WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? aka THE COED MURDERS (Italy - 1974; US release 1977) Directed by Massimo Dallamano. Written by Ettore Sanza and Massimo Dallamano. Cast: Giovanna Ralli, Claudio Cassinelli, Mario Adorf, Franco Fabrizi, Farley Granger, Marina Berti, Paolo Turco, Corrado Gaipa, Micaela Pignatelli, Ferdinando Murolo, Eleonora Morano, Sherry Buchanan, Roberta Paladini, Renata Moar, Adriana Falco, Lorenzo Piani, Giancarlo Badessi, Steffen Zacharias, Attilio Dottesio. (Unrated, 91 mins) The second film in a loosely-connected trilogy of "schoolgirl in peril" thrillers, WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? is a semi-sequel of sorts to 1972's giallo/krimi hybrid WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE?, jettisoning the German "krimi" element to instead function as a giallo/poliziotteschi mash-up. Both films were directed and co-written by Massimo Dallamano, who earlier established himself as a top cinematographer for Sergio Leone on A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS and FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE before becoming a filmmaker in his own right. Dallamano was set to direct the third film in the series, 1978's ENIGMA ROSSO, aka RED RINGS OF FEAR, but was killed in a car accident in late 1976 before finishing the script, which was completed by others with directing duties assigned to Alberto Negrin. All three films share the "schoolgirls in peril" motif, but where SOLANGE dealt with a string of brutal murders--where a group of teenage girls are stabbed in the vagina--committed in the wake of an unspeakable, heartbreaking tragedy, DAUGHTERS takes sociopolitical aim at the powers that be in the upper echelon of Italian society, with its darkly misanthropic tone abetted by one of Stelvio Cipriani's top scores, with a chipper-sounding, wordless vocal refrain that, given the subject matter, comes across as incongruously unsettling.
The film opens with the discovery of a nude 15-year-old girl found hanged in a small apartment that appears to be a secret love nest. Insp. Valentini (Mario Adorf) catches the case, but is soon replaced by the more bullish Silvestri (Claudio Cassinelli) and his partner Sgt. Giardana (Ferdinando Murolo), who team with deputy D.A. Vittoria Stori (Giovanna Ralli) in their investigation. For much of its first half, DAUGHTERS is more of a polizia-tinged procedural than a giallo, with Silvestri and Stori looking into the background of the dead girl, Silvia (Sherry Buchanan), who they soon discover was murdered at a different location, then taken to the apartment, with her body staged to look like a suicide. They also learn that Silvia was part of a secret teenage prostitution ring, much to the dismay of her wealthy parents, with her mother (Marina Berti) expressing outrage at finding her stash of birth control pills, and her father (Hollywood expat Farley Granger, in one of several gialli he made around this time) remorseful that he loved his daughter but never really tried to get close to her. Before long, the giallo end of the story kicks in as a meat cleaver-wielding hired killer decked out in leather and a black motorcycle helmet starts going after the other girls in the ring as well as any clients who pose a threat at exposing the powerful forces in charge of running it and profiting off the forced sexual servitude of underage girls.
From the beginning, Dallamano pulls no punches with WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? Valentini's reading of the coroner's report on Silvia's murder is graphic, mentioning the semen of multiple men found in her vagina, anus, and stomach, and later on, one scene where Silvestri and Stori listen in shock and disgust to secretly-recorded tapes of teenage girls being subjected to abhorrent sexual violence--including an impotent john who resorts to penetrating the girls with a bottle--is excruciating. With 1970s Italy in constant political upheaval and with crime rampant, there was also an epidemic of teenagers running away from home, disappearing, falling into drug abuse, etc. Secret prostitution rings were a recurring theme in Italian genre fare around this time, as seen in ENIGMA ROSSO as well as Sergio Martino's THE SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF A MINOR (1975), which also starred Cassinelli, Paolo Cavara's PLOT OF FEAR (1976), and Carlo Lizzani's bluntly-titled THE TEENAGE PROSTITUTION RACKET (1975), arguably the CHRISTIANE F of Red Brigade-era Italy. DAUGHTERS does an excellent job of balancing its dual polizia and giallo nature, with some dizzying camera work in a couple of chase scenes as well as a terrific suspense set piece with the killer pursuing Stori through a dark parking garage. There's also a few jarring moments of over-the-top splatter (one that prefigures a famous bit in Argento's TENEBRAE) along the way to its appropriately bleak, cynical, and pissed-off ending.
WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? wasn't released in the US until 1977, when short-lived exploitation outfit Peppercorn-Wormser sent it out on the grindhouse and drive-in circuit. It was re-released in 1980 as THE COED MURDERS, but never made it to video stores in VHS' 1980s glory days. It's been difficult to see in America outside of the bootleg circuit until Arrow's recent Blu-ray release with numerous extras, including a commentary by film historian Troy Howarth that takes time to give props to the unsung dubbing heroes revoicing the actors on the English version. Arrow's restoration really does the film justice in its 2.35:1 aspect ratio, of which former cinematographer Dallamano takes full advantage. It also benefits from a strong cast, though one wishes the great Adorf wasn't sidelined for much of the film, even though Cassinelli and Ralli make a fine LAW & ORDER: SVU team. Veteran actress Ralli was back in Italy after a brief attempt to break into Hollywood with James Coburn in the 1966 Blake Edwards farce WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DADDY?, the 1967 Stephen Boyd/Yvette Mimieux heist comedy THE CAPER OF THE GOLDEN BULLS, and the 1970 George Peppard actioner CANNON FOR CORDOBA. She's given an especially substantive role, and her casting is practically progressive--perhaps even approaching woke--on the part of Dallamano, considering the unusual notion of a strong, independent female lead in a 1970s Italian polizia, a genre where women usually existed as victims, complaining girlfriends, or abused junkies. Ralli's Stori takes no shit from anyone, is respected by her male colleagues, lives alone, and she and Cassinelli's Silvestri never hook up. Fans of Aldo Lado's NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS will recognize Marina Berti and Franco Fabrizi in familiar roles, with Berti as the distraught mother of a victim and Fabrizi as a voyeuristic Peeping Tom. Also worth noting are some of the young actresses cast as the girls in the prostitution ring, with Mississippi-born Buchanan going on to a reasonably busy Eurotrash career over the next decade (TENTACLES, THE HEROIN BUSTERS, ESCAPE FROM GALAXY 3, DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D.), Micaela Pignatelli co-starring as James Franciscus' wife in Enzo G. Castellari's infamous JAWS ripoff GREAT WHITE, and Renata Moar, whose place in film history would be secured the next year as the girl forced to eat a handful of human excrement in Pier Paolo Pasolini's SALO, a moment preserved on the cover of the film's Criterion release.
THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS (Italy - 1973; US release 1975) Directed by Sergio Martino. Written by Ernesto Gastaldi. Cast: Luc Merenda, Richard Conte, Silvano Tranquilli, Carlo Alighiero, Martine Brochard, Chris Avram, Luciano Bartoli, Lia Tanzi, Steffen Zacharias, Bruno Corazzari, Luciano Rossi, Cyrille Spiga, Rosario Borelli, Antony Vernon (Antonio Casale), Bruno Boschetti, Sergio Smacchi, Tom Felleghy. (R, 99 mins) After the artistic triumphs of Dario Argento's gialli, the next most notable figure in the genre in the early 1970s was arguably the journeyman Sergio Martino. Frequently teamed with the stunning Edwige Fenech, Martino cranked out a series of verbosely-titled gialli like 1971's THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH and THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL, and 1972's ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK and YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY, and his 1973 masterpiece TORSO. Though directors like Umberto Lenzi and Fernando Di Leo also dabbled in gialli, their strengths at that point in time were the violent, politically-charged poliziotteschi, a craze to which Martino inevitably contributed a handful of entries, beginning with 1973's THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS, which has just been released on Blu-ray from Code Red.
Though it works in the social and political implications of an early '70s Milan that these films frequently presented as a violent, crime-infested hellhole, there's a definite DIRTY HARRY influence to THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS in its central character, Giorgio Caneparo (Luc Merenda). A standard-issue plays-by-his-own-rules cop, hot-tempered Caneparo is read the riot act by his boss Del Buono (Chris Avram) after blowing away a pair of escapees from a locomotive prisoner transport when they were already cornered and ready to give up and he was more than capable of simply arresting them. Del Buono suggests Caneparo lay low and look into some robberies that he's been investigating, and no sooner than mentioning that does Del Buono get gunned down in the street by a trio of mystery assailants. Obsessed with avenging his boss and fed up with the useless lip service paid to his memory ("Pathetic!" he shouts, interrupting an official government tribute to his slain boss), Caneparo goes undercover to infiltrate the bank robbery operation, which is being coordinated by Milan mob boss Padulo (Richard Conte). Caneparo gets a job as a wheelman for Padulo's current crew, and his first job with them goes off the rails when a psycho Padulo flunky (Bruno Corazzari) opens fire on a pregnant woman for no reason. But the rationale for the robberies runs deeper, as Caneparo gradually figures out that Padulo isn't quite who he says he is, and that the supposedly powerful mobster is just a cog in the wheel, serving much more powerful masters with more ambitiously sinister plans.
Those plans are never completely clear given the muddled political subtext of THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS. There's a lot of talk in Ernesto Gastaldi's script about creating an aura of chaos around Milan and throughout Italy and "rebuilding this country all over again," which probably played better for Italian audiences living through the political tumult of that era. But even in the English-dubbed version released in the US by Scotia in 1975, the film is a solid second-tier polizia offering, with a memorable score by Guido & Maurizio De Angelis, some not-quite-but-still-spirited FRENCH CONNECTION-style car chases and Merenda (dubbed by Michael Forest) a believably pissed-off lone wolf cop in the Dirty Harry vein (he even gets a final moment comparable to tossing his badge away in disgust). It's also worth noting for those with polizia experience that THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS is also the source of that oft-used shot of a car crashing through a stack of cardboard boxes engulfed in flames, which resurfaced in seemingly a dozen other polizias and even more trailers. Born in 1943, Merenda got his first big break as a doomed French racing driver in the 1971 Steve McQueen vanity project LE MANS. He would go on to work with Martino on several occasions, most notably in a supporting role in TORSO and in a pair of entertaining 1975 actioners, GAMBLING CITY and SILENT ACTION. Merenda was a regular presence in Italian action films throughout the '70s and he would shift to Italian TV in the '80s. He grew disenchanted with the entertainment industry and walked away, retiring from acting in 1992 to focus on his family and opening a successful antique shop in Paris, which he still runs to this day, taking a break only to make a one-off return to the screen when Merenda superfan Eli Roth talked him into accepting a small role in 2007's HOSTEL PART II.
Richard Conte (1910-1975)
After a memorable turn as the duplicitous Barzini in 1972's THE GODFATHER, veteran American actor Conte found himself in much demand in Italy. In 1973 alone, including THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS, he played mob figures in no less than seven Italian crime movies, including Fernando Di Leo's THE BOSS and the gangster spoof MY BROTHER ANASTASIA, which teamed him with beloved Italian comedian Alberto Sordi. Conte and Merenda reteamed in 1974 for Di Leo's SHOOT FIRST...DIE LATER, with Merenda as a corrupt cop and Conte as a subservient mob lawyer who jumps at the chance to throw his boss under the bus and take over as soon as he's feeling unappreciated. Thanks to the worldwide success of THE GODFATHER, Conte was such a sought-after export-value name for the Italian crime genre that he wound up spending the rest of his career in Europe and never appeared in another American film. Conte died in April 1975 from complications of a heart attack and a subsequent series of strokes (he's dubbed by someone else and looks noticeably frail and aged in SHOOT FIRST...DIE LATER compared to THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS just a year earlier), and by the end of his life, the jobs he was getting in Italy were on a marked decline compared to the exemplary polizia work and GODFATHER-associated star treatment he was receiving just two years earlier. Conte's final film found him as a glum, morose exorcist in 1975's tawdry and embarrassing NAKED EXORCISM, by far the worst Italian EXORCIST ripoff of them all, released in the US as THE POSSESSOR in 1977, two years after his death.
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.
At times looking like what might happen if Costa-Gavras made a Eurocrime movie, Luciano Ercoli's KILLER COP is one of the more politically-charged poliziotteschi to come out of Italy in the 1970s. Inspired by the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, the film centers on eccentric narcotics commissioner Rolandi (Claudio Cassinelli), who always carries a copy of Melville's Moby Dick for symbolism at its most cumbersome, being in the wrong place at the wrong time when he stumbles into the bombing while working another case. He subsequently butts heads with Armando "Minty" DiFederico (Arthur Kennedy)--so nicknamed for his Tic Tac habit--the hardass judge assigned to oversee the investigation. Both set aside their differences and work together--but not exactly in an if they don't kill each other first! buddy-movie capacity--when they eventually realize the bombings and the subsequent trail of bodies, starting with likable but mistake-prone detective Balsamo (Franco Fabrizi), point to police and judicial corruption and a cover-up from inside the department. Ercoli (1929-2015) was best known for gialli like THE FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A LADY ABOVE SUSPICION, DEATH WALKS AT MIDNIGHT, and DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS, but KILLER COP is a thoughtful and thoroughly engrossing snapshot of the Red Brigades domestic terrorism affecting Italy at the time and influencing the country's wildly popular polizia genre in particular. Cassinelli has one of his best roles and the great five-time Oscar-nominee Kennedy, in prime "grumpy Arthur Kennedy" mode, is terrific in one of his standout performances from the often-dubious Eurocult phase of his career. The supporting cast includes familiar Eurotrash faces like Sara Sperati (SALON KITTY), Valeria D'Obici (ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX), Enzo Fisichella (THE GREAT ALLIGATOR), Ugo Bologna (NIGHTMARE CITY), and Enzo G. Castellari regular Giovanni Cianfriglia. Stelvio Cipriani's score is one of his greatest. According to IMDb, Jack Lemmon recorded an introductory voiceover narration for the film's US release, but there's nothing on YouTube, Google, or in the liner notes of Raro's 2015 Blu-ray release of the film, to corroborate this highly suspect claim.
KILLER COP was released in the US in 1976 by grindhouse outfit Joseph Green Pictures. It was in regular late-night rotation on Detroit's WGPR Channel 62, which went on the air in 1975 and was the first African-American-owned TV station in the US. It focused on religious programming (the call letters stood for "Where God's Presence Radiates") and niche fare like the talk/variety show ARAB VOICE OF DETROIT, but after hours, the station would air "All Night at the Movies." These were mostly old movies and serials, but at some point in the late '70s, WGPR must've acquired the admittedly limited Joseph Green library, showing their sometimes racy titles uncut in prime 2:00-6:00 am insomniac hours (I can personally attest to the stories in this link: 62 came in fairly clear in the Toledo area and in the early '80s, I caught Jose Gutierrez Maesso's 1975 actioner ORDER TO KILL, which proved to be a watershed moment in my grindhouse education as I witnessed nude Sydne Rome on broadcast TV). WGPR struggled as Detroit's least-watched station until it was purchased by CBS in 1994 and the call letters were eventually changed to WWJ. (R, 97 mins)
With the possible exception of Umberto Lenzi's incredible 1976 Maurizio Merli ragefest ROME ARMED TO THE TEETH (aka THE TOUGH ONES), the director's ALMOST HUMAN is probably the greatest of the 1970s Italian poliziotteschi crime movies. Astonishingly mean and unrepentantly nasty, even with some of its more transgressive offenses--the main villain forcing a male hostage to blow him at gunpoint--clearly implied but taking place offscreen, ALMOST HUMAN exists on its own special plane of misanthropy. Tomas Milian is Giulio Sacchi, a vile worm of a whining, pathetic lowlife in Milan's underworld, a twitchy loose screw and a psychotic fuck-up who can't even handle the simplest task without losing his shit--he overreacts and kills cops on two separate occasions in the first ten minutes of the movie--and causing trouble for boss Majone (Luciano Catenacci). Full of self-aggrandizing hot air and tired of small scores and subsisting on Majone's table scraps, Giulio pressures his dim-witted sometime-girlfriend Iona (Anita Strindberg) for information on Mary Lou (Laura Belli), the daughter of her wealthy boss Porrino (Guido Alberti), with the intention of kidnapping her for a hefty ransom. Because Giulio and his equally thick-skulled, impulsive sidekicks Carmine (Ray Lovelock) and Vittorio (Gino Santercole) can't do anything right, the entire plan collapses on itself, and with a quickly-escalating body count, it's only a matter of time before angry detective Grandi (Henry Silva) realizes Giulio is behind all the mayhem.
Shot under the Italian MILANO ODIA, which translates literally to the very appropriate "Milan Hates," the film was released in the US by Joseph Brenner from 1975 to 1979 under a variety of titles like THE KIDNAP OF MARY LOU and THE DEATH DEALER. Brenner relaunched it again in 1980 under the ALMOST HUMAN moniker, which saw the film absurdly being sold as a horror movie ("It doesn't matter how loud you scream"). That title seems to have stuck and is what the film is best known by these days, but not since career con man Edward L. Montoro's Film Ventures released 1973's acid-bathed RICCO THE MEAN MACHINE in the US in 1979 as THE CAULDRON OF DEATH ("Pray it doesn't happen to you!") was a Eurotrash crime movie more fraudulently peddled to unsuspecting audiences. ALMOST HUMAN is a masterpiece of seething rage and completely unlikable characters. Even the "hero"--Silva's irate Grandi--is a hot-tempered asshole, but he's the most upstanding asshole around (and nobody, and I mean nobody--not even Samuel L. Jackson--belts out a "motherfucker" like Henry Silva). Even dubbed by veteran voice actor Frank von Kuegelgen, Milian is one of the most weaselly, loathsome bad guys you'll ever see, one whose quick solution to everything is to make matters even worse and dig the hole deeper. To say he gets his comeuppance in the best possible location is an understatement, and a scathing critique on exactly what Lenzi and screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi thought of the character. It's foul, it's trashy, and there's no redeeming qualities to any of its characters--in other words, ALMOST HUMAN is mandatory viewing, and an excellent place to start if you're new to the demented joys of poliziotteschi. (R, 99 mins)
