Quelli che contano

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!

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

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.

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.

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.