Manhattan Baby (1982)

After watching Italian horror director and gore-meister Lucio Fulci’s ‘Gates Of Hell’ trilogy last year for spooky movie Halloween season, the collapse of logic was definitely understood as an auteur trademark across all those movies. Manhattan Baby (1982) is Fulci’s Exorcist rip-off, which follows an archaeologist digging around a haunted tomb in Egypt whose family […]

Street Law (1974)

Franco Nero and his moustache get into trouble in Street Law (1974) when he is taken hostage in a bank robbery. The opening credits have already spelled out that the city is rampant with robberies and murders, backed by the beautiful soundtrack work of Guido and Maurizio De Angelis (the prog-rock stoner jam of ‘Goodbye […]

The Big Racket (1976)

If you start watching Poliziotteschi from the 1970s, or Eurocrime movies where they attempt to go further than Dirty Harry and Death Wish, there’s always going to be some heinous shit in there in terms of the violence and sleaziness. The Big Racket (1976; Il Grande Racket) has that and more, but it is one […]

Keoma (1976)

I remember seeing a scene from Keoma (1976), a Franco Nero spaghetti western, on SBS Cult Movies a long time ago and hearing some of its discordant, strange soundtrack, and never forgetting it. Scored by Guido and Maurizo De Angelis (who had already made a lasting impression on me recently with their weird theme to […]

The Boss (1973)

Henry Silva made a career out of playing heavies and gangsters over many decades. Alongside Jack Palance, their distinctive features didn’t necessarily make them the matinee idol hero leading man type. In the world of American actors working in Italy throughout the 1960s and 1970s, however, they could be tough guy main characters, the leading […]