L'ombre d'un tueur

Yul Brynner's last film before giving up cinema for the stage, and it's a Naples based crime film directed by Antonio Margheretti. I wonder if that's what put him off.

In New York, Yul is informed by a local mob boss that the guy who killed his brother is now located in Naples, where an American mobster has just been gunned down by the same guy. Yul heads off there for revenge, and recruits a small time crooks called Angelo (who really wants to be in the big leagues) as his eyes and ears. Angelo also introduces Yul to stripper Barbara Bouchet, who immediately falls in love with the fifty-six year old guy who looks like a peanut.

Yul's character also has a reputation of being a hard-ass contract killer, and his running about in broad daylight wasting mobsters draws the attention of cop Martin Balsam, who intends to either use him to destroy the local mob, or at least get Yul killed so he gets some sort of result. I wasn't quite sure to be honest.

Yul also has this strange affliction where, under stress, his vision goes all red and he flashes back to his brother being killed. It's never really explained but I guess it does have something to do with the plot so we'll just let it slide for now.

The main storyline focuses more on Yul's relationship with Bouchet, and his mentoring of Angelo as a contract killer. Will Barbara change Yul's mind about being a cold-blooded killer, or will Yul's cold blooded killing put Angelo off a life of crime? You'll have to sit through a lot of cold-blooded killing to find out!

The De Angelis brother supply a very funky but melancholy soundtrack that adds to the general bitter atmosphere that'll stick with you. For years this was one of the easier Eurocrime films to find as it was in the public domain. I've now watched the complete version and if you track down the shortened free version you don't miss out on much anyway. Good stuff.

Just in case you didn't know it yet, Yul Brynner isn't the type of guy you want to mess with! This charismatic tough bastard starred in a whole lot of western & war movie classics and wasted the lives of approximately a thousand bad guys on screen. Being a big fan of his macho style, I loved to see him star in a typically violent crime-thriller, particularly because this an Italian crime-thriller and those guys always add more of the red stuff and sleaze! The plot of "Death Rage" is unimportant and routing Mafia & Revenge guff, but the car chase sequences are exhilarating and the wild shootouts are truly blood-soaked (at least in the uncut version...). The events are set in Italy – mainly on the horse racecourse – where the American hit-man Peter Marciana has come out of retirement especially to kill the gangster boss who was responsible for the death of his beloved brother. Peter gets entangled in the local mafia network, falls in love with a ravishing strip bar dancer (Barbara Bouchet!) and makes a young and spirited thug his hit-man-acolyte. This last sub plot is stolen directly from the Charles Bronson flick "The Mechanic", but who cares, as every fan knows that Italian cinema loves to borrow ideas from popular American blockbusters. Yul Brynner is still the total definition of coolness, even though he clearly didn't put too much passion into his performance of the ageing assassin. His bald head, his eyes (that appear to malfunction) and his sneaky smile are enough to make his character convincing! Martin Balsam is another veteran actor whose character isn't really important, but it's still very nice to have him around. Antonio Margheriti is – in my humble opinion – Italy's most underrated cult director and "Death Rage" is another amiable effort in his repertoire.

The "Chilling Classics" 50-movie pack was staring me down like a salivating jackal as I stood in the horror aisle of Circuit City, contemplating the pros (50 movies for dirt cheap!) and cons (probably crap quality as a result). My inner consumer scanned the titles on the back of the package, and was intrigued enough to hand over the greenbacks. First flick: "Death Rage," a Naples-set crime thriller starring stoic bald superman Yul Brynner, an ex-hit man who is brought back into the world of organized crime to avenge his brother's murder--car chases ensue; an unlikely pupil is taught the ways of contract killing; a blonde sex kitten (Barbara Bouchet, from "Don't Torture a Duckling") falls for our chrome-domed hero; and Martin Balsam shows up to pay the rent. Director Anthony M. Dawson (really Antonio Margheriti) keeps the pace moving along, and stages some good (if ridiculously unrealistic) action sequences. And Brynner's performance is a wooden hoot... While "Death Rage" is hardly brilliant, it is low-budget, low-down fun.

When you think of Yul Brynner nine times out of ten it's his roles in either The Ten Commandments, Magnificent Seven or the King & I. Lucky for him that his mailed-in performances at the end of his career are so forgetful that they do little to mar his reputation. Death Rage is one of these movies.

Yul Brynner plays former mob hit-man Peter Marciani that has flashbacks of the murder of his brother. The so-called "Death Rage" appears as an epileptic red montage of his brother's death superimposed over Peter's face whenever something reminds him of that fateful day. At one point in the movie it is proposed that Peter suffers from glaucoma as evidenced by his "eye medicine" however he is then told by an optometrist that nothing is wrong with his eyes and that perhaps the problem is mental. Whether this was deemed necessary to flesh out the story remains a mystery to me because it never factors into the movie. Obviously his sight is fine due to the fact that he's an amazingly accurate shot and the flashbacks do not in any way alter his demeanor. You might as well have named the movie Serious Bald Hit-man and been done with it.

The cast also includes Massimo Ranieri as Angelo, Peter's eager beaver apprentice who tries very hard to impress him. One of Angelo's gifts to Peter is the introduction to Amy played by the gorgeous Barbara Bouchet. She instantly falls head over-heels in love with Peter and provides the few scenes worth viewing as she is topless in a strip club and fully nude in a following hotel scene. This, it appears to me, is the only reason this movie was given an R rating as the violence is the soft side. Martin Balsam rounds out the cast as, guess this, an Italian commissario! I'm sure Mr. Balsam cashed all of his checks thinking to himself if at some point he would still get paid for playing the same character.

The reason I think so lowly of Death Rage is because it is boring and forgettable. Two sins that supersede production value, sound editing, or poor acting that plagued many seventies flicks. To top it all off, Dino DeLaurentis released basically the same movie three years before this called Frank & Tony starring Lee Van Cleef of spaghetti western fame as Mean Frank and his entertaining sidekick wannabe Tony LoBianco as Crazy Tony. Watch that one instead.

Another selection from the 200 Drive in cult classics from those fine people over at Mill Creek.

Basic euro revenge mafia movie. Yul Brynner's last film. He play a hitman retired from the business but brought back in to kill the man who killed his brother. Decent enough movie nothing really stands out but very watchable. Worth a watch just for Mr. Brynner alone.