1973, Italy. Starring Antonio Sabato, Phillipe Leroy, Antonio Casagrande, Carla Romanelli, Alessandro Sperli, Franco Fantasia, Tano Cimarosa, Marisa Mell. Directed by Umberto Lenzi. Written by Franco Enna, Ombretta Lanza, Umberto Lenzi. Purchase from Amazon.com.

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Like Enzo Castellari, Umberto Lenzi is no stranger to followers of global cult and genre cinema. And like Enzo, it's a shame that Lenzi is best known for his worst films. Invariably, mentioning Lenzi is going to cause a person -- the type of person who wouldn't just say, "Who the hell are you talking about" -- to think of either Cannibal Ferox (better known to many as Make them Die Slowly or Nightmare City (also known to many as City of the Walking Dead). Though each film has its fans, and Nightmare City has zombies that wear sweater vests and can pilot huge military transport planes, neither is an especially high water mark in the history of cinema in general, or even Italian genre film in particular. Memorable? Sure. Entertaining? Well, Nightmare city sure is. But as examples of the notion that Umberto Lenzi might be anything other than a hack exploitation director whose skill level just barely managed to surpass Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso, those two films aren’t going to give you a whole lot with which to work.

Which is kind of a shame, because Umberto Lenzi was, for a time, a director who showed a remarkable panache for directing gritty, action-packed cop films. Poliziotteschi ended up being Lenzi's forte, but like most Italian directors, he could only settle into one genre for as long as that genre was wildly popular. As soon as box office returns and public interest waned, the entire Italian exploitation film industry would fold up camp like a bunch of Mongolian nomads in search of the greener pastures of whatever genre or subgenre caught movie-goers' fancies. During the late 1970s and into the 1980s, that meant plying one's trade in zombie and sleazy cannibal exploitation pictures. But just as zombie film auteur Lucio Fulci proved he couldn’t leave splashy horror film gore behind when he tried to make a gangster film (Contraband), Lenzi could never really divorce himself from the street crime and action with which he enjoyed so much success during the early 1970s. So you get an army of zombies that fire Uzis and develop invasion tactics in Nightmare City, and you get an excessively drawn-out big city Mafia subplot that seems like it was taken from an entirely different film and grafted onto the emerald-green gore of Make Them Die Slowly in more or less random spots.

Prior to his entry into the poliziottechi genre, Lenzi was tinkering with the usual types of films, including giallo (some better than others) and the film that would serve as the kick-off for the Italian cannibal craze, Man from Deep River. In 1973, he made his first foray into the poliziottechi film, or rather, into a poliziottechi-style crime film since Milano Rovente (Gang War in Milan) is more about gangsters than cops -- something that would become fairly common, though both cop and gangster films tend to get lumped into the same category. Milano Rovente is a pretty basic film: Italian pimps with moustaches battle French drug dealers who don't have moustaches. From time to time Italian cops, also with moustaches, show up to survey the aftermath. But of course, most poliziottechi films take a very lean, basic premise and lump ten tons of convoluted insanity on top of it.


Milanese pimp Toto and his partner Lino (Antonio Casagrande, whose last name is also a place many people want to live) are enjoying the sweet life as the top pimps in the fashion capitol of Italy. They also run a fruit and vegetable wholesale company on the side. The sweet life is rudely interrupted, however, when some of their ladies start turning up dead in pools and other inconvenient locations, thus cutting into their business and attracting the unwanted attention of the police. It turns out that French drug dealers lead by the imaginatively named Frenchie (I'm sure his full name was Frenchie McFrench, The Frenchest Frenchman in Frenchtown) is trying to get Toto's attention. He has a deal for the A number one pimp: let the French gang use Toto's women to distribute drugs, and vastly increase both gang's profits. If Frenchie wanted to enter into a business partnership, he probably should have picked a friendlier way than killing off Toto's best prostitutes just to get an audience with the man. Obviously, Toto isn't all that thrilled with the proposition.

But Frenchie is adamant: cut them in on the action, or ignite a gang war. So Toto takes a look at himself and sees a lean, good looking Italian guy with an impressive moustache and flaired slacks that flap majestically in the wind every time he lifts his leg to kick someone's ass, so he and Lino chose the war. Which is why, I suppose, the title of this film translates to Gang War in Milan instead of Gang Cooperation in Milan, which would be more of an instructional video than an action film, something that clues in young up-and-comers in both the drug and prostitution rackets to the benefits of working together. Anyway, the French drug dealers don't have moustaches, so what use does Toto have for them? Knowing that they are outgunned, however, Lino calls in the help of Milanese gangster Billy Barone to provide some serious firepower as the Italian pimps fight for nationalistic glory and their right to smack women around and feel their boobs.

On the surface, Milano Rovente isn't much of a film. It lacks the immediate emotional impact of High Crime and the over-the-top violence of Violent Rome, though it is plenty violent. But where as Castellari got a kick out of grinding human bodies beneath the hard metal and rubber of motor vehicles, and Violent Rome spent its time watching Maurizio Merli strut around down and kick everyone's ass, the violence in Milano Rovente centers largely on watching drug dealers or pimps smack women around. When the French drug dealers want to strike a blow to tough pimp Toto Cangemi (Antonio Sabato), they do it by roughing up or killing off some of Toto's hookers (yes, Wizard of Oz fans, relish that last sentence). When Toto wants to get back at Frenchie, he usually seems to do it by smacking some woman around. Beating up prostitutes just isn't cool. It's not like watching Maurizio Merli throw on his raincoat to walk down the block and box the ears of some punks on a cheap little motorbike.

When the gangs finally go head to head, Umberto Lenzi showcases a steady hand in the direction. Everything is tightly plotted and paced, and there are plenty of the shoot-outs and car chases in little Fiat type cars that Italian action films demand. Antonio Sabato is a convincing bad-ass with a great moustache, and he turns in a solid performance. The main problem is that his character is pretty rotten. He's shallow, selfish, mean, and not at all heroic. He's not even a heroic anti-hero. He just kind of a scumbag, no better or worse than the drug dealers in the film; the protagonist only because the narrative has chosen to focus on him. He's not one of those pimps with a heart of gold who cares for and really protects his ladies. He'd probably be throwing them into pools himself if the French guy hadn't beat him to it. That seems to be his main beef: that there are his women to beat up and exploit and kill when they piss him off, and he's taken umbrage at some outsider stepping in and getting rough in his stead. When Toto falls for beautiful Jasmine (Marisa Mell, one of our favorite and most tragic Euro starlets, last seen around these parts in Danger: Diabolik!), he's more than willing to stab Lino in the back and jet off to Switzerland, leaving the whole mess on the shoulders of his friend. When, in the end, he discovers the price of burning your bridges and being an asshole, you can't really sympathize with him. He's a dog, and he dies a dog's death, only not one of those cute dogs or one of those dogs who travels across the Arctic tundra to save someone. So maybe not a dog. Let's just say he gets what he deserves.

Still, Sabato's performance is strong and engaging even if you come to hate his character. He's not quite Stuart Whitman in Blazing Magnum despicable, but that's only because he starts out as a pimp, rather than as a cop who does things like ram hot curling irons up the arse of kungfu-powered transvestites (yeah, Blazing Magnum is really something, even without any significant moustache action). Sabato is also surrounded by a solid caste of Italian genre film regulars. Marisa Mell turns in a good performance and looks dazzling with long black hair.

Lenzi's direction is steady but not outstanding. This was his first foray into the genre, and he seems in many places to be feeling things his out. This is his Titus Andronicus as I like to call these types of films -- the testing of the waters, raw and unpolished but packed with the themes and stylistic touches, albeit in cruder form, that would come to fruition in later works. The despicable protagonist seems to foreshadow Thomas Milian's grotesque thug in Almost Human, for example.

Whatever the case, even this ultimate footnote in the world of the Italian crime film is light years better than any of the gorier, more sensational films that Lenzi is best known for. It wasn't completely obvious in Milano Rovente that the genre had found its signature director. It was as mean-spirited as Violent Rome without the redemption of a solid main character like Merli's Inspector Betti. And it definitely lacks both the emotional engagement and mind-blowing action of High Crime. Still, it was still decently entertaining, and Lenzi had a nice touch. The test would be to see what would happen if you took Lenzi and paired him with Maurizio Merli.

What happened was Violent Naples, a film that is consistently (along with High Crime and another Lenzi-Merli vehicle, From Corleone to Brooklyn) tagged as one of the absolute best action films of the seventies.

Continued...

Labels: Director: Umberto Lenzi, Poliziotteschi