Who payed the critics

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This Italian giallo film contains a tremendous musical score: that is the first thing I noticed. Luciano Michelini's funky, jaunty soundtrack permeates throughout, bringing to life scenes of police procedure and making the action sequences even better. There are even moments of comedy in here. Are they successful? Not in the slightest, in my view, although other opinions are equally justified. To me they undermine the atmosphere without adding anything extra that is successful.Where Sergio Martino's direction really shines, however, is in the chase and shooting set-pieces, the best being a tremendous shoot-out on a roller-coaster ride. The fusion of calamity and the rattling soundtrack guarantees enjoyment. A shame that such urgency isn't injected into more of the 100 minutes, or that some pruning couldn't have been done. For however energetic certain moments are, the film is a little too long and could have done with perhaps losing 15 minutes.Is Martino's mixture of styles a success? Partially, I'd say. But ultimately, I prefer my giallo more consistently dark and without the flights of comedy. It is good, but not great. Whilst it is pleasing to see the director experiment with an established style, his crowning achievement remains 1971's untouchable 'Strange Case of Mrs Wardh.'

When looking into this film before watching it I kept seeing it referred to as a giallo film, those Italian films that featured a killer being hunted by police or more often someone affected by their murders. While watching it I found it felt less like a giallo and more like one of the police action films that seemed to pour out of Italy in the 70s known as Poliziesco (police thriller). The end result will be up to each viewer to decide.The film opens with a young woman on the run, a prostitute who is followed and found and quickly killed by a sunglass wearing killer. A man she bumped into at a dance hall begins looking into her death and it isn't until later in the film we discover he is police detective Paolo Germi (Claudio Cassinelli). Recruiting the help of a street thief named Giannino he begins a rather strange investigation of the situation.Germi is unlike most detectives in that he has his own way of doing things. He inserts himself into the criminal world and isn't averse to opening fire when need be or slugging his way out of a situation. While not quite the vigilante style that audiences have come to associate with characters like Dirty Harry he does tend to ignore a number of laws while seeking out who the killer is.Along the way Germi learns that there is more to the case than a simple murder of a prostitute. It all revolves around a teenage prostitution ring and the powerful man behind it all. You know that a face off will eventually come, the only question being who will walk away from it unscathed? The film features two items that fill a lot of screen time, one different than most and the other part and parcel of the genre. The humor in the film is what is unusual, even more so when it's not limited to Germi's sidekick but includes him as well. A running gag about him constantly breaking his glasses is a nice twist. The second and more common item is a lengthy car chase and this film has more than one. One of them brings these two elements together as Germi and Giannino toss the doors of Germi's car at a pursuing police car since Germi is undercover.In the end the movie is an enjoyable film to watch and entertains from the beginning to the end. The end itself is quite satisfying after having watched the rest of the film. Cassinelli never had the chance to make his way to starring in U.S. films because his life was cut short in a tragic helicopter crash 10 years after this film was made. He shows the potential to become a world class star here and it's sad he never had the opportunity.Arrow Video has done their usual bang up job for this release. To start with they're offering a brand new 2k restoration of the film from the original camera negative meaning you get the best picture quality for this film ever. Extras include a new commentary track by Troy Howarth (the author of SO DEADLY, SO PERVERSE: 50 YEARS OF Italian GIALLO FILMS), new interviews with director Sergio Martino and cinematographer Giancarlo Ferrando, a reversible sleeve with newly commissioned artwork by Chris Malbon and with the first pressing only an illustrated collector's booklet with new writing by Barry Forshaw.

As other reviewers have said this is a strange movie. It is kind of an "unofficial" sixth entry to the series of excellent gialli directed by Sergio Martino in the early 1970's (although, as such, it is definitely step down from his previous film "Torso"). It has a very familiar "giallo-esqe" starting point where the investigation of a murdered underage prostitute leads to a lot of equally nasty killings. It also functions as a "poliziani" with lots of action and chase sequences and a cynical plot involving high-level political intrigue. Claudio Cassinelli plays a cop who makes Dirty Harry look restrained and by-the-book. He sleeps with prostitutes, consorts with minor criminals, feels up underage girls, shoots at civilians, and even leads the regular police on a wreckless high-speed chase for no real reason. The people he is after though are even worse, involved in everything from kidnapping to drugs and teenage prostitution to money laundering.But if all this isn't a little too much, the movie also tries to be a comedy. Cassanelli has a comical side-kick, and there is a running gag where he keeps breaking his glasses. Sometimes the comedy works, but other times it tends to sabotage the drama, like when he incorporates slapstick pratfalls into what is already a very over-long car chase (a bane of these type of movies ever since "The French Connection" was released in Italy). Fortunately, Cassinelli has charisma to spare in his first of many roles for director Martino (he didn't have the impressive breasts of Martino's other frequent collaborator Edwige Fenech, but he was no doubt a better actor). Jenny Tamburi, on the other hand, was pretty much wasted (both as an actress and pair of impressive breasts). But Mel Ferrer and most of the other obscure more actors acquit themselves pretty well. Not as good as Martino's earlier movies, but better than his later ones, and it has just been released in widescreen with English subtitles on (import) DVD. So check it out for yourself.

This quite rare movie by Sergio Martino is an odd thing. As the title presumes, it starts off like a typical giallo: A man with sunglasses stalks and slashes a young woman. But after the murder, the movie becomes a film in style of the "poliziescho", the Italian crime movie of the 1970s, as the audience follows an undercover cop searching for the killer and also for the kidnappers of a young boy (but the audience doesn't know for a long time either that the cop really is one and that the murder case and the kidnapping rely to each other). All this culminates (within the first half of the movie) in a car chase which offers enough gags to make the scene pure slapstick.After that, the giallo style returns as the sunglassed killer goes on a killing spree. The crime movie is back as the plot unfolds to have its motive in mob-style drug dealing. And let's not forget: The killings have also to do with professional child prostitution and abuse. A really wild mix, even more so if one considers that the film sometimes boosts cheap (if mostly funny) humor.The cool sound track is reminiscent of the early scores by "Goblin" for Dario Argento's films, and it seems that Ernesto Gastaldi, who wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay with director Martino, was influenced by Massimo Dallamano's great "La Polizia Chiede Aiuto" that was made one year earlier.All in all, this surely is not Martino's best film (his "pure" gialli are more enjoyable), but if one gets used to the unusual concoction of such different topics and styles, it's an entertaining and sometimes hilariously funny, fast paced and thrilling movie that even boosts some harsh social comment.