Ruggero Deodato's Uomini si nasce poliziotti si muore (Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man) (1976)

At a cafe, two extremely good-looking young gentlemen, Fred (Marc Porel) and Tony (Ray Lovelock) are having coffee. Both have sugar while one has decaf. Save the expected street noise, it is a quiet afternoon in Rome. The noise at the cafe's pinball machine attracts the attention of Fred and Tony who then become fixated with the two men surrounding it. Tony puts a silencer on a pistol and covers it with a newspaper. Fred follows suit. The pinball game comes to an end, and the men occupying its space enter the street. A van makes an abrupt stop outside. The van speeding is assumed from the stop. A misdemeanor at most. The two men at the cafe join another in the street. Fred and Tony pull their pistols and kill a man sitting alone in a car and a man standing reading a newspaper, respectively. The three men in the street don hoods and pull weapons. Without any hooded figure firing a shot, two of the group of hooded three are killed by Tony and Fred near the van. The lone survivor of the van group (but not for long) attempts on foot to escape in the crowded street. Tony cracks an adept shot to his head; and the final corpse hits the asphalt, and blood streams making a large pool. Cue soft acoustic ballad (sung by lead actor Ray Lovelock). Fred starts his motorcycle and Tony hops on the back. The two leave. Sound like murder?
Or does it matter? In Ruggero Deodato's Uomini si nasce poliziotti si muore (Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man) (1976) in the director's signature style, there is a lot of immoral fun to be had by its characters while their director seeks an amoral tone with his film. This is an extremely judgemental description of the film, and perhaps totally inaccurate. The inclusion of Lovelock's ballads within the film were, according to Deodato, to soften the tone of the film. The tone of the film is what? Violent? "It was very violent, perhaps too violent" says Lovelock in retrospect. Al Cliver was offered a role in the film by Deodato who had previously appeared in his Una ondata di piacere (Wave of Lust) (1975) but declined the role after reading Fernando di Leo's script, because it was "too bloody, too violent. Both the dialogue and the action." (Cliver would not turn down a subsequent Di Leo script with I padroni della città (1976).) In addition to Lovelock's ballads, Deodato added light-hearted scenes to soften the violence and to give the film a cop-film feel, like American ones such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Silvia Dionisio appears as a secretary in Live Like a Cop, and she has a lot of fun keeping Porel's Fred and Lovelock's Tony at bay: fun flirting in mock adversarial positions. Deodato even exercised restraint by toning down the violence in a particularly nasty scene where Bibi Pasquini (Renato Salvatori) has one of his henchmen remove the eye of a drug-addicted debtor. Deodato said he filmed the eye being pulled from the victim's socket and then in close-up, filmed the eyeball being squished under foot. Deodato admits the scene is still violent in its cut form.Save Deodato's one act of restraint in excising his cinematic violence, the violence in Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man remains, only to be softened by its director. Deodato admits: "It's a cop film that I made and got to make my own personal decisions." Like his screenwriter Fernando di Leo, Ruggero Deodato loves being playful (even dangerously so) and combined with his undeniable creative talent, it is this playful, irreverent attitude which makes his cinema so compelling. Uomini si nasce poliziotti si muore (Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man), Deodato's sole entry into the 1970s crime genre, is amongst one of his best works and one of the best films of that genre.The punchline to the first paragraph above is the absence of three important facts: Fred and Tony are police officers (of a "special squad" which officially doesn't officially exist); the men that the two kill are known criminals about to commit a heist; and the heist is never executed. One could argue that the five slain would-be thieves are guilty of conspiracy to commit robbery at the time of their death but then, one would have to answer the question: why does no police officer identify himself and arrest them? Or the moral perspective, did the crime of conspiracy merit an on-the-scene killing? Any viewer can play with those questions and come up with an answer. The facts that remain from within the film unequivocally lead to this answer: Fred and Tony are two criminals, with a propensity for violence, with badges.The opening ten minutes of Live Like a Cop are famous for its motorcycle chase (exciting and brilliantly filmed by Deodato) but the events that prompt the chase and the events which occur after the chase are the incendiary ones. A woman exits a bank with a satchel handcuffed to her wrist. Two thugs on a motorbike attempt to snatch the satchel and make a quick getaway. The woman victim is dragged, and her head lodges into a metal pole. Still not deterred, the thug gets off the bike and begins violently pulling her arm to free the satchel, eventually stomping her head. The thugs flee without the satchel. Fred and Tony witness the crime. Motorcycle chase ensues. At the conclusion of the chase, one criminal gets impaled in a crash and dies which prompts a smirk from Lovelock's Tony. Fred attends to the other thug who was thrown from the motorbike. Although severely injured, the criminal is still alive...but not for long, as Porel's Fred snaps his neck with his hands. The impetus crime and the chase result are mirror images: criminals committing crimes in different societal roles. The talent on both sides of the camera shines. Marc Porel and Ray Lovelock are damn sexy men giving fantastic performances in an arrogant yet coy style, infusing their characters' attitudes. Gorgeous Silvia Dionisio beams with her smiles in a small, scene-stealing performance. Her sister, Sofia, steals her only scene with Porel and Lovelock later in the film. The best two performances with characters with the richest complexity are Adolfo Celi, as Fred and Tony's boss, and Renato Salvatori, as Bibi Pasquini, the crime boss that Fred and Tony chase in Live Like a Cop's main narrative. Two veteran actors at the top of their game. Di Leo delivers another acid-tongued, smart-aleck script and Deodato executes. Like most of Deodato's cinema, Live Like a Cop is still powerful and incendiary today. Is being bad this much fun? I wouldn't know, but Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man certainly is. The film is available on DVD from Italian label, Raro, in a very nice non-anamorphic widescreen print with both English and Italian (with English subtitles) audio. Included amongst its supplements is an approximately forty-minute featurette with Deodato, Lovelock, Cliver, and others involved in the production (and where all quotes and objective facts within are taken).

Riccardo Freda's Murder obsession (Follia omicida) (1981)

Michael (Stefano Patrizi) is acting in a scene with Beryl (Laura Gemser), and something within Michael takes over while he's strangling her. "You seemed as if you really wanted to murder her," says director Hans (Henri Garcin) to his leading man, after it takes half the crew to pull Michael's hands away from Beryl's throat. Michael cools out at his flat, strumming his guitar, when a sudden gush of wind blows through the window. This gush of wind prompts Michael to want to see his mother, Glenda (Anita Strindberg) after many years without. Michael and his girlfriend, Deborah (Silvia Dionisio) drive to Michael's childhood home, where they are greeted by the manservant, Oliver (John Richardson). Glenda's ill and has desperately missed her baby boy. Michael's going to scout some film locations around the villa's countryside, so Hans, Beryl, and Shirley (Martine Brochard) are invited to the villa for both business and pleasure.
Riccardo Freda's Murder obsession (Follia omicida) (1981) is a mess. Highly influenced by Dario Argento's previous films, such as Profondo Rosso (1975), Suspiria (1977), and Inferno (1980) in terms of themes, style, and atmosphere, Murder obsession lacks Argento's inimitable and singular style and atmosphere; and unfortunately for Freda, he's unable to direct a film that's an Argento-esque mess (a whole other level of sublime beauty). Murder obsession is bits and pieces of a lot of motifs and genres which escalates to a surprisingly focused ending; yet for all its ending's focus, it reaches the heights of incredulity. Black-gloved killers and sexual obsessions are side by side with psychic phenomena and the occult and a black mass, which are further indulged by hallucinatory dream imagery from dated Gothic horror and as much bloody gore and special effects that can be sculpted and then shot. Like Michael making an associational link between a gust of wind to calling his neglected mother of many years, Murder obsession works in the same way: completely irrational (and certainly supernatural), the film is a lot of guilty fun.
Patrizi's Michael is a complex and enigmatic character, only because Freda (and his co-writers Fabio Piccioni, Antonio Cesare Corti, and Simon Mizrahi) doesn't know in what direction to take his main character (or his film, for that matter). Michael's initial sequence on the set while strangling Beryl curiously hints to Michael having a psychological affliction or some supernatural possession. Freda plays to both. Michael's father was murdered when he was a child and he was present at his father's death, along with Strindberg's Glenda. Michael has grown up to become a dead ringer for his father. Apparently, Michael was quite fond of his mother as a child, and now as an adult and at the villa, he's rekindled a strong attraction to his mother (Strindberg, incidentally, looks the same age as Patrizi or only slightly older). Glenda is also taken with her grown son, and although bed-ridden and ill, she immediately begins her subtle seduction. Michael's somewhat Oedipal upbringing combined with his childhood trauma could be the source for his "murder obsession" that is blossoming. However, Freda's treatment, like the mysterious gust of wind, dreamy flashback sequences of Michael's childhood, and the over-dramatic use of music hint also that perhaps not only does Michael look like his dead father but might be literally becoming the dead man. (It's later revealed that Michael's hidden secret is related to his father being abusive to his mother.)
Gemser's Beryl, Brochard's Shirley, and Garcin's Hans appear in Murder obsession, seemingly, to provide a body count or a red herring. Gemser's character is not developed at all and has really no depth. She wakes frightened from a sound (or a dream) to have Brochard's Shirley suggest that she take a bath. While in the bathtub, a black-gloved killer hides in the shadows and attacks her. Gemser's Beryl survives the attack only then to be placed in a giallo signature voyeuristic scene with Michael. Michael emerges from the woods with knife in hand to encounter the contemplative Beryl at lakeside. Michael pockets the knife, and without words, the two embrace and have sex. The two sleep after lovemaking to only have one wake up. Brochard's Shirley has even less depth than Gemser's character, although Freda and company intimate in a few scenes that Shirley and Brochard are having an intimate relationship (only hinted at, again, and never developed). Garcin's Hans, revealed in a long dialogue sequence with Strindberg's Glenda absent from the English-language print of Murder obsession, is not only a film director but also quite interested and knowledgeable about the occult. Hans has several strong beliefs about reincarnation and death. Foreshadowing? No. Hans and the occult do not commingle again in the film. When chainsaw appears, however, innocuously in the hands of Richardson's Oliver cutting wood, it does make an appearance again...as a murder weapon. Score one for Freda.
Among a cast of actors (all of whom have made notable appearances in European cult cinema), Silvia Dionisio stands above all as Deborah with her performance. (Dionisio's performance, like Strindberg, appears to be one of her last.) Deborah is a great character, and if Freda could have found some focus and development to match Dionisio's talent and enthusiasm, Murder obsession might be more well-known (and subsequently appreciated). When Michael first introduces Deborah, it is to Oliver as his "girlfriend." However, when Deborah meets Strindberg's Glenda, Michael introduces her as "his secretary." Dionisio's Deborah immediately and intuitively picks up on Glenda's jealousy, and the two become rivals for Michael's affection. The few scenes that the two have together are charged and tension-filled (Strindberg gives a fantastic performance, as well). Deborah's both sweet and smart: she knows that something is wrong with Michael, and despite his attempts to push her away, she's still affectionate and caring towards him. The best sequence of Murder obsession (and also Freda's most indulgent) comes with a very long dramatization of Deborah's nightmare that she tells Michael upon waking. Dionisio's Deborah descends into the deep, dark Gothic catacombs of the villa where she is being chased by a caked-face figure in a shroud. She spies a beautiful, Eden-like garden on the outside, only to have her path blocked by a giant rubber spider and its web. Through a foggy, sinister thorn forest, she ends in the hands of two dark figures in the midst of a black mass. Real snakes and a motorized spider lay in front of the bound Deborah, as the dark duo prepare their sacrifice. Utterly amazing. Dionisio carries the sequence, despite the laughable effects and ridiculous settings. Wide-eyed and frightened, most actresses would be unable to conjure as much credible emotion as Dionisio. All of her scenes within the film are welcomed. Sensuous and beautiful, it's hard for me to take my eyes off of her.
Included on the Raro release of Murder obsession is the longer Italian-language cut of the film without the options of English subtitles. An English language audio track is included, and for the scenes cut out of the English-language version, English subtitles are provided for the Italian audio. A short scene is included from the English print, absent from the Italian, less than thirty seconds, dark and murky of just really Gemser splashing in the bathtub. The highlight, and only other extra is an interview with Sergio Stivaletti, who worked (uncredited) on Murder obsession's special effects with Angelo Mattei. Mattei, according to Stivaletti, had previously worked with Dario Argento (apparently created the corpses for the underwater scene in Inferno.) Stivaletti describes Murder obsession as his first break, working with Mattei and Freda, and anecdotes about the production. The film is presented non-anamorphic and letterboxed. It doesn't have the sharpest picture or most clear audio, but I found it more than acceptable (considering the title's obscurity).

Mario Caiano's Bloody Payroll (1976)

Claudio Cassinelli is Raul "The Cat" Montalbani in Mario Caiano's Bloody Payroll (1976). As its English-language title suggests, Montalbani and his crew (including a drug-addicted psycho, Fausto (John Steiner)) head to a local corporation to rob its payroll money, and also as its English-title suggests, the heist doesn't go well. The crew of four manage to smack the employees around a little bit while collecting the dough. The police arrive and two of the crew get away, leaving Montalbani and Fausto inside. The police give chase to the fleeing two, while a hostage standoff happens at the corporation. The two make a successful getaway, along with all of the cash from the heist. Montalbani convinces the police to exchange the hostages for a getaway car and safe passage. The police agree, even though Montalbani's killed one of the hostages and thrown his corpse out the window. With two hostages in tow, Montalbani and Fausto exit, only to inadvertently get spotted by patrolling officers at a gas station. Fausto and Montalbani split. Fausto dies and Montalbani's pissed. This is just the beginning: Bloody Payroll is about get bloodier, as Montalbani's out to get his cash and more importantly, revenge.

Along with Weapons of Death (1977), Mario Caiano delivers with Bloody Payroll, two of the best films of the Italian Eurocrime genre in the 70s. Claudio Cassinelli is one bad motherfu**er as "The Cat," who doesn't care about anybody or anything, except getting his money. Anyone who has seen him play cops, such as in Massimo Dallamano's What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974) or little-seen and underrated Umberto Lenzi's Free Hand for a Tough Cop (1976), knows that good-looking and unassuming Cassinelli can play intense and focused. However, when he's on the other side of the law, his character becomes downright nasty. The two thugs that's he's after aren't angels, either; they're going around killing the ones who knew about the heist and their current whereabouts. If Raul manages to find them, they plan on killing him, too. Fortunately for Raul, he finds the getaway-car supplier's girlfriend before his cohorts do. Her name is Leila, played by Silvia Dionisio. She's a pro, and Raul picks her up while she's working. Thinking he's a john, she takes Raul back to her apartment and Raul roughs her up. She gives up the location of the hiding two heisters. Raul's off to confront them, but still, Bloody Payroll has much more to play out.The score is by Gianfranco Plenizio and it's a swinging jazzy score, almost dated by a decade. Save Silvia Dionisio's performance, it's about the only sweet thing in this production. Bloody Payroll is gritty and violent. Even the police scenes, as they track Raul, are played without theatrics: the cops move with an intense investigative focus (also totally credible), because they know how dangerous the criminals are. Caiano drops in some cold compositions that really stick with the viewer:

Caiano also really shows a command of the action sequences of which there are several. The car chase scene after the heist is phenomenal: he uses multiple shots with some crafty editing to make this one (and I've seen a bunch) one of the most exciting that I've ever seen. The violence is hard-hitting and Raul's character (and Cassinelli's performance) is a perfect vehicle for it: one way or the other, he's going to get what he wants. Dionisio's Leila is also an interesting character: she latches on to Raul because she believes he's strong enough to take her out of her current life and into a better one. She's truly incredulous that someone could be so cold and uncaring, even after she plays loving nursemaid and on-call lover to him. Dionisio is a fine actress with some of my favorite performances in Paul Morrissey's Blood for Dracula (1974), and Ruggero Deodato's Wave of Lust (1975), alongside Al Cliver and John Steiner. Bloody Payroll doesn't really roll on what's unexpected: its execution is just done unexpectedly well. See it.