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Rush's Freebie and the Bean is the immediate point of departure, the chase is frontloaded as a grisly streak through Christmastime Rome. (Choice details include the conk! of a woman's head smashing against a post as she's dragged across the sidewalk, and a blind man stranded at a crossroads after his guide pooch gets squashed.) Members of the squadra speciale, the policemen (Marc Porel, Ray Lovelock) are chiseled specimens introduced sharing a motorcycle like a two-headed Playgirl cover, the aftermath of the opening pursuit finds one of them treating a surviving purse-snatcher to a snapped neck. "Mine died on his own." "I helped mine out." Their approach to the law is to crash through the door of a hostage situation, and to prevent a robbery by approaching would-be crooks beforehand with a polite "con permesso" and shooting them in the face. The chief (Adolfo Celi) fumes at tactics but can't argue with results, conceding that the protagonists display "a slight tendency toward delinquency." The fascism behind the badge breeds hedonistic executioners, Fernando Di Leo's script recognizes the sanctioned savagery while Ruggero Deodato's camera milks the scummy giddiness. Hoping to intimidate the kingpin (Renato Salvatori), the swaggering nitwits set ablaze the parking lot of his nightclub but have to walk back after torching their own car. The harassed secretary (Silvia Dionisio) has their number: "Masculine supremacy is bullshit," a thesis put to the test by the underworld nympho (Sofia Dionisio) who turns her interrogation into an erotic endurance test. (Her housekeeper offers to serve the depleted Lotharios eggnog.) Too distracted by a topless blonde to complete their own happy ending, the "heroes" settle for one last freeze-frame of destructiveness and wait for Aldrich to bat cleanup with The Choirboys. With Franco Citti, Marino Masè, Margherita Horowitz, Bruno Corazzari, and Alvaro Vitali.
--- Fernando F. Croce |