Débito de Sangue

KNELL, THE BLOODY AVENGER, aka BLOOD AND BULLETS, is one of the best in the mixed filmography of director Alfonso Brescia, who is best known today for the trashy STAR WARS rip-offs that he put out in the late 1970s. Brescia is nobody's idea of an auteur but I grant him a certain grudging respect for turning out commercial oddities on what are obviously low budgets. KNELL begins with George Eastman - playing a rare hero - turning up in New York to avenge the death of his father. Straight away we're in the thick of the action as he interrupts a hostage situation at the airport, and the action flows fast from there with shoot-outs and car chases aplenty. Jack Palance co-stars as a vengeful mob boss, and cheap and cheerful is a good descriptor for this one.

This is in my opinion one of the worst Italian crime films I've seen. Acting, screenplay nonexistent. The leading actor (Eastman) wanders from one side to the other of the town and the viewer can' t understand what is happening.

I don't understand why the film was shot in S. Francisco with Italian, American actors unknown except for Jack Palance in the role of a worthless gangster. Surely A. Brescia, the director, directed better films (see Napoli serenata calibro 9). Sound strange but the original dialogues were in English then dubbed for the Italian market. In Italy is difficult to get this movie. I had (I deleted it after viewing!) an old recording maybe from VHS. I give it 3 out of 10.

Italian tough guy "Knell" (as in a funeral bell), played by George Eastman, comes back to New York City to avenge the death of his father. He gets in a shootout right in the airport with half a dozen armed goons in hockey masks, but amazingly the American police don't arrest him, but just tell him to watch his "p's" and "q's". After briefly reuniting with his childhood girlfriend (Jenny Tamburi), he proceeds to go after his enemies. In typical 70's Italian action movie fashion, his revenge is pretty cynical--he teams up with one vicious mob boss (Jack Palance) so he can go after another vicious mob boss and the corrupt cops that killed his father. His "avenging" really isn't all that "bloody", however--there's a couple high speed chases and shoot-outs, but really nothing that couldn't have played on network television as far as violence goes.

Eastman, who's probably most famous for appearing Joe D'Amato horror movies like "Anthrophagus", plays a rather interesting character. He's so monomaniacally focused on revenge he doesn't even avail himself of the various women he encounters, like Tamburi's virgin or the stripper sister of his father's former partner. Both women, of course, still have incredibly gratuitous full-frontal nude scenes (Tamburi gets tied-up at one point wearing only her birthday suit--commence drooling), but "Knell" himself is interested in nothing but vengeance.

This is far from the best Italian crime thriller I've ever seen, but it's not entirely unenjoyable either.

Italian exploitation movies from the 70s and 80s come with a guarantee. Whenever George Eastman is somehow involved, whether as the writer or as a principal cast member - the movie will be nasty, vile, and extremely violent! Eastman is irreversibly associated to the legendary cult shocker "Anthropophagus", but he accomplished so much more, and he is - in fact - one of the most underrated contributors of Italian cult cinema. Therefore, he deserves an ode.

In the beginning of his career, in the sixties, Eastman almost exclusively starred in Spaghetti Westerns, which makes total sense considering his tall, handsome, and robust appearance. In the seventies, after the western genre was largely dead & buried, he and his pal Joe D'Amato started making gross and shocking exploitation horror, and as from the 80s Eastman specialized in post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi/action movies. "Knell the Bloody Avenger", a.k.a. "Blood and Bullets", is one of the sole Poliziotesschi (Italian crime-thriller) on his resume, and it's actually a shame because he's quite good and convincing in the role of hardened thug/vigilante killer. Hollywood big star Jack Palance receives top-billing here, but George Eastman is the true start of the movie.

The plot is standard stuff. Dan Caputo, nicknamed Knell - whatever that means, travels towards New York to investigate the cowardly murder of his father, who was one of the only noble and uncorrupted cops on the force. The crime network responsible for his father's death expects him, and they certainly don't underestimate Knell, because they foresee a large-scaled hostage taking at the airport to make his murder look accidental. They fail, and with a little help from the commissioner and his old mentor (Palance), Knell comes gradually closer to unraveling the mystery of who killed is father... but blows away a lot of bad guys in the process!

"Knell the Bloody Avenger" ticks all the mandatory boxes. There's a virulent car chase ending with a cliff and an explosion, the overlong striptease act in a sleazy night club, mayhem during a clandestine boxing match, and a shootout at an abandoned steel factory. Well done, Alfonso Brescia and George Eastman!

Sure, it's a simple trifle in film history, if even that, and seeing Sangue di sbirro today is at best mildly entertaining. For although made in the heyday of the Italian crime genre this one is no zenith. Dan Caputo (George Eastman of dubious Antropophagus-fame) arrives in New York to avenge the death of his father, a cop involved with the mafia. Dan clears up the murder (and kills what seem like some 30 people) with help of local mob boss Duke (Jack Palance) and then flies back to wherever he came from. Possibly there is a bit more to the story, but the script is so confused so there is little point in trying to describe the goings-on. Suffice to say there is a little romance, brief scenes childhood reminiscing, and a helluva lot of shoot outs. Some of which are quite exiting in a cheapo euro trash way. The highlight of the film is definitely the opening scene at the airport when Dan arrives during some sort of terrorist attack simply to shoot his way through it. All in all it's not a badly done revenge film technically, and it's clichéd in the best sense of the word, but it suffers from some seriously dragging scenes, and a poorly executed whodunit sub plot, which slows the whole thing down. Only recommended for the die-hard fan of Italian 70's crime films. But then again who isn't?