Ten Statements About.... IL BOSS (aka WIPEOUT!) (1973)

Budgets cuts on Girls Gone Wild got noticable early on...

"Would you kill me when you're tired of me? I really mean that."
"Honey, I'm tired of you NOW!"

1) I would pay not only for a single movie, but a whole series of movies where Henry Silva is a hitman and Antonia Santilli plays his annoying nymphomaniac girlfriend who keeps bugging him while he's busy killing people. The interplay between those two are hands down the best things in the film.

2) I know this is only my second policia, but I simply just don't get them. It seems that they share the same lack of attention to plot and detail as gialli and spaghetti westerns, but without the dreaminess and sardonic humor that made those genres fascinating.

3) This is Henry Silva in Stoneface Henry Silva mode and, while I miss the goofy Silva of La Mala Ordina, he fits perfectly in this insane world. And this shows up the best whenever Silva's Lanzetta is contrasted with the more...theatrical moments in the film. Seeing Silva trying to contain his anger at Santilli's Rina, or keeping himself cool while Richard Conte's Don Corrasco pontificates to insane lengths is pure gold.

If you won't watch this movie, Henry Silva will kill this
sleazy-looking bum...because we're all out of puppies.

4) Gianno Garko's Commissioner Torri is such. A. Goof. And the way he's set up as a hardass in the first part of this film, smacking around mafioso and chasing widows out of coroner's office, only for us to learn that he's a squirrely, corrupt weasel with a bad mustache in the second part only serves to confuse the narrative. We never get a sense that he is a worthy opponent for Lanzetta, nor that he is anything but a caricature for Silva to eventually gun down.

5) But then, the problem with this film is how no one seems to make up any sort of opposition here. Hell, we see Corrasco dictating terms to a man who, it is implied, is The Pope. This is a film that takes the average cop drama and unbalances the other way, with the Mafia so thoroughly in charge of Italy they can run the country with impunity.

"I swear...his gun was this big...why are you laughing?"

6) I really, really like Antonia Santilli. I'm not a big fan of most Euro-babes who populate these films, but there's something about this baby-faced doll (who looks very remarkably like anti-folk 90's songstress Brenda Kahn) and her charms that makes me drool. Add in that amazing chemistry she has with Silva, and I'm in love.

7) There is a moment about half way through the film where Silva decides that he's going to take over the mob where I get the impression director Fernando Di Leo got bored with his original script and started making things up on his own....leading to weird scenes like Corrasco telling his advisor that Lanzetta has to die, but he still respects him as an underling. And I get the impression this sort of abandoning of the original story happens a lot....

8) I know that we're supposed to feel some sort of reaction--horror? Surprise?--to the montage where the kidnappers and other soldiers in Cocchi's employ are murdered....but even the kidnappers, who we spend a bit of time with in the first half, are interchangable ciphers there only to terrorize Rina (and to indulge her in her nymphomania). Thus any intended impact has been thoroughly blunted.

"So...when you go kill that Mafioso, can we stop at TCBY for
some Key Lime with nuts?  Please?  Please? "

9) One thing I do appreciate about these films is the jazzy scores. While it doesn't necessarily fit every moment of the film, it's unique to the genre and makes these films feel both of their time and timeless.

10) And let's give this film, and the examples of the genre I've seen so far credit....if it wasn't for the rotary phones and other technological cues, these movies don't date much. Hell, even the talk of student protests and free love doesn't serve to freeze these stories in a specific time.

Overall...while Henry Silva does try to keep the film together by sheer dint of his glowering presence, this really doesn't bring much that's engaging to the table. I respect that so many people I like like this stuff; it's just not interesting enough for me and my sensibilities.

Ten Statements About....LA MALA ORDINA (a.ka. THE ITALIAN CONNECTION and MANHUNT) (1971)

He's oily, she's got the weirdest fashion sense..it's a match made
in Italain Stereotype Heaven!

"These men are worthless. You've worked them over. Luca Canale has worked them over, and when their bruises heal, so will their fear, and that's exactly what must not happen! You've got to make sure the fear stays in them like an open wound."

1) Boy, there's nothing quite so engaging as Henry Silva and Woody Strode sitting together trying to out-stoneface each other. It's like watching the heads on Mount Rushmore trying to act all gangsta...

2) ...until you realize once Silva's Dave Catania hits Milan that he's more interested in chasing tail and throwing money around and he's....seriously goofy. I'm so used to Silva being the quiet, brooding guy of so many other films that seeing him lounging in yellow bathrobes, making it rain for a bunch of prostitutes and trying to bang hippy chicks is a bit of a culture shock. And the weird thing is that the interplay between Silva and Strode's Frank Webster is the most compelling thing about the film. There's this sense that Frank is there just as much to keep an eye on Dave as he is to kill a small-time pimp, and it's a fun and compelling little partnership.

3) But here's a big problem with the film. We spend almost the entire first act--roughly twenty minutes of the film's ninety minute running time--with Dave and Frank, following them around as they punch hookers, kick bikers in the nuts, insult mafia soldiers and otherwise raise hell in their search for Mario Adorf's Luca Canali. But after that they disappear for long stretches of time as we discover that it's Luca that's the real hero of the film and not these two. And because Luca comes off as a goof for all of the first act and a portion of the second, it takes a while for the film to regain that first twenty minutes' momentum.

Believe it or not...someone just told Woody Strode and Henry
Silva a funny joke.  This is them laughing.

4) As someone who called Adolfo Celli's Largo one of the most boring Bond villains of all time, I was really surprised at how cool his Don Vito comes off here. He goes through the entire film with this dark malicious light in his eyes, as if he's looking for the next person to slaughter. And the scene where Vito outdoes Dave in disciplining one of his soldiers by shooting them both dead is a highlight of the film.

5) Why is Luciana Paluzzi even in this film? She's established in the very first scene of the film as Dave and Frank's handler...and then all she does, it seems, is take the two of them to this same goofy nightclub so they can sit in a booth and ogle the naked women dancing on tabletops. Everything else Dave and Frank do, they do for themselves. Yeah, she's hot--the hottest of all the women on view here, although Francesca Romana Coluzzi comes close when she's not wearing that ridiculous blue wig--but narratively she contributes nothing.

6) Getting back to Luca, you know what else bugs me about him? He's established as a low-level pimp, and not a very good one. Nothing in the first thirty-some-odd minutes do we get any indication that he's nothing but a muttonchopped, oily 'tard. And then when everything starts going down we see him outwitting, outfighting and otherwise acting like Big King Ass Kicker Guy. There's a severe disconnect between the Canali of the first act and the Canali of the rest of the film. And speaking of which....

7) That chase scene that seems to be the central sequence of the film...Ye Gods, does it go on. It exceeds its Chase Tolerance Point by a mile, and having the chased being a thug driving a milk cart (!) gives it a rather silly cast. It could easily have lost a few minutes, especially from the back end.

Mario Adorf's attempt to recreate the scene where Tom Cruise
shows off in The Color of Money goes horribly, horribly wrong.

8) I find the slapping that goes on in this movie infinitely fascinating. It seems like the biggest insult of all--Hell, the scene where Luca's girl is being brutalized as punishment for not telling Vito where he is comes down to two men pinching her breast, jerking her around by the arm and taking turns slapping her. Given in an earlier scene the woman tells Luca they promised to cut off her arm, the whole slap fest seems a lil' anticlimactic.

9) Boy, nightclubs are really peculiar in policia films. Seemingly random people--including a few guys in glasses and business suits amongst the young hipsters--bouncing up and down without rhythm while some bizarre pop song plays....wow. Just...wow.

10) There's a weird mix of fairly normal acting performances mixed with some really theatrical ones that seem to come straight out of the silent era. The aforementioned girlfriend/hooker of Luca in particular is so broad as to yank the viewer out of the film whole.

Overall...a strange mix of elements, some of which (especially Silva and Strode acting like bad asses) are admittedly fun...but the way the film seems in love with its pimp lead, turning him into a total asskicker after promising us ninety minutes of Dave and Frank, makes it a slightly unsatisfying experience.