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A war veteran from southern Italy (Carlos Monzon) comes to a northern industrial town looking for work and gets tangled up with two rival clans of mafiosi. The plot of this sounds like another knock-off of "Yojimbo" (the Japanese film that inspired "A Fistful of Dollars" and any number of other spaghetti Westerns and Italian crime thrillers), but it's a little bit different in that the hero turns out to have a very personal vendetta against the leader of one of the rival mafia clans (Luc Merenda) and is not just a pure mercenary.

Stelvio Massi is considered on the great directors in the Italian crime genre. I wouldn't personally rank him with Fernando DiLeo, Enzo Castellari, Umberto Lenzi, or with some of the other talented directors who dabbled in the genre (Martino, Fulci, Dallamano), but this is probably the best of his films I've seen (with the possible exception of "Emergency Squad"). The producer is Gabriel Crisanti who was responsible for a series of notoriously sleazy exploitation flicks in the late 70's/early 80's--"Giallo in Venice", "Malabimba", "Burial Ground", "Patrick Lives Again". This was made a few years earlier and doesn't really hold a candle to any of those in the sleaze department, but it does feature three of the actors from Crisanti's later films--his then-wife Mariangela Giordano, Gianni Dei, and Leonora Fani.

Carlos Monzon has a good look, but he's not a particularly strong lead compared to someone like Franco Nero or Fabio Testi. Luc Merenda, however, really makes the movie as the handsome but very slimy villain. Mariangela Giordano also has a good role as Merenda's former mistress who has been pushed aside in favor of her own teenage daughter (Luisa Maneri). The daughter would have been a perfect part for Leonora Fani, but she plays ANOTHER young girl who gets sexually abused by Merenda's vile gangster. Her character is a child-like but very perceptive blind girl whose father tries to help out the hero with tragic consequences for them both (This definitely isn't one of her sexier roles, but it's one of her better performances). Gianni Dei, meanwhile, plays the Merenda characters only slightly less vicious younger brother.

This is neither an Italian crime thriller classic or an Italian sleaze classic, but it's pretty entertaining nevertheless,

I've got a new theory - Italy was actually relatively crime free during the seventies, but the sheer volume of Italian crime films being made gave the impression that Rome, Palermo, Milan and Genoa et al were hovels of violence, car chases and street executions. I cannot believe how many of these films there are, even in 1976 alone! Along with this film, Stelvio Massi directed another two Poliziotesschi films in 1976. Umberto Lenzi made three the same year. Fernando Di Leo got two under his belt in 1976 and wrote Live Like a Cop, Die Like A Man, directed by Ruggero Deodato in 1976. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

So, with this saturation in mind, let's cut The Last Round some slack for repeating the 'stranger plays two rival gangs off each other' plot of Fistful of Dollars. It's still a good film nonetheless, full of action, grimness, and Luc Merenda glaring at things, only this time he's the bad guy!

The good guy is a fella called Marco, who travels from the South to find a job, taking with him a small music box that contains pictures of two women (and yes, that's straight from For A Few Dollars More). Marco immediately clashes with some goons from the Manzetti clan, and even though he lays out about eight of them, he still ends up knocked out and left in a dump at the edge of town. Here, he makes friends with a blind girl and her surrogate father, then heads off back to the Manzetti's for round two.

By this time the Manzetti crime boss (Merenda) is more intruiged by Marco's fist action and hires him as a goon, just in time for Marco to realise that Merenda has a thing for teenage girls, as evidenced by him drooling over his step-daughter while wife Mariangela Giordano scowls at him. Time for Marco to get all Eastwood on this gig and go to the rival gang, led by Mario Brega.

So it's a mix of Fistful of Dollars, for a Few Dollars More, with a bit of Django thrown in there for good measure too, but who cares? It's full of action, double crosses, and a bit where the blind girl psychically senses that Marco is getting a kicking across town, something that isn't even remotely explained but is welcome anyway, as is Luc Merenda's ridiculous gun skills and the full on battle at the end of the film. Not sure about that blind girl rape bit though.

THE LAST ROUND (Stelvio Massi - Italy 1976).

This moderately entertaining crime thriller by Stelvio Massi is pretty much a violent updating of YOYIMBO (1962) or A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964). Star of the show is former middle-weight boxing champion Carlos Monzón, a drifter who arrives in town looking for a job, but doesn't seem entirely serious about his future and starts looking for trouble immediately. Within ten minutes, he wipes the floor with a whole gang of motley henchmen at the gates of some factory where he wanted to apply for a job. Apparently, they don't like Southerners (he just arrived from Sicily) and turned him down (at the gates, the old days). This scene provides the viewer with some social commentary as well, stating it's not good when people are turned down because they look a bit scruffy or come from the South. Some other workers claim the union should put a stop to this and that it's not right banging up poor workers for no reason. Damn right they are. Turns out the owner of the factory in question is Gino Manzetti (Luc Merenda), who also happens to be the head of a murderous crime ring and a pretty good shot as well, we learn later on the film. Now, Carlos Monzón starts working for him, but plays out every bad guy in town in the process, or something.

Carlos Monzón is not the greatest of actors, to put it mildly. He is clearly there for his ... well, physique, or his fighting skills, or probably both, but he got what it takes to kick some serious ass, but after a while he kind of bored me. Director Stelvio Massi knows how to stage some effective slow-motion fight scenes. Problem is, the story is not very original and after 50 minutes or so, the film kind of lost my attention. It's attractively shot and starts out well, but the story loses much of its momentum halfway when the promising plot is dropped almost completely, with the second half of the film consisting of an endless array of nightly shootouts, fight scenes and lots of skulking in the dark between the various parties involved. Practically the entire second half of the film is devoted to a seemingly endless showdown between all kinds of rival factions whose interests were completely beyond my grasp. But, perhaps that's just me.

One thing I will remember about this charade is the score. No Shame's release came with a separate CD containing some seriously groovy tracks, that I've been playing in my car for the last week. Pretty funky. We also get an extensive 37 minute interview with Luc Merenda by some boot-licking Italian guy, which consists of an extensive tour of his Paris-based antique shop and a mere 5 minutes or so about his films.

Camera Obscura --- 6/10