Quelli che contano

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.

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.

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!