La salamandra

This film felt more like a made for t.v movie. It does pace slow for about the first 30 min or so. You see the funeral of a general, intro to all the big players. Nero goes around interviewing them, some of it is too talky and drags out, a couple more deaths occur and he goes into hiding with the help of Anthony Quinn to continue his investigation, it leads up to a really good climax. One of the best bits of dialogue comes from Martin Balsam talking to Nero about a story of wanting cigars and what happened when he went home. Quinn character is great too as your never really sure who's side he's on. Great performances by Martin Balsam, Anthony Quinn, Eli Wallach, Christopher Lee,Franco Nero, Claudine Cardinale, and the sadistic "sergeon". John Steiner performance is not as top notch, and Sybil Danning I felt kinda phoned it in. Over all decent watch.

The ingredients are here for a passable political-thriller but the approach used to tell the story is numbingly routine. Investigator Franco Nero pursues his case simply through a series of interviews, thus allowing the movie to present its roster of marquee-names -- Christopher Lee, Eli Wallach, Claudia Cardinale, etc. -- in a succession of talky, static scenes that lack interest and vitality. (Though these interviews provide an opportunity to show off a series of impressively furnished and decorated rooms.) And then, when it comes time for Nero to present his solution to the case, he does so by showing to a group of people a movie which simply re-caps information gleaned from his interviews!

Attempts to liven up the proceedings with spurts of action merely serve to emphasize the overall dullness of the movie. For example, when Nero falls into the clutches of a villain known as "the Surgeon" who is determined to torture information from him, we only see Nero -- stripped to a jockstrap and strapped to a chair -- being given an injection with a hypodermic needle. Surely this is one of the most boring forms of torture ever shown on the screen.

THE SALAMANDER had so much potential, especially with an all star cast of supporting actors like Anthony Quinn, Martin Balsam, Eli Wallach, Christopher Lee, Cleavon Little, Paul Smith, and Claudia Cardinale. The leads were Franco Nero, who had such a strong Italian accent that his English was hard to understand and Sybil Danning, who played her character with the personality of a roof shingle who was always dressed like a nun or the wife of the Quaker Oats guy so she was playing against type and her persona. She was suppose to be a spy and the mistress of the assassinated General but the conservative and bland way she was dressed indicated to me that he might just have committed suicide.......On the DVD extra's one of the men associated with the film referred to Sybil with this disrespectful comment, " " which I found shocking because there was no cleavage displayed at all with that Puritan wardrobe in the movie. There is very little action in the film, basically one car chase and then the torture scene which turned out more like comedy then anything else where Paul Smith was to torture Franco Nero to get information and what made it funny is it turned out to look like Franco Nero was torturing Paul Smith by sexually assaulting him hanging on his back with Paul Smith screaming and Nero with his bare arse hanging out of his jock strap. The scene was so absurd and ludicrous that it came off as comical rather then scary. The best acting was done by Martin Balsam who played Nero's father figure like partner, who gets killed midway so you lose the most interesting character in the film. Anthony Quinn was 2nd to Balsam in performance and he made the most of the material he worked with. Cleavon Little has a small part and did a great job but you wonder why he was not given more and the most disappointing part of the film were the two villains, Eli Wallach and Christopher Lee who barely had any screen time and just a few lines. They just weren't utilized and neither was Claudia Cardinale who was so stunning in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST but had the same wardrobe designer as Sybil so she looked like an Amish farmer or Quaker Oats girl with maybe two lines of dialog. It was not the worst film, it just did not live up to its potential

it was one of favorite films of my childhood. today, it is only a promise. large, noble, interesting but prisoner of good intentions. the impressive torture scene, Franco Nero as Prince Charming, presence of Claudia Cardinale are little sparkles of a work without axis. sure, a thriller not must be a masterpiece but in this case it is a lost seed of fantastic tree. because story is fragile and almost boring. because central impression is to be at a great lunch without forks and knifes. and the script may be only improvisation . sure, it may be a cruel verdict. but after years, only gloomy memories about a nice film saves this movie.is it enough ? may be. in a little measure.

How did it go so wrong? How can a film with such an impressive cast (Franco Nero, Christopher Lee, Eli Wallach, Sybil Danning, Claudia Cardinale, Martin Balsam, Paul Smith - the torturer in "Midnight Express" - as, you guessed it, a torturer, etc.) and such colorful location filming around Italy (Rome, Milan, Venice, etc.) be such a bore? Probably because the story is slow-moving and unengaging, and has no real climax. Another obstacle for the viewer is the difficulty to buy people like Lee and Balsam as Italians. Nero is always likable, and Danning is stunning (even if she's in completely "unrevealing" mode here), but these two are barely enough to keep you focused on what was excellently described by another reviewer as "a political thriller without thrills". (*1/2)