorio's son's wife Jeanne (Irina Demick) starts to fall for Roger, as well as the commissioner Le Goff (Lino Ventura) following hot off their tail.

Verneuil is to me an underrated director who managed to create a nice filmography of exciting genre films in the 60's and 70's. The problem often is that even though the movies have all the elements of greatness, something stops them from being stone-cold classics. Here the problem is that Verneuil doesn't manage to keep the film's style compact. As an international heist movie, it entertains, but from a film titled like this, one would expect to see a more intimate depiction of a crime family, and not shy away from the brutalities they commit.

Now it's so casual it's basically a version of The Pink Panther without jokes. The film has a great cast, though and each makes their part a memorable one.

★★★

Gang War in Milan (Milano rovente, Italy 1973)
Dir. Umberto Lenzi

French drug couriers, led by Le Capitaine (Philippe Leroy) starts ruthlessly taking over Italy, first at small towns, then moving on to major cities like Milan. The owner of a local nightclub and pimp Salvatore "Toto" Cangemi (Antonio Sabato) resists both joining or working for the cartel, which leads to the increasingly violent feaceoffs between the French gangsters and Italian small-time crooks. One can see here as well that the Italians are worried thet their delicate balance of dealing with some criminal aspects in their society are about to blow in their faces with the advent of more brutal criminals from abroad.

Lenzi was one of the most prolific Eurocrime directors, and Gang War was his first shot at the genre. It's a seedy and confusing little film which had qualities the filmmaker would improve upon later on. As such, it works well as your average Eurocrime. It has little action scenes, shitty cars and slimy moustaches, but plenty of torture, abuse of women and other nastiness that guarantees its notoriety. Lenzi always had the most despicable central characters, but the film fails to give better reasons of following them.

 ★★ 1/2

From Corleone to Brooklyn (Da Corleone a Brooklyn, Italy 1979)
Dir. Umberto Lenzi

Lenzi is on hand again, as he was one of the most central directors of the genre. This time around the film's depicting a multilayered cat-an-mouse game on the run. Mobster Michele Barresi (Mario Merola) makes a play for more power and has his main rival gunned down, but has to escape with his life to New York. The tough, uncompromizing insperctor Berni (Maurizio Merli) hatches a plan to capture the fugitive, but this makes Barresi's girlfriend and a former mob assassin Salvatore Scalia (Biagio Pelligra), out to testify in court, moving targets.

From the setting of the story to both Sicilian village of Corleone to New York, it is obvious this has been majorly influenced by The Godfather, but also several other 70's New York mob flicks, like Mean Streets. Lenzi has learned to not overindulge in violence and brutality, centering more on the plot and the paranoid athmosphere this time around. It doesn't offer anything too spectacular or best of the genre, but a very solid entry into the genre itself, with some interesting depictions of the Mafia pulling strings across continents as well.

This one was Lenzi's last foray to poliziottesci for a decade, in the 1980's Italian genre cinema basically became a lot more horror-oriented and he started to churn out Cannibal movies. He returned to the genre in the early 90's, but without Merli.

The Milieu Trilogy, 
Dir. Fernando Di Leo:

Caliber 9
(Milano Calibro 9, Italy 1972)

Di Leo specializes in making crime films that are simultaneously operaticly tragic and caricaturized like fumetti comics. He also usually starts out with a bang, and the same thing happens here. A criminal syndicate sends a money package from person to person, gets betrayed, and then Mario Adorf's Rocco Musco acts swift revenge and blows them all up with dynamite.

Mostly the film moves more slowly, with tensions rising as we wait on violence to explode again. The film has a bleak look on the Italian society that has failed to stop the most ruthless and brutal to exact on their will. The main character Ugo Piazza (Gastone Moschin) tries to play straight after being released from prison, but is soon sucked in to criminal works since he is being blamed of embezzling the money. At the same time, the police also wants his help in order to find the stash.

The film has more double-crossings as a season of soap opera. Mostly everyone plays to their own interests, and Di Leo also has a cruel irony regarding the ideas of honor among thieves and respect within the crime family. He doesn't find much good about working within truly rotten apples and getting involved in crime has plenty of tragic consequences play out. The movie also has a banger of a theme song, which has been used by Di Leo several times after this one, too.

★★★★

The Italian Connection 
(La mala ordina, Italy 1972)

On my money, this is Di Leo's finest work, and also one of the all-timers for the greatest action movies ever made. To tell exactly why would be spoiling, but suffice to say, Di Leo doesn't put his most explosive scene in the film first, this time around.

A small-time Milanese pimp (played by incresing desperation by Mario Adorf) finds out there are two American hitmen (Henry Silva and Woody Strode) sent for his head. Even though he works within the mafia, he doesn't understand why they would threaten his life. He tries to find out who has set him up for stealing a shipment of heroin, until the hits get too personal, after which he sets out on a quest for vengeance.

It appears Di Leo got a hold of bigger budgets after the success of (the rather small-scaled) Caliber 9. The film has superb action scenes, from car chases along the streets to a final showdown at a junkyard. Action direction is clear and purposeful, and daring to go as far into the ridiculousness as one can. Though Di Leo finds the life-or-death situations of involvement in the organized crime tragic, he knows he's also an entertainer. That's probably also the reason why a major action scene ends up on an abandoned circus.

★★★★ 1/2

The Boss
(Il Boss, Italy 1973)
 

The capper of his trilogy has some of the biggest scenes the director ever did, and was probably intented to be the first of two parts. The film ends on a "To Be Continued" cliffhanger, so it's a shame we never got to see what Di Leo had in store for the latter part. But what we had is explosive and mesmerizing either way.

It has another explosive opening as Henry Silva's assassin kills a bunch of mob bosses in a movie theatre with a grenade launcher that also sets the screen on fire (Tarantino was probably taking notes for Inglourious Basterds). But the pace evens out a bit, with most of the movie being criminals arguing in small rooms. As the film was released after The Godfather, there are several scenes of murder that imitate the suave montages that one had.

The film may be a bit slighter, subtext-wise, than its two predecessors, but it is still tremendous fun and everything one could want from a film like this, right down to the angry police chief. It's still a bit cynical on the situation of the society and the criminal enterprises it lives in a symbiotic relationship with.

★★★★

Blow Up, Blow Out

 Did you just accidentally capture a murder on film, or a sound of evidence for one? Can the truth be found on details or does it just send its seeker to the path of obsession? There's a trio of films much studied and appreciated that riff on a very similar subject. I think it appeals to film directors, as the job often includes getting easily distracted on the moments they weren't set out to capture. That's why this idea lingers on, and what's more it epitomize the styles and ides of each of their respective auteurs. Each could also not have been done in a different time, they are the image of the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's.

So, let's talk about Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966), Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and Brian De Palma's Blow Out (1981).

Blow-Up (UK, Italy 1966)
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

One of the essential depictions of the image of 1960's Swinging London, Antonioni's most famous film sees David Hemmings as a wealthy, self-centered and womanizing photographer. Much of the film we also see odd and off-putting public performances of Flower People through his eyes. Like in many of Antonioni's films, much of the mood and ideas are put between the lines. Even as Hemmings' Thomas tries his best to be a hip mod, it is obvious that he does not feel comfortable or let his guard down.

But his boredom and uneasiness also allow him to push boundaries and operate on a morally gray area. As he's secretly photographing a mysterious woman in the park, it seems that his camera captures something odd. The woman confronts him later on and demands the roll. The instance haunts Thomas and as he's studying his secret negatives he starts seeing things by blowing up smaller and smaller elements to bigger pictures. But we as an audience also never get any closure or reinsurance of the fact throughout the film.

The obsessions related to the sexual nature of how Thomas uses the camera makes the film basically about the male gaze and voyeurism. Antonioni had a knack of combining his themes to the plot. Empty hedonism and sex where his every whim is filled still doesn't satisfy, and by pushing morals, the main character is left a giant void. These days, one could also see how his masculinity turns more and more toxic, as he treats women disposable and has the entire world revolving around his wants and needs. The film is a fascinating look at details and visually wondrous, but the strictly male navel-gazing it provides is a bit out of time by today's standards.

★★★★

The Conversation (USA 1974)
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola

As Antonioni was exploring life in the 1960's, then Coppola took the idea to the paranoid 1970's and brought a more political aspect to the proceedings. It is probably still the best movie ever made about surveillance and the endless hole of compromizing ideals it leads to.

It's not to say Coppola is stealing the idea from Blow-Up, rather he's using it as a key influence. A most notable difference is that as Antonioni's film was about a wealthy and cool young artist, Coppola centers around a sweaty and mousey middle-aged man that considers himself a public servant. Actually Gene Hackman's Harry Caul is a surveillance expert, and with his company, follows around those his clients point out to him with very little regard on the moral aspects of his work.

By contrast to his job description, Caul himself is very much an introvert, careful of his own privacy and keeping his private life private (I wonder what he would make of the modern day when American and Chinese apps follow your every move and sell them to the highest bidder in a bat of an eyelash). But as he is very much a loner, there's a perverted aspect of him following young couples around and listening their conversations. One particular conversation might contain some damning information, but it is not clear and could be interpreted multiple ways. Nevertheless, Caul is horrified to learn that the couple he is listening in might be stalked by a murderer.

Coppola's film has an amoral man grow a conscience but as one would expect, he is not rewarded from it but rather, having his whole life come crumbling down and things going from bad to worse quick. He blows his few relationships, work and most of all, his safety, which means all his posturing around privacy concerns was basically for naught as his enemys could still get to him. Coppola is also careful not to make his film into your basic thriller, but having the tensions come from very slow development of the plot, and as Antonioni, reading moods and implications from between the sparse lines of dialogue.

It's a jazzy and alienating, often frustrating and deliberately off-putting film. The use of sound is brilliant and I think would warrant a seeing seemingly such a small-scale character drama in theatres. This is one of those films you get to appreciate properly only second or third viewing. It is very multi-layered, but I think well worth the effort.

★★★★ 1/2

Blow Out (USA 1981)
Dir. Brian De Palma

Easily the most garish of the trio, De Palma was never afraid of "borrowing" stuff from even well-known cinema, so his answer to the same theme takes more out of the previous movies, as well as Michael Powell's Peeping Tom. Visually, though it looks more like it's director. As the ideas stretch far beyond just plucking them from previous work, it is among the director's finest works with particularly a climactic image lingering on long after the curtains have closed.

John Travolta plays Jack Terry, a character that is something like an amalgam of Hemmings' and Hackman's characters. On surface he may seem like a brash and cool film sound engineer, but below he's tormented and traumatized, as well as feeling empty and lonely. He is recording ambient sound at a park one evening as a car crashes into a pond. He manages to pull out a woman, Sally (Nancy Allen) and helps her to a hospital. But it turns out she was dealing with an important political figure and thus someone might be out to get her. Terry finds evidence on the sound he recorded that the car crash was not an accident.

The film makes fun of the misogynism of murder movies and by-the-numbers stalk-view that De Palma and many of his copycats have used. The movie opens with a film-within a film that seems like a cheap Halloween knock-off and a sub-plot of the film concerns on trying to find the right kind of scream to be used on the film. De Palma presents himself to be more detail-oriented. The actual film has a murderer stalking women too, played by thorough iciness by John Lithgow. But the movie goes out of its way to show how pathetic and disgusting this messy killing actually is, not just stalking girls in a house with a bread knife. De Palma uses plenty of underutilized tricks to emphasize the suspense, such as exciting camera shots and suspending expectations. He is a true follower of Hitchcock in that, carefully limiting on what the audience knows and what he shows.

But in its core, it is a tragic love story of a man who has lost his wife being unable to protect another woman he has developed feelings for. It has similar qualities also to Vertigo in this regard, with the love being really as much about obsession. The final punch of the film also depicts a more cynical end to the character arc than the more open-ended predecessors allowed. In a way all of these are about a man being destroyed by thier obsession in multiple ways. The film also draws parallels to the political decay of the loss for truth and the withering of cinematic artistry in a way I'm not really enclined to agree with, but find fantastically entwined within the plot. De Palma is just as angry as Coppola was, but comes to different conclusions on the same issues.

The cycle of inspiration carried on, as the film itself proved very influental to Quentin Tarantino (particularly Death Proof, which features the same love theme) and Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio.

★★★★

Three laughs: Parole Violators

 
It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #27:
Parole Violators, USA 1994
Director: Patrick G. Donahue

You might know that I tend to love action movies more when the cars in chases are rusted-up old lemons and the actors seem to be picked from a local gym or bus stop. And as dumb as they come. In this case Parole Violators is a home run for me.

"We're ALL potential Video Cops!"

The film concerns a vigilante going around with a video camera to beat some sense to store robbers and the likes. But he also seems to know their names and criminal histories. In actuality, it is the mulleted ex-cop Miles Long (Phil Donahue) who also hosts a local TV crime show.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Cops, an irredeemable piece of propaganda that for years colored the public eye for police brutality and treatment of the poorer classes. Fictional world at least gives us a canvas through which we can better handle the ideas being fed to us. In this case, of course, they are being given as dumb and ineptly as possible which makes the movie such a laugh riot. This film is not really even a narrative per se, more a showcase of various stunts like getting hit by a car or falling from any height. The final showdown in particular is a shooting range that constantly keeps upping the ante with more and more inventive kills.

Anyway, Miles himself soon gets to see that there are cases he can't solve with his camera as a guy he helped put away comes after him and his family. He and his girlfriend must survive a gauntlet after they are kidnapped by a small army of thugs.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The first laugh comes from the opening scene that shows the masked Video Cop stop a convinience store robbery. It shows everything you need to know about the movie, with a lot of roundhouse kicks thrown, cardboardy sets destroyed and wilhelmy cartoon screams added on the soundtrack. My favorite move is Video Cop hitting the robber on the head with his own camera. I gotta wonder how that footage will look on Miles's show.

2. One of my favorite scenes is a woman-on-woman fist fight that ends with the bad girl's head getting impaled to a nail sticking out of a wall. The female lead (Pamela Bosley) quips "Hope you got you tetanus shot, bitch."

3. It gets increasingly crazy on just what the main characters are able to survive as the movie goes on. A particularly insane climatic scene sees Miles getting shot twice while on a roof, but as he's sliding down, he chances the clip on his handgun and shoots baddies as he falls down, landing on his back on a crappy car. It's an image of the entire movie, none of the Lethal Weapons ever did anything so excoiting.

C is for Castellari's Crimes

 During this blog's long history, I've had the chance to talk about Enzo G. Castellari's Eurocrime movies a couple of times before. Here's the review of High Crime and here The Day of the Cobra. Castellari was always one of the more entertaining Eurocrime directors, taking note from American action of the time rather than having more emphasis on commenting the social issues and inherent corruption within the system like some of his peers.

That's not to say his films are just purely fascist mouthpieces glorifying police violence. Castellari is not a toothless director and he has a certain way of having both empathy for the criminals with their backs against the wall, as well as criticisms for the police force's excessive use of force. It may not be exactly the perfect time to revalue these now, but there are some grains of wisdom sprinkled throughout. I think at core Castellari is a lot more humane than many other, more nihilistic Italian genre directors.

Street Law (Il cittadino si ribella), 1974

The face of Eurocrime, Franco Nero himself, plays a timid engineer who gets caught in a post office during a robbery, taken hostage and then mugged as the crooks make their getaway. Afterwards, he gets angered with the police's poor handling of the case and decides to infiltrate the criminal organizations in order to get some justice. Things get more complicated as he befriends a small-time-crook, played by Giancarlo Prete.

The film has some plot elements similar to the same year's American hit film Death Wish, but instead of having a liberal character straight-up lose his humanity due to tragedy like that film, it is clear that Nero's character still has strong empathies as he's trying to protect his friend through a criminal underworld getting increasingly violent. The character is not infallible, making dumb mistakes along the way, but still miracously not getting killed. Nevertheless, the journey drags him through the mud and punches him in the gut.

Castellari first highlights standing up to the violent underworld similar as standing up to fascism in WWII, but then muddies the waters more so as not to make a clear line of right and wrong. There are some irredeemable psycopaths on the crimal side, but also people with their backs against the wall, just doing what they can to survive and to get out of a bad hand dealt to them. The film is light on shoot-outs and car chases, but makes each of them stand out and have a maximum impact. The resulting gem is among the very finest works of both Castellari's career, as well as the Eurocrime genre as a whole.

★★★★

Cold Eyes of Fear (Gli occhi freddi della paura), 1971

Since it's darker, noirish tones and strong suspense, many would categorize Cold Eyes of Fear as a giallo. However, it's visual stylizations are just something that was popular at the time it was made. The plot has more elements similar to some of the more brutal Eurocrime films and thier home invasion or kidnapping subgenre. The film concerns a young lawyer (Gianni Garko) in London picking up a girl (Giovanna Ralli) and takes her to his uncle's house, only to find out there is a gunman (Julian Matteos) hiding out in the same house. He is waiting for a backup (Frank Wolff), attempting to get their revenge on the uncle, who happens to be a judge (Fernando Ray).

The film has a superb swinging soundtrack by Ennio Morricone that can also shift gears when the scenes get more disturbing and suspenseful. The film's weak point is its bungling its cenral mysteries. First of all, its not much of a mystery of waiting to find out why the would-be assassings want to kill the judge. Secondly, the siege situation is dragged on a bit too long for its own good.

Many similar movies, like Almost Human or Hitch-hike get thrills out of big villanous characters and their nastiness, whereas here the characterizations are a bit lacking in interset and they are not properly fleshed out. Here, there's not enough development, except on Ralli's Anna on the very last moments of the film. The visual, film noirish flare of the film saves a lot for fans of giallo, but other wise it seems it is a bit middling in its qualities.

★★★

The Big Racket (Il grande racket), 1976

Towards the end of the 70's, Italian crime films started to take more note on movies like such as The French Connection and Dirty Harry. Thus, they also started to center around tough guy cops roughing things up. In the hands of more capable directors, the police brutality was also criticized and these sort of characters were more like anti-heroes, playing western outlaws at their own amusement and not for the betterment of society.

Fabio Testi's Nico Palmieri is a prime example of a character like this. Rome is taken over by ruthless gangsters, and he takes upon himself to kill just about everyone that comes in the way of his handling of the case. The police superiors are furious at this, trying to have a more bureaucratic approach, that is also ineffective. At the same time, the gangsters also up their violence and go from extorting cash in a small Italian town to torture, rape of women and borderline terrorist strikes.

The film is built like a freight train, with not a moment going by without some new action scene, more ante on the grittines or dramatic development on the case. They are also mostly stuff everyone has seen and expects out of cop movies, just taken to extremes and bigger stakes. With modern eyes, the film has a lot of questionable qualities, from the nasty rape scenes to the depiction of police brutality of a necessary evil to battle violence. But Castellari is still not happy about it. The film is more of a cry of anguish of a circle of violence beginning to engulf everything around it.

★★★ 1/2

The Heroin Busters  (La via della droga), 1977

Many of Castellari's films have some level of western in them. It is perhaps the most clear here. After a globe-trotting opening that sees Fabio Testi as a short-fused cop and David Hemmings as a cold-blooded Interpol agent take down drug lords around the world. These two must learn to co-operate to take down the head of the cartel in Italy. And this is done mostly by having car chases and fist fight around.

The film seems a lot lighter than the other fares into the genre, even the violence is mostly suitable for kids. The movie has the ingredients for something great, but seems at times to be a bit unsure of itself and just shoving out faces with big showstopping action scenes. Thet are plenty well directed, though. There's a great chase scene through a construction site, and in the finale Testi himself piloted a small plane giving chase to the main drug lord. That last scene does resemble a bit too much of an airshow, though with all the tricks possible to do with two planes being utilized.

This is more of the mindless entertainment Castellari began to give us towards the late 70's and 1980's. His earlier work had something to say, but it seems that when he upped the grittiness and the violence, he also managed to burn himself out on these. Nevertheless, his steady quality does make him one of the most notable directors of the era, and especially of the Eurocrime genre.

★★★