Alligator (1980)

It’s difficult to know what’s more ferocious in the movie Alligator (1980): the hormone growth accelerated sewer-dwelling alligator with an insatiable appetite or the string of wise-cracks people make about Robert Forster’s male pattern baldness? Yes, Forster is sporting some fresh plugs, but give the guy a break! He plays a cop investigating body parts […]

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 […]

Sharky’s Machine (1981)

Sharky’s Machine (1981) has a great opening sequence of Burt Reynolds looking gruff, striding through fog on a train track to the sounds of Randy Crawford’s ‘Street Life’ (later used on the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown). Directed by Reynolds himself, this is adapted from a William Diehl novel and works as a 1980s […]

Le Marginal (1982)

I discovered Ennio Morricone’s main theme for Le Marginal (1982) recently on a Best Of – that piece of music is awesome, with its disco-bass and dramatic strings. So I thought I’d track down and watch the movie it belonged to, a French super-cop crime thriller in the tradition of Bullitt, Dirty Harry, every cop […]