Colpo in canna

The Italian cult-directors from the seventies were genius, but also as unstable and unpredictable as the weather in my home country. Take Fernando Di Leo, for instance. With "Milano Calibro .9", "La Mala Ordina", and "Il Boss", he directed three of the toughest and most relentless crime-thrillers ever made, and so I obviously expected for his "Colpo in Canna" to be just as violent and brutal in tone.

But what do you know, the cheerful musical tunes that accompany the opening credits immediately reveal that this will be a much more light-hearted and comical effort than usual from this director. "Colpo in Canna" is indeed a bizarre and wildly uneven mishmash of comedy (I even daresay slapstick), sexploitation, mafia thriller, and Poliziotesschi. These are genres/styles that are absolutely difficult to blend, and therefore it's probably the weakest Di Leo that I have seen (only "Avere Vent'anni" is worse).

The best way to describe "Colpo in Canna" is like a very loose interpretation of "Yojimbo" and "A Fistful of Dollars", with airline stewardess Nora Green (Ursula Andress) evoking a gang war between the two rivaling drug cartels in Naples and getting a lot of benefits out of it herself. The tone of the film is wildly uneven, and changes often and abruptly. After the jolly opening tunes, there's a nasty sequence in which Andress' character gets brutally beaten up by the gang led by Woody Strode. The middle section is soft in tone, and mostly features random footage of Ursula Andress having sex or parading around fully naked. I simply must state that she's amazing to gaze at! The actress who became world famous as the first Bond-girl in "Dr. No" was 39 years old in 1975, but her body looks as fit as that of a 25-year-old, and she certainly isn't too prudish to show it! The last half hour then turns into pure slapstick, with a (massively overlong) fighting battle between the members of the two gangs on a fairground, a (massively overlong) and unrealistic car chase in the streets of Naples, and too much screentime for comic relief actor Lino Banfi in a dual role as clumsy police commissioner and horny taxi driver.

Ursula Andress, who clearly enjoyed her whacky role as the floozy man-eating stewardess very much, forms the main reason for cult-fanatics to seek out this "Colpo in Canna", but admittedly some of the stunts and the fairground and the impressive torso of Woody Strode are highlights as well.

At his best, director Ferdinand DiLeo was on par with great Italian genre directors like Bava, Argento, Fulci, and Sergio Martino. But he was also kind of uneven, especially when he got too far from his comfort zone of violent crime thrillers. Fortunately, he isn't TOO far away here. This is kind of like a sex comedy/parody of a crime thriller. It has a typical strong DiLeo plot: a stewardess is offered $100 to deliver a letter and finds herself involved in a Neapolitan gang war between drug traffickers, and has to outwit both sides (and the police) "Yojimbo"/"Fisftul of Dollars" style. Naturally this isn't nearly as good as one of DiLeo's serious crime thrillers, but if you take it as an Italian sex comedy, it's a relative masterpiece. Italian comic Lino Banfi has a dual role as a police chief and a cabdriver, and even though I've seen more of his films than any non-drunken Italian peasant from the 1970's should, this and Sergio Martino's "Creampuffs" were the only two where I thought he was actually funny.

I thought this was my first DiLeo comedy, but I found out from the accompanying documentary that a DiLeo film I saw earlier, "Mr. Scarface". was also supposed to be a comedy; it was so badly presented on public domain DVD I had no idea (I just thought it REALLY sucked). Nocturno really deserves kudos therefore because their presentation here really makes this movie (they have also released DiLeo's "La Seduzione" and Sergio Martino's similar comedy/crime thriller hybrid "Suspicious Death of a Minor"). Bond girl Ursula Andress made this film during her late 70's "Sensuous Nurse"/"Mountain of the Cannibal Gods" phase when she was regularly throwing all her clothes to the wind. One of the guys in the documentary complained that she was "over-the-hill". Well, maybe compared to her 20- year-old self in "Dr. No", but compared to 99.9 percent of twenty year olds and pretty much 100 percent of forty year olds, she stacks up pretty well. (She's a lot sexier than Jack Palance in "Mr. Scarface" at any rate). The supporting cast includes Marc Porel from "Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man", hulking African-American actor Woody Strode from DiLeo's "Manhunt", and, of course, Banfi. This is not Dileo's best movie by a long shot, but you could certainly do worse.

Bizarre mix of slapstick comedy and commedia sexy with Ursula Andress and Woody Strode

There's a lot on offer in this film by cult director Fernando Di Leo (1932-2003), also known as "I'll polish your bald head". Hearty fights in the Spencer Hill style alternate with sexy insights all the time. Whether doing mattress sports, in the bathtub or simply changing clothes - Golden Globe winner (1964 for "Dr. No") Ursula Andress (*1936) appears stark naked in what feels like every other scene, but also knows how to get involved in wonderfully funny beating orgies.

What's it about? The stewardess Nora Green (Ursula Andress) lands her plane in Naples and runs an errand for a passenger. She drives to a fairground and gets caught between two rival gangs, led by Silvera (Woody Strode, 1914-1994) and Don Calo (Aldo Giuffre). Silvera doesn't treat the stunning blonde particularly gallantly (this scene is really inappropriate in a film that vacillates between fun and seriousness), but she gets help from the handsome acrobat Manuel (Marc Porel, 1949-1983). So she soon ends up on his trampoline and in his bed. Marc Porel is also allowed to hold his shapely backside into the camera. But above all, the tough guy is good at giving out beatings, and he still gets plenty of opportunity to do so.

Other roles include Lino Banfi as Commissario and Maurizio Arena as Padre, who is not so particular about abstinence. After all sorts of complications, there is ultimately a wild car chase and a fun fight that takes place again at the fairground.

What's really interesting about this film is the strange mixture of beating and sex stuff. Ursula Andress is in her element and becomes the sole heroine of an otherwise male-dominated Italian slapstick comedy, which was very fashionable in those years due to the enormous box office successes of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. Woody Strode's counterpart scores highly with his strong physique, but also demonstrates slapstick talents. The American actor, who was a decathlete at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and later an American football player, was rewarded with a Golden Globe nomination for his supporting role as a gladiator in "Spartacus." Marc Porel (could have celebrated his 73rd birthday on January 3, 2022), the son of Gerard Landry and the recently deceased Jacqueline Porel, cuts a particularly good figure in this film and shows his pretty face as La Andress's ToyBoy.

The director Fernando Di Leo shows his more fun side here. After writing scripts for numerous spaghetti westerns, he shot three absolute EuroCrime classics: "Milano Calibro 9", "La mala ordina" and "Il Boss".

I wonder how, in all those biblical epics they made, they never got Ursula Andress to play the role of Eve. After all, she is the perfect female specimen, so what better choice is there for the first woman ever created? And can you believe that this incredible body and face belong to a (then) 39-year-old woman? And yes, she does get nude, frequently. There is a rather distasteful scene early on where she gets roughed up by some thugs, but don't worry, she takes charge later on and even kicks a little ass herself! The plot? Ah, who cares, it's just a senseless mess about rival crime organizations in Napoli. One strange thing is the tone: for the most part it's fairly serious, but when the fight scenes come they are shot in a slapstick style that reminded me of the Bud Spencer - Terence Hill comedies (with Woody Strode, of "Spartacus" fame, in the Bud role). There is also an overlong "comic" car chase with a clumsy Italian inspector. The problem is that these fights and chases are not the least bit funny. See this movie (if you can find it) only for Ursula...and frankly, she's reason enough to see it. (**)

This is one of these daft sex comedies that could only have been made in Italy, and only in the 1970s. Often, the moments and plot twists are just completely ridiculous and at other times the film expects us to take it seriously.

However, there are a few classic scenes of 1970s exploitation cinema in here which are just priceless. One of them lets us ogle at the nude Ursula Andress having a bath in her hotel room when she is rudely interrupted by the local Mafia clown (played by the unbearable Jimmy il fenomeno) with gun in hand and trousers down. Undeterred, Ursula smashes a radio on his head to calm him down. They don't film scenes like this anymore.