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I saw this movie, the 97 mins uncut version for the first time recently after reading a glowing review by Coventry which is spot on.

This movie is indeed brutal n very misogynistic.

After drugs are found inside the dead body of a kid, mafia bosses get angry at this despicable act and a senior Don Coscemi hires Tony (Silva), a misogynist n cold-blooded psychopath to wreak havoc on the perpetrators of the heinous act.

After arriving in Italy, Tony who has his own agenda, gets himself in the middle of a feud between two mafia families. He manipulates both families into believing he is on their side but is seduced by Margie, a former prostitute now married to one of the mob bosses. A shocking relationship between Tony and Margie wreaks havoc on both of them.

Silva's character Tony is the epitome of misogyny. His character whips a woman, punches her eye, sodomizes her while pushing her face in the carcass of a butchered pig and even bites off her cheeks.

And inspite of all the nastiness Tony is capable of, we still root for him.

His character even bulldozes two fellas by an asphalt bulldozer.

The circular saw machine scene is shocking.

Director Andrea Bianchi is probably best known for the nauseatingly brutal Zombie Gore flick "Le Notti Del Terrore" (aka. "Burial Ground", 1981) and the super-sleazy Giallo "Nude Per L'Assassino" ("Strip Nude For Your Killer", 1975), so it is not surprising that his contribution to the Italian Crime genre, "Quelli Che Contano" aka. "Cry of a Prostitute" of 1974, (which he co-directed with his brother) is one of the most brutal and misogynist films in a genre that generally isn't for the squeamish. This might be seen as a warning for the sensitive, faint-hearted and politically correct, but it definitely serves as a word of recommendation for my fellow fans of Italian Exploitation cinema from the 70s.

Genre icon Henry Silva stars as Tony Aniante, a super-tough mob hit-man (who is sort of a more exaggerated double of Silva's absolute greatest role of hit-man Lanzetta in Fernando Di Leo's masterpiece "Il Boss" of 1973). The film already starts out intensely brutal when an apparent family has a fatal car crash in gory detail. The autopsy makes it clear that the kid was already dead before the crash, and just transported by mob-related drug-dealers who use children's corpses (!) as means for heroin production. Since such depraved methods are even despicable by organized crime standards, and furthermore bad for business, the dons of the Sicilian mafia assign Tony Aniante to clean up among the dirtiest of their own...

The violence in this film is very intense, even by brutal Italian 70s crime standards, and the degree of political incorrectness is as high as it gets. The great Henry Silva is super-tough, super-cool and cold as ice as always; whenever he offs someone in this flick he whistles a cool tune. The man simply is the best guy ever to play mafia hit men. Period. Cult-goddess Barbara Bouchet is ravishing as always in the role of a nymphomaniac ex-prostitute turned mob-boss' wife, who enjoys getting raped and severely beaten. Fausto Tozzi plays her perverted mafia don husband, who gets off on hearing his wife talk about her extramarital activities. Between macho talk, revenge-vows and mafia conspiracies, the film features brutalities such as rape, people being beaten to a bloody pulp, decapitation and autopsies and dozens of bloody gunfights. The storyline isn't the most intriguing in Italian crime cinema, and the film has some minor logical flaws, but these are secondary to the tons of gritty and hard-boiled entertainment that it provides. Definitely one to watch for my fellow Italian Crime / Poliziotteschi fans.

This film is obviously inspired by A Fistful of Dollars directed by Sergio Leone. Henry Silva is not by far what is Clint Eastwood but, he is doing his best. Andrea Bianchi, the director, the same, is not bad. The other actors are also at height. True, the whole movie is a series of clichés and deja-vu but, even so, it manages to captivate, you can follow it to the end, it's not boring. The music signed by Sante Maria Romitelli is very good. The cinematography of Carlo Carlini is also good. And, the presence of the sex symbol Barbara Bouchet(who looks like a twin sister of Jill Ireland, once the wife of Charles Bronson) is the hot spice of everything, her white panties have a role by itself...

Andrea Bianchi wasn't a great (or even good, for that matter) Italian exploitation director from the 70s-80s period, but cult fanatics will surely remember his name forever, if only because his films are so much sicker, more perverted and more nauseating than the rest! Everybody knows Bianchi's zombie classic "Burial Ground", and more particularly the crazed-out scene in which the creepy kid bites off his mother's nipple. Bianchi's contribution to the giallo-genre, "Strip Nude for your Killer", was also more obscene and nastier than the others. This "Cry of a Prostitute" marks Bianchi's attempt to tell a mafia-tale, but - here as well - the most memorable aspects are the film's extreme gore, the brutal misogyny and the unhinged violence.

Admittedly, the international title "Cry of a Prostitute" is a bit too sensationalist, and not entirely relevant. For once, though, the original Italian title (literally translating as "Those who matter") is lame, unenergized and totally unworthy of the depravity shown on the screen. The plot isn't exactly original. It's basically a mafia/euro-crime version of Sergio Leone's western "A Fistful of Dollars" (and thus also of Akira Kurasawa's "Yojimbo"), with the stern and almost naturally petrifying Henry Silva as a professional killer Tony Aniante, manipulating two rivaling mafia clans at the same time. The titular prostitute, played by the ravishing Mrs. Bouchet, is actually just a sub-plot character. She's reluctantly married to one of the mafia Dons, and hopes for a more exciting life as Tony's mistress, but she gets far more than she bargains for.

As stated already, the violence and sheer brutality in "Cry of a Prostitute" are staggering! The film opens quite impressively, with a car accident in which somebody loses a head - literally - and the shocking discovery that dead children's bodies are being used to smuggle drugs over the borders. Yes, seriously!!

There's more nasty stuff where this came from, in fact. Family feuds are solved, next to big guns, with asphalt compactors and circular saws! Silva's character Tony Aniante balances somewhat between being the anti-hero and the most sadistically evil psychopath who ever appeared on a screen. His attitude towards woman is deeply disturbing, to say the least. During sequences that are definitely not intended for sensitive souls, Silva beats Bouchet to pulp with his belt, or rapes her from behind whilst her face is suffocating in a pig's carcass. And all she ever did, was tease him and demonstrate her sensual banana-eating skills.

Leave it to Italian sleazemeister Andreas Bianchi (here co-directing with his brother)to take a brutally violent and borderline misogynist genre like the Italian "polizieschi" and actually up the ante considerably. This movie begins with drug dealers trying to smuggle drugs into Italy sewed up in the body of a dead child(!), and it only gets more gratuitously violent from there. A brutal gang war is going between a traditional Italian mafia family and an Americanized godfather who has been deported back to Italy. Injected into this conflict is another Italian-American gangster, the protagonist (Henry Silva), and he begins to play the two rivals off against each other in the style of "A Fistful of Dollars" or "Yojimbo".

Silva's character might seem like the good guy, or at least the kind of anti-hero Clint Eastwood played in "Fistful" and other Westerns (and later in "Dirty Harry" which was a big influence on the Italian polizieschi). But the Silva character himself is quite psychotic when it comes to women, specifically the masochistic prostitute/mistress of the American gangster (played by Barbara Bouchet). The first time they meet he violently sodomizes her. And when she comes back for more he beats her with a belt. Now I have to admit the description I read somewhere of a naked Bouchet being whipped by a belt did not exactly dissuade me from seeing this, but it's not an accurate one. She is not naked (at least in that scene) and he literally beats her to a bloody pulp. Even her boyfriend, who otherwise is content to throw the promiscuous girl at his erstwhile partner, is horrified by the brutal beating and vows revenge.

This scene squanders any goodwill toward Silva's character (which may have been the intention, I don't know), but also toward the film itself--it's pretty hard to take even for someone like me accustomed to the casual misogyny of the genre. It certainly doesn't help that the actress is Barbara Bouchet, who along with Edwige Fenech and Rosalba Neri, was (and still is) one of the most popular European exploitation actresses of the era (although this probably would have been only marginally more palatable if it had been some anonymous Euro-bimbo). To its credit this movie at least can't be accused of glorifying any of its gangster characters like some other "polizieschi" tended to do. Still it might be a little bit too much for many viewers.

A strong italian¨Poliziottesco" about a lonely killer vs. Bloody killers with thrills, chills , erotic scenes , crossfire and lots of violence . The picture deals with the turbulent times when the dangerous mobsters organizations dominated the Italian environments by committing terrible crimes , kidnaps and massacres in order to carry out their black market currency and illicit drug traffic businesses . Italian thriller with plenty of action , crisply edition , tension , intrigue , suspenseful , plot twists and loads of violence with reminiscent to ¨Charles Bronson¨ films . As the Mafia war between the Sicilian families results to be the principal character in the yarn . This is a thrilling and twisted flick about the political scene in Italy at the time of the thunderous Seventies . It starts with car accident with three fatalities and a child on board that had been dead for several days ago . And police discovering that the child's body cavity had been used for transporting heroin . It is the spark causing a lot of deaths and it will soon destroy the old mobster equilibrium , giving the way to an escalation of violence , as the powerful gansters are determined to a relentless Sicilian vendetta . The senior Don Coscemi hires misogynistic crook Tony (Henry Silva) to go after the perpetrators of the ominious criminal acts . As the matter escalates and rival band members kill each other , and the hit-man gets caught in the mafia war between two families : Cantimo and Scannapieco . Along the way, he's seduced by a former prostitute (Barbara Bouchet) , a supposedly innocent victim, now married to one of the mob boss (Fausto Tozzi). When the mobster chief learns the treason , he turns the tables and making him his next target. "For a lousy twenty-five bucks some people think they can do anything!¨. "She Left Prostitution only to find Murder!¨.

This is an intriguing Crime Thriller that contains noisy action , betrayals , suspense , sleaziness , twists , turns , and anything else . This film results to be one of the best among the whole saga of Italian thrillers or Poliziottesco sub-genre that had its splendor in the Seventies and early Eighties , concerning a contract killer who manipulates two mobster families into believing he is on their side and eventually all hell breaks loose . It is an acceptable movie that takes place in ups and downs with surprises and plot twists , but also with unfortunate and unpredictable events . Everything revolves around the unstable highly charged criminal environment : in the thunderous Italy during those days of civil unrest during the 1970's with the Mafia ruling Sicily island. The picture depicts perfect and violently those nasty criminal times . Although failing on occasion to balance the thin line it establishes between perception and reality , offering a semi-realistic look at the priorities and lives of heinous mobsters . Nail-biting and moving Italian Poliziesco in lurid roughie style with enjoyable acting , the film is interesting enough , though it has some flaws , gaps and shortfalls . The base plot structure regarding a battered killer bears remarkable resemblance to Sergio Leone's A Fistful Of Dollars . Stars two-fisted Henry Silva , as he is nice in his usual way by playing a contract killer who stumbles into a mafiosi war with fateful consequences and the gorgeous Barbara Bouchet as the nymphomaniac wife , she steals the spectacle by showing some nudism . Henry Silva sports his inimitable and cold style as a hired murderer gets himself in the middle of a feud between two mafia families while shooting and killing . He plays efficiently a cold-blooded killer , a 'mob hitman' sent to Italy to pacify rival gangs impeding on Mafia operations . Silva was born in Brooklyn , New York , and called to Hollywood, he played a succession of heavies in films, including The Bravados (1958), Green mansions (1959), Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Johnny Cool (1963). An Italian producer made Henry an offer he could not refuse--to star as a hero for a change--and he moved his family overseas . As he emigrated to Italy where perfomed Spaghetti Westerns as The Hills Run Red (1966) and White Fang to the Rescue (1975) , but Silva's turning-point picture was Poliziescos sub-genre by playing usually misogynist and cold-blooded psychopaths causing wreak havoc , such as : Razza violenta, Napoli spera , Fatevi vivi, la polizia non interverra, Milano odia: la polizia non può sparare , which made him a hit box office commodity in Spain, Italy, Germany and France . His popularity was enhanced by a gift for languages. He speaks Italian and Spanish fluently and has a flair for the kind of gritty, realistic roles that also catapulted Charles Bronson to European stardom . Returning to the United States, he co-starred with Frank Sinatra in the film Contract on Cherry Street (1977), then signed on as Buck Rogers' evil adversary Kane in Buck Rogers, among others.

It displays an atmospheric , appropriate musical score by composer Romitelli. Likewise, an evocative and adequate cinematography by Carlo Carlini ,shot on location in Andora, Savona, Ventimiglia, Imperia, Liguria, Guidonia Montecelio, Rome, Lazio, Italy and Incir De Paolis Studios, Rome, Lazio, Italy . The motion picture was professionally directed by Andrea Bianchi . He was an Italian director expert on explotiation movies . He made all kinds of genres with penchant for terror , thriller and erotic genre , such as : Malabimba , Strip Naked for your Killer , The Big Shots , Maniac Killer , Dangerous love , Massacre , Commando Mengele , Treasure Island , Night Child and several others . Being his most successful movie : Zombi Horror also titled Burial Ground or The Nights of Terror . Rating Quelli che contano (1974) : 6.5/10 , better than average. The picture will appeal to explotiation fans and Italian thriller lovers .

If you are a big fan of "spaghetti westerns" then I highly recommend "Cry of a Prostitute" as a mafia version of "A Fisful of Dollars". Instead of Clint Eastwood playing both families against each other, you get a brutal Henry Silva. Barbara Bouchet taking milk baths isn't a bad thing to see either. Like the Italian Westerns the plot is secondary to style, and the outstanding soundtrack is an integral part of the story. The editing is choppy and the dubbing atrocious, but this violent film has definite entertainment value. The closeups of Henry Silva's cold black eyes certainly elicits thoughts of Lee Van Cleef, and Silva is every bit as evil as "angel eyes" ................. - MERK

1st watched 4/5/2003 - 4 out of 10(Dir-Andrea Bianchi): Godfather-like Italian movie without good acting, directing or writing. The title will fool you(at least the U.S. released video title-Cry of a Prostitute) because this movie has very little to do about a prostitute except that she is a minor character that pretends to be the wife of one of the many `Don's' in this movie. This is just a way to get people in the U.S. to rent the video. The story is actually about a man who plays the game with many mafia-type gangs and ends up being the top honcho in the end. It's very obvious where this movie is going, but there was some interesting things like seeing the actual reason for the family feuds(centering around the mis-treatment of a handicapped boy in one family) that became mafia's and seeing the reality of their real business's that become crooked by entering drugs into the business. The emotionless Henry Silva does an ok job in his part but most of the acting was not memorable. Watching this makes me want to see the Godfather, to see how much better it is in it's storytelling and acting. Not a good reason to give this a thumbs up, though.

"Cry of a Prostitute" is a typically boring and colourless poliziotteschi flick, perhaps only notable for its (also fairly typical) attitude toward women, who get slapped around a lot. One even has her face shoved in a hog's guts as punishment for trying to seduce the manly hero.

I didn't pay close enough attention to work out the plot. It is impossible to pay close attention to 99% of poliziotteschi flicks because they are so boring and badly structured. You want to pay attention but then you're faced with a stretch of film about as exciting as staring at a wall for half an hour.

There are, of course, some violent moments: the movie opens with a ridiculous car crash-decapitation scene, with what looks like a mannequin's head falling out of a car window. There's also an autopsy scene where a dead body has stitches in the chest which are cut open, revealing canisters of heroin.

Anyway, main man Henry Silva, one of my all-time favourite actors, is a mafia don from the US who comes to Italy to investigate the situation. Once he's there, the other don's slutty wife immediately starts coming on to him, so Silva sticks her face in hog guts, and in another scene, slaps her down and attacks her with a belt. That'll show her!

The only other woman in the movie I remember gets similar treatment.

I remember reading that, unlike The Godfather, Italian mafia movies show the criminals for what they are: scum. There's no honour among them because the Italians had first hand experience of this type of scumbag and knew they were exactly that: human garbage.

This is not true of "Cry of a Prostitute". You are obviously positioned to think that Silva is the "hero" of the story, despite his appalling treatment of women. In the end he is clearly positioned as the better man among his criminal cohorts, which is weird. He's a woman abusing criminal scumbag, after all?

It would seem that this film is more of a godfather rip-off than anything else, but it's clear that the film takes its fair share of influence from the western genre. Many Italian films lift plots from other successful films, and in this case it's A Fistful of Dollars that provides the influence (though in fairness to this film, Leone's first masterpiece did take its plot from Yojimbo...). The film also takes influence from the crime films that were rising in popularity in 1974, and could be described as an urban western. The plot focuses on Tony Aniante, a loner who arrives in a Sicilian town with a pair of warring families. He decides to be friends with both of them, until the moment to strike presents itself and he can have both families implode on themselves. The prostitute of the title refers to Barbara Bouchet's character Margie; one of the mob's whores who takes a liking to Tony and ends up getting embroiled in his little war with the rival mafia families.

The film features all the things that make the Italian crime films popular, including fist fights, gun fights and car chases and none are in short supply. Andrea Bianchi never got himself a reputation for making high quality films, and that really isn't surprising considering how much Cry of a Prostitute borrows from other, more esteemed, sources. However, he does at least manage to keep things entertaining and that is of course the most important thing about a film like this. Of course, the fact that the plot has been seen many times before means that it is not difficult to guess what is going to happen by the end, which kind of spoils it a bit. The lead actor is Henry Silva and he does a good job in the central role. My main reason for seeing this film is the fact that it stars the lovely Barbara Bouchet. Barbara has never come across as being shy, and she doesn't here either! Overall, I wont say that Cry of a Prostitute is a must see Italian film; it adds very little for the experienced Italian film viewer; but it's not bad and is worth a watch.

Andrea Bianchi the director of the gory zombie film Burial Ground and the sleazy giallo Strip Nude for Your Killer turns his subtle (ha ha) hand to the Italian crime film with Cry of the Prostitute. It's Yojimbo time! The feuding between two warring families in rural Italy has become so fierce that the heat is coming down on the big families in Rome. Henry Silva is a gun for hire sent in to stop the fighting. He does this by playing the two gangsters against each other, offering his services to first one and then the other. Bianchi provides more gore than expected for the genre but none of it is overly convincing: a fake severed head, a band-saw mishap, and a dead child that looks, well, like a mannequin (and the camera lingers over it!). The adorable Barbara Bouchet appears playing a washed up former prostitute who has turned to drink. She wears heavy make-up and looks less than flattering. Nonetheless, I was glad to have her. Silva was fine as well. There isn't much here to praise and technically the film is less assured than many others in the genre. Fans might like it more than I did though.

This excellent poliziottesco with extreme and stylized violence immerses us in the mafia's arcana. Tony (Henry Silva, The Italian Connection) is an Italo-American hitman from Brooklyn hired by Don Cascemi (Vittorio Sanipoli, The Hassled Hooker) to make a big washing up among the "Famiglia". For in the Old Big Family of the mafia quarrels are to be cleaned with blood. And the "capo dei capi" (Gennarino Pappagalli, Closed Circuit) is angry: his troops have to humbly serve "Mamma Nostra" for vendetta is "no good for business". And climate is quickly deteriorating since the police and its commissioner (Enrico Marciani, No Il Case è felicemente risolto) have intercepted at the Franco-Italian border between Menton and Ventimiglia a drug traffic stuffed in a child corpse, fact which has shocked even the most tough mafiosi.

Don Cascemi has thus received the command from above, from "those who matter" as quoted by the more appropriate Italian title, to bring back order and get rid of "discord, disobedience and anarchy" in the Sicilian village of Colle Pietra (in fact shot in Rome area), epicenter of the fratricidal struggle between the clans of Don Turi Scannapieco (Mario Landi, director of Maigret a Pigalle) and Don Ricuzzo Cantimo (Fausto Tozzi, The Sicilian Connection), whose "American" methods displease to the honorability of the Family, for "America misses the real value of language in the way we think".

And when Tony in his smart sky blue suit with yellow shirt arrives in the small village, all the doors close silently before him: the poliziottesco turns into a kind of modern western, the saloon has been changed into a pizzeria, Tony whistles before shooting, horses neigh and duels follow under the sun. Tony's "Sicilian menu" for his task is simple: sow mischief and maintain hostility between the two camps by serving each one after the other to push them to a mutual destruction. And during his perilous mission, Tony meets the women of the two clans: Don Turi's daughter, Santa (Dada Gallotti, Le Notti della Violenza), turned mad since her husband was killed by the adversary, and Don Ricuzzo's wife Margie (Barbara Bouchet, Milano Calibro 9), a former Bronx prostitute who drowns in alcohol her homesickness.

Shall Tony succeed in his venture by managing to elude distrusts and betrayals? Could the "Honorable Family" retrieve a kind of quietness after this bloody gangs war? And doesn't Tony actually bring another and more secret diary partly embedded in his past? The keys of all the plot shall be given at the very end of all this violence. (Viewed in Italian 1h37 version.)

Where do I begin? Horrendous acting, bad story, amateur directing, and some of the worst editing and cinematography in the history of movie making are the only ways to describe Cry of a Prostitute. The Godfather, this is not. Henry Silva is the lead, and he will not be compared with Brando. He is Tony, a guy who has moved to Italy from Brooklyn with some unknown score to settle. In between, we get several shootouts which result in a lot of dead bad guys. The title refers to a hooker played by Barbara Bouchet; and my two points are for Barbie's naked body; clearly the high point in this horrible film; avoid this like the plague.

Of course I had never heard about this 1974 Italian movie "Quelli Che Contano" (aka "Cry of a Prostitute") prior to sitting down in 2024 to watch it. I had no idea what I was in for here, aside from it being a movie that I hadn't already seen.

Writers Piero Regnoli and Sergio Simonetti didn't exactly concoct a script that proved particularly interesting or entertaining to me. Even at 60 minutes into the 97 minutes runtime I still had no idea what the point of the storyline was. There was no red thread throughout the course of the movie, and that made it a very, very boring movie to sit through.

The only one I was familiar with in this movie was actor Henry Silva. The acting performances in the movie were fair, though you're not in for anything grand or extraordinary.

I had the misfortune of sitting through an English dubbed version of the movie, which just added to the overall boredom that was "Quelli Che Contano". Yes, I absolutely loathe dubbing in movies, as I prefer to watch movies in their original language.

"Quelli Che Contano" was an unfathomably boring movie, with a lack of an actual storyline. This is definitely not a movie that I would recommend you to waste your time or effort on.

My rating of director Andrea Bianchi's 1974 movie "Quelli Che Contano" lands on a two out of ten stars.

WOW! Another false ad campaign by Joseph Brenner! He mis-advertises this film at the theatres as some kind of a woman beating movie, as the poster shows a woman's face all bruised up, with the caption "for a lousy 50 bucks he could do whatever he wanted with her", when it is another Italian Mafia film with Henry Silva! Even the video box hints it is some kind of a motel sex film, when it isn't! And it isn't a good mafia movie either! This is one of the mafia films that is so bad it probably ENDED the mafia film craze! The opening credit isn't even the original, as it is a tacked in credit with music from DELTA FOX! UGH! To be avoided!

Cry of a Prostitute (1974)

** (out of 4)

Ultra-sleazy and incredibly violent Euro Crime picture starts off with a couple adults and a child being killed in a car crash. It turns out that the child had been dead for some time and his body was sewn-up with drugs hidden in it. Pretty soon two Mafia families are battling with each other when a hit man (Henry Silva) gets in the middle of things.

Andrea Bianchi will always be remembered for the insane BURIAL GROUND as well as the sleazy STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER and if you're a fan of those films then you'll certainly want to check this one out even if the end result isn't nearly as good or as entertaining as those two pictures. What CRY OF A PROSTITUTE lacks in regards to any sort of story it more than makes up with its violence, which at times is rather shocking.

Not only do we get countless shootings and stabbings but there's also a bizarre mix of sex and violence, which I'm sure would have outraged more people had the film been better known back in the day. There's some bizarre sexuality at play here including one woman being beaten before sexually pleased and another sequence involving a dead pig! The violence in the film is very much over-the-top and especially with the various shoot outs, which often lead people pouring blood all over the place.

As I said, the sleaze and violence are top-notch and it's bound to please fans of the genre. Henry Silva also turns in good, strong performance like only he can and the supporting players are fun as well. The biggest problem I had with the film was the screenplay, which wasn't all that interesting and it certainly didn't add anything new to the genre. The characters weren't the most interesting either and the Mafia folks just seem like the ones we've seen countless times before.