Ghostly Vengeance

What at first would seem to be your prototypical poliziotteschi (an Italian sub-genre infusing action and crime), Cry of a Prostitute (1974) – its more subtle titles: Love Kills and Guns of the Big Shots), directed by gritty film maker Andrea Bianchi (Strip Nude for Your Killer; Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror), actually holds more in common with the classic spaghetti western. Taking inspiration from Shakespeare’s Capulets and Montagues, the real life Hatfields and McCoys, and perhaps most importantly, films like Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964), you’ll probably note that each reference relates to two feuding families... which is the main element of the story here.

A giallo murder mystery released well after the craze of the early 1970s, The Bloodstained Shadow (1978), co-written and directed by Antonio Bido (Watch Me When I Kill), has more suspects than you may even be able to keep track of. Utilizing its sizeable cast to keep its twisty turns in the shadows, we flash forward some twenty years after a brutal unsolved strangling on the small island of Murano – which rests on the edge of Venice, as professor Stefano D’Archangelo (Lino Capolicchio) returns home for a calming visit after years away in the big city... it just so happens that a fetching artist, Sandra Sellani (Stefania Casini – Suspiria), is also returning home on the same train after being away for some time.

A Spaghetti Western set during the chaotic time period of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), 1967's A Bullet for the General (sometimes known by its original Italian title Quién sabe?, in English – Who Knows?), directed by Damiano Damiani, is a lesser known gem found within the subgenre best known for titles like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Django. Written by Franco Solinas – the famed Marxist political writer who a year earlier scribed The Battle of Algiers, his screenplay is filled with the tension, violent action, and the politics of this historical time period... and, to add a layer on top of a layer, this film is considered the first Zapata Western – a subgenre of the Spaghetti Western that delves into this era in Mexico, usually juxtaposing the themes of intense revolution with cold hard cash.

There is no doubt that Tom Cruise has taken up much of the action attention over the past couple years with his possible finale of the Mission: Impossible franchise... which was released earlier this summer. Yet, there is another action franchise that also deserves some viewership –Jackie Chan’s Police Story, which started in 1985 and most recently hit theatres in 2013 (though there is talk of another one in the works). With parts one and two already reviewed here on Filmizon.com, here goes number three – which is sometimes called Police Story3: Supercop, but in North America is usually referred to simply as Supercop (1992). Directed by Stanley Tong – his first of six directorial collaborations with Jackie Chan, the star returns once more as Insp. Chan Ka Kui, this time often being referenced as the titular Supercop. Grudgingly sent by his longtime friend and boss ‘Uncle’ Bill Wong (Bill Tung) from his home in Hong Kong over to mainland China to help run a dangerous undercover sting on an underground drug smuggling operation, he must also leave behind his longtime girlfriend May (Maggie Cheung) for at least a month.

Sometimes a movie just doesn’t fit perfectly within its own genre... going against a few of the tropes that define what something is, all while hitting enough of them to still be what it is – confusing! That’s the case with this latter-day Italian giallo, Mystère... sometimes better known by its English title Dagger Eyes (1983). Co-written and directed by Carlo Vanzina, the film opens with a rather impressive, though more crime inspired assassination in Rome... resembling the real life John F. Kennedy car killing. It will start a chain reaction of murders that will rock the Eternal City.

Some might know that icon Mario Bava is often considered to be the first filmmaker to make a giallo with 1963's The Girl Who Knew Too Much... though unless you’re a big fan of the genre, many will probably not know that his son, Lamberto Bava, continued on with the gialli tradition well past its heyday in the early 1970s – releasing a number of horror tinged mystery thrillers, including today’s Delirium (1987)... sometimes also known as The Photo of Gioia. Welcome to what very well could be the Italian rival of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy, fluffily called Pussycat – a high end nudie magazine that brings some class (and a bit of kitsch) to artistic nude photography. Run by former supermodel Gloria (Serena Grandi), she inherited the business when her husband tragically died.