STREET PEOPLE (Italy - 1976) Directed by Maurizio Lucidi. Written by Ernest Tidyman, Randal Kleiser, Gianfranco Bucceri, Roberto Leoni, Nicola Badalucco and Maurizio Lucidi. Cast: Roger Moore, Stacy Keach, Ivo Garrani, Ettore Manni, Fausto Tozzi, Ennio Balbo, Loretta Persichetti, Pietro Martellanza, Luigi Casellato, Romano Puppo, Rosemarie Lindt, Aldo Rendine, Emilio Vale, Salvatore Torrisi, Franco Fantasia, Giuseppe Castellano, Salvatore Billa. (R, 92 mins) One of four films Roger Moore made in quick succession between his second and third 007 outings (1974's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN and 1977's THE SPY WHO LOVED ME), the 1976 Italian-made mob thriller STREET PEOPLE was always an oddity in his filmography, and that's even counting his appearance in the 2003 Cuba Gooding Jr/Horatio Sanz atrocity BOAT TRIP. Moore never held himself in any particularly serious regard as an actor, and with the mountains of cash he was making once he got the James Bond gig, his other jobs seemed to be decided by how nice of a working vacation they'd provide. Much of STREET PEOPLE was shot in San Francisco--which offered plenty of sights to see in his downtime--with interiors done in De Paolis Studios in Rome. Moore is quite improbably cast as Ulysses, the half-Sicilian/half-British consigliere to his uncle, San Francisco mob underboss Salvatore Francesco (Ivo Garrani), who helpfully gets the viewer up to speed on Ulysses sounding like Roger Moore by mentioning, apropos of nothing, "The smartest thing I ever did was get you out of Sicily and into that English law school!"
It's Ulysses' job to make Uncle Salvatore's business ventures look legal and that gets difficult when Salvatore arranges the importing of a large Sicilian cross from a church in the small town where he grew up in the old country. It arrives at a pier in the warehouse district, accompanied by Father Frank (Ettore Manni), a childhood friend of Salvatore's. But it turns out the inside of the cross, unbeknownst to Father Frank, has been packed with a massive heroin shipment that's hijacked by three ambitious gangsters--Nicoletta (Fausto Tozzi), Pano (Pietro Martellanza, aka "Peter Martell"), and Fortunato (Romano Puppo)--looking to make a huge score. Salvatore claims to know nothing about the drugs and pleads his case to boss of bosses Don Giuseppe Continenza (Ennio Balbo), who orders all the drugs off the streets in order to find the culprits. Don Giuseppe's edict still doesn't out them, which means it must be an inside job with someone in the organization, prompting Ulysses to recruit his racing driver pal Charlie (Stacy Keach) to track down the three gangsters and find the mastermind behind the shipment.
The mystery doesn't prove to be a difficult one to solve, especially once an enraged Father Frank starts reminding Ulysses about a long-suppressed traumatic memory from his childhood. The plot gets far too convoluted for its own good, and it doesn't sufficiently explore the frayed relationship between Salvatore and Father Frank or any parallels you might expect in the friendship between Ulysses and Charlie. It's possible these themes were touched upon in the 101-minute European version titled THE SICILIAN CROSS, but the film was chopped down to 92 minutes and rechristened STREET PEOPLE by American International when it played drive-ins and grindhouses in the fall of 1976. Director Maurizio Lucidi (STATELINE MOTEL) was one of six credited screenwriters, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if none of them bothered to check anyone else's work. Other hands in the screenplay include diverse figures like future SANTA SANGRE co-writer Roberto Leoni; a 30-year-old Randal Kleiser, the same year he directed the John Travolta TV-movie THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE and soon on his way to big-screen fame with 1978's GREASE and 1980's THE BLUE LAGOON; and Oscar-winning FRENCH CONNECTION screenwriter Ernest Tidyman, no stranger to '70s crime thrillers having also written 1971's SHAFT (based on his own novel) and 1975's underrated REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER.
Just out on Blu-ray in its US cut from Kino Lorber with a new Stacy Keach interview (because physical media is dead), STREET PEOPLE isn't quite on the level of those gritty Tidyman-penned gems. But it does get a lot from some genuinely likable Terence Hill/Bud Spencer-style camaraderie between Moore and Keach, the latter having an especially good time as a devil-may-care hellraiser prone to oddball quips ("I'll have to tell everyone on the street that you're a turkey deluxe!" he says to a potential snitch who doesn't want to play ball), ambitious but foolhardy schemes (switching out the heroin with powdered milk), and some proto-SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT levels of wanton destruction. In addition to a vaguely FRENCH CONNECTION-inspired car chase, there's a long sequence where Charlie takes a car being sold by a cash-strapped Nicoletta for a test drive and speeds up and down the streets crashing into anything in sight and demolishing the car to the point where it's a barely-recognizable hunk of metal. It's unquestionably the film's highlight and also does a nice job of showing off Keach's rarely-utilized comedic skills. As enjoyable as STREET PEOPLE's goofy side can be, it's also indicative of its struggle to find its own identity, as the film can't decide if it wants to be a gangster buddy comedy, a violent pseudo-polizia mob thriller, or something more serious in terms of Ulysses confronting a horrible childhood memory, which is really sold by composer Luis Bacalov going for his best mournfully elegiac Ennio Morricone-style cues. Lucidi (1932-2005) had a generally undistinguished journeyman career, dabbling in peplum (1965's HERCULES THE AVENGER), spaghetti westerns (1967's HALLELUJAH FOR DJANGO, 1972's IT CAN BE DONE, AMIGO), macaroni combat war actioners (1969's PROBABILITY ZERO), gialli (1971's THE DESIGNATED VICTIM), and he even used the alias "Mark Lander" when he made a one-off, late-career sojourn into hardcore porn in the late '90s with A GYNECOLOGIST AND HIS VICES. He was also one of several uncredited directors who didn't want to deal with the always-unstable Klaus Kinski on 1988's notoriously troubled NOSFERATU IN VENICE. Lucidi isn't exactly an Umberto Lenzi or a Fernando Di Leo, and STREET PEOPLE isn't about to make anyone's list of top 1970s Eurocrime outings, but it's got some great San Francisco location work throughout (check out Keach driving through the city's seedy red-light district, and Moore and Keach chasing Tozzi across some downtown rooftops), and it's better than its reputation, even if Roger Moore was rarely more miscast.
Directed by Andrea Bianchi. Written by Piero Regnoli. Cast: Henry Silva, Barbara Bouchet, Fausto Tozzi, Vittorio Sanipoli, Mario Landi, Patrizia Gori, Dada Gallotti, Alfredo Pea. (Unrated, 93 mins) Titled QUELLI CHE CONTANO in Italy, which translates to the vague THE ONES WHO COUNT in English, this tawdry 1974 Eurocrime thriller was given a sleazy, drive-in-ready rechristening as CRY OF A PROSTITUTE for its 1976 US release by grindhouse outfit Joseph Brenner Associates, Inc. It's not exactly false advertising--there is an ex-prostitute who figures into the story and she indeed cries--but it probably disappointed those specifically looking for T&A trash, though audiences did end up getting a more-violent-than-usual Italian mob movie out of the deal. The great Henry Silva, who was getting a ton of work in poliziotteschi films throughout the 1970s, is Sicilian-born hit man Tony Ariante, who returns to his rural Sicily village birthplace after spending years with the American mob in Brooklyn. He's back at the behest of Don Cascemi (Vittorio Sanipoli), who wants to start a war between two other bosses, Don Cantimo (Fausto Tozzi) and Don Scannapieco (Mario Landi). The three warring dons have gotten involved in the drug trade, though Cascemi and Tony are appalled that the bodies of dead kids are being used to move junk back and forth between Europe and America. In classic YOJIMBO fashion, Tony plays both sides against the other ("Whose side are you on?" Scannapieco asks, to which Tony replies "The winner") and things escalate when he steps in and offs three goons who try to kill Don Scannapieco's handicapped son Zino (Alfredo Pea). If that's not enough, Tony's lured into a sadomasochistic fling with Don Cantimo's alcoholic, nympho wife Margie (Barbara Bouchet), the former prostitute of the title, who ropes Tony in by gently fellating the tip of a peeled banana at the dinner table. Fortunately for Tony, Don Cantimo gets off on being a cuckold, demanding dirty-talk confessionals about her extramarital flings while they have sex ("God, what a whore you are!" he ecstatically moans in the velvet tones of veteran voice dubber Michael Forest). Tony doesn't have time for romance, instead opting to anally rape Margie in the barn while beating her and forcing her face-first into the gutted, raw carcass of a hung-up pig in a scene so wrong in so many ways that it has to be seen to be believed.
The casually cruel nature of CRY OF A PROSTITUTE shouldn't be a surprise since it's directed by Italian trash auteur Andrea Bianchi, whose later films include the charming 1975 giallo STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER, the sleazy 1979 supernatural horror/porno crossover MALABIMBA: THE MALICIOUS WHORE, and the 1981 zombie incest masterpiece BURIAL GROUND. Silva plays one of the most vile sociopaths of his career, possibly even more despicable than the similarly nihilistic asshole he played in Fernando Di Leo's THE BOSS, aka WIPEOUT!, a year earlier, the difference being that Tony's the hero. Not only is there the extremely brutal sodomy scene in the barn, but he also later whips Margie with his belt, finishing her off with a few thwacks across her face with the buckle (the end result adorned Joseph Brenner's US poster art, which would not fly today). He also finds it's not enough to kill a couple of rival gangsters, but he also has to drive over and flatten them with a conveniently-available steamroller. The only thing that makes Tony even slightly human is the small amount of sympathy he feels for the helpless Zino, and a surprise reveal at the end tries to justify Tony's actions, but it's pretty hard to excuse his--or the film's--treatment of the pathetic Margie, played by the gorgeous Bouchet at her least glamorous. After opening with an instant classic decapitation, CRY OF A PROSTITUTE is a little slow-going and predictable for a while, but Bianchi clearly gets bored and starts going increasingly over-the-top in ways that make Silva's next Eurocrime gig--Umberto Lenzi's incredible ALMOST HUMAN--seem tame by comparison. Whether it's the misogynistic sexual violence, the pervy antics of Don Cantimo, or the insane killings (another guy gets his head split when it's pushed through a band saw), CRY OF A PROSTITUTE never resists a chance to go for shock value.
It also takes advantage of its rural, old-country setting by essentially making the story a spaghetti western in poliziotteschi disguise, from Tony's FISTFUL OF DOLLARS machinations to his climactic resurrection to take on Don Cantimo's men after he's presumed dead. Also noteworthy to the spaghetti western motif is Tony's ominous whistling before the kill, an obvious nod to Charles Bronson's Harmonica in Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. There's some good ideas in Piero Regnoli's script but Bianchi, by all accounts still with us at 90 though long-retired from the movies, is just too rude and crude to pull off any notion of stylistic, genre-melding subtleties. In the relatively controlled hands of a Di Leo, an Enzo G. Castellari (STREET LAW), or a more politically-minded genre figure like a Damiano Damiani (CONFESSIONS OF A POLICE CAPTAIN), CRY OF A PROSTITUTE could've been a much smarter film. But Andrea Bianchi never did subtle or smart, so it still scores as unabashed drive-in garbage, which is fine on its own. It also offers an essential Silva performance, with the actor getting in one of his signature, emphatic "MotherFUCKER!" bellowings ("Will you please clean my shoes?") that have retroactively made him the Samuel L. Jackson of Eurocrime.
Newspaper ad for CRY OF A PROSTITUTE, opening in Toledo, OH on 6/2/1977, significantly toned down from the brutal one-sheet art.
