Si può essere più bastardi dell'ispettore Cliff?

When you watch a lot of 60s, 70s and 80s exploitation cinema successes from Italy, you'll find that many of them often have absurdly sensational but irrelevant international titles. This one, for example, is mostly known under its glorious sounding title "Super B...". Nice, admittedly, but totally nonsensical. "Mafia Junction" and "Blue Movie Blackmail" are also a.k.a titles, but not very good, neither. Most times, the best thing to do is to simply translate the original Italian title literally! In this case, you then get: "Can you be more evil than Inspector Cliff?" and that's the best and most suitable title imaginable indeed!

The tremendously charismatic Ivan Rassimov stars as undercover police inspector Cliff, but he's as corrupt as they come. He infiltrates into drug-smuggling gangs, double-crosses them for his own financial benefits and provokes violent gang wars between them. What makes the script greatly entertaining is the fact the rivaling gangs are so unique and original. The London gang lures prominent businessmen into sexual traps, and then blackmails them into smuggling artworks stuffed with drugs. The Beirut gang is a musical "Ma Barker" type of family, with Patricia Hayes as the crazed matriarch. This all may sound rather comical and light-headed, and it is, but you can rest assured that "Mafia Junction " (see, now I'm using it) also contains suspense, action and sleaze. There is perhaps slightly less action than in the films of Fernando Di Leo or Umberto Lenzi, but the violence is extreme and graphic, like the "bloody newspaper execution" or the massacre of Gamble's entire gang. The unearthly beautiful Verna Harvey and - especially - Stephanie Beacham provide several luscious and exciting nudity moments, Riz Ortolani's score is as stupendous as ever, and the climax is as grim and downbeat as possible.

Last but not least, Massimo Dallamano's direction is downright fantastic. I don't know what it was about this man, but practically every genre that he touched turned into gold! His "What have you done to Solange?" is my all-time favorite giallo (and I've seen more than 130 of those), with "Bandidos" he delivered one of the meanest and nastiest Spaghetti Westerns, and his other Poliziotesschi effort "Colt .38 Special Squad" is also really great. Sadly, Dallamano died in a car accident in the mid-70s already, because I'm sure he easily could have made another handful of excellent films in various genres.

PS: I realize the literally translated title in English doesn't 100% correspond with the original title in Italian, but the review policy standards of the website don't allow me to use certain words...

Notable actors: Ivan Rassimov! Stephanie Beacham! Giacomo Rossi-Stuart!, Patricia Hayes! Others!

You're never really sure for the duration of the film, but Ivan Rassimov is either a corrupt cop or a straight cop pretending to be corrupt. What's for sure is that he is undercover as a button man for Marco (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart), who are up against Mama The Turk, a psychotic gangster granny whose on children have written her her own theme tune! Mama shows she means business by quickly dispatching a hitman sent to kill by taking him out during a car chase, in Beruit.

Ivan, whose been doing his own hit man thing in Beruit, heads for London and works at an escort agency for Morrel, who is into blackmailing politicians and forcing them to go to Paris to buy statues filled with drugs. We see one escort girl (Beacham) take a politician home, while he indulges in his favourite aberration - that of dressing up and acting like a rabbit. This liaison is filmed through a wall in the room, but when Beacham and Morrel play it back, it's like a multi-camera Hollywood production! Obviously Ivan muscles his way into the business, and, subsequently, Stephanie Beacham's pants.

Ivan's plan goes a bit pear-shaped once his police contact gets a bullet to the back of the head in rather gory fashion, and of course Mama's no fool and sends her own hit man to London to take care of business, but Ivan's playing the long con and all he has to do is get every gangster in the one place in New York so they can be all gunned down, but is he doing it for business or something else?

You know you are good hands with Massimo Dallamano, director of Bandidos. He's got a great eye for a unique shot, including in this one a point of view shot from underneath a frying pan. So you get his visual skills in a film filled with the usual Euro-crime traits - double crossing, nude women, car chases, and extreme violence. This is a very bloody film and violent film, especially when a minor character is savagely beaten by Mama's children, while one of the plays a tune on a guitar, and then, while laughing, they graphically run the guy over and kill him.

Special shout goes out to Patricia Hayes, who is one of those actors you see in eighties films (like Willow and Never Ending Story) but you never really remember her name. She's great here as Mama, and seems to be doing quite a lot of the driving during the car chases sequence! She kind of overshadows Rassimov, but Stephanie Beacham is rather good too as the hooker who falls for big Ivan. You get to see her naked, if anyone's interested.

Another good one from a genre full of good ones!

Massimo Dallamano is a criminally underrated Italian director, most famous today for "What Have You done to Solange?, one of the very best Italian gialli. But he also directed its equally excellent sequel "What Have They Done to Your Daughters?", the Laura Antonelli erotic classic "Venus in Furs", and "The End of Innocence", one of the better "Emmanuelle" knock-offs. This British-Italian co-production is his only foray into the Italian crime thriller genre that I know of, but it rivals anything by Ferdinand DeLeo or Umbeto Lenzi.

The great Ivan Rassimov plays an undercover cop who falls somewhere between a heavy-handed "Dirty Harry"-type rogue and a flat-out corrupt bastard--and by the end he has pretty obliterated the line between the two (if nothing else making this film a lot more honest than the American-style vigilante cop movies). He inserts himself "Yojimbo"/"Fistful of Dollars" style between two hilariously colorful drug-smuggling gangs. One gang runs an escort service which it uses to film powerful men in compromising positions with girls (and boys)and then blackmail them into helping out with the trafficking via a whole Rube Goldberg scheme involving art auctions. This is all totally ridiculous, of course, but highly entertaining. The other gang is lead by "Mama", an old lady (she's supposed to be Turkish, but looks a lot more Italian and even crosses herself at one point), who wields a gun and leads the police on high-speed chases! Her gang are all aspiring musicians, wielding musical instruments as well as guns, and quite literally providing their own theme music. After the gang kidnaps Rassimovs main squeeze (Stephanie Beacham) and tortures her with their music, he responds by kidnapping "Mama's" jailbait daughter (Verna Harvey, who definitely does not dress like a Turkish girl). At the end, another, American gang shows up lead by "Tony Accardo" (which was the name a real-life Chicago gangster at that time).

This movie has everything fans love about the genre--crosses and double-crosses, gun-play, high-speed car chases, sadistic brutality, and extreme moral ambiguity. Beacham and Harvey (who had appeared together a few years earlier as governess and charge in Michael Winner's misbegotton "Turn of the Screw" prequel "The Nightcomers") provide some nudity. (Well, so does Rassimov actually, but "Mama" stays dressed at least). There's also a GREAT musical score and the kind of nice cynical 70's ending you'd never get away with today. Highly recommended.

this is a good thriller/chiller type of European crime story. Ivan Rassimov gives Clint Eastwood an able run for his money as a Dirty Harry type detective albeit a corrupted one. Stephane Beacham, the presumed title character is as beautiful as she had been with Brando in "The Nightcomers". This might sound like a cheapy production with the video title being "Superbitch". But it has great photography & excellent location work ie the ruins in Greece at the beginning. Also the film has a thumping theme on it's soundtrack. Look out for veteran Brit actress Patricia Hayes as Mamma with her band of misfit though lovable grown children. Hayes is excellent & funny as the old lady crime family boss. Without giving spoiler away I'll just say this. The song two of her eldest boys sing her will have you reaching for your hanky. This movie goes to show you where a slim budget need not hinder the making of a good taut movie. And this movie's script gets tauter and tauter as the later part of the movie wears on. You must pay good attention in the last part of the movie to appreciate all you've seen from the beginning. This would be a great part for an actress like Sharon Stone to pick up the Mamma role with a merry band of criminal children. She's at the right age to do it believably. Perhaps not as old as Hayes was but a younger 'Mamma' actress would work just fine. If not Stone then an actress like Susan Sarandon. But this could be updated & remade. Id love it.

Director Massimo Dallamano's 1973 poliziotteschi Super Bitch stars Italian exploitation legend Ivan Rassimov as devious undercover narcotics agent Cliff, who is every bit as corrupt as the drug-runners he is supposed to bring to justice. Cliff manipulates everyone—criminals and cops—to suit his own needs, using whatever means necessary to put the bad-guys out of the picture AND make himself a fortune in the process.

To be honest, I had trouble keeping up with all of the intricacies of Super Bitch's storyline: Cliff's Machiavellian scheming gets awfully complex, and with British hottie Stephanie Beacham (as lovely escort girl Joanne, who is worth every penny) shedding her clothes every few minutes, I found my mind wandering quite a bit (especially during that shower scene! Phew!).

Thankfully, a thorough understanding of the plot isn't absolutely necessary to have a good time with this nifty little crime thriller. Dallamano's film delivers plenty of fast-paced action, lots of OTT violence (blood squibs-a-plenty), and colourful characters (including a diplomat who likes to dress up as a rabbit, and a family of singing hippie gangsters, led by Patricia Hayes' ruthless crime-boss Mamma), plus more welcome eye-candy in the form of Mamma's sexy daughter Eva (Verna Harvey).

Super Bitch also benefits from great location work (Beirut, London, and New York), a wonderfully funky score from Riz Ortolani, and a cool ending in which Cliff's carefully laid plans finally go awry.