Profession garde du corps

"Vai Gorilla" is a somewhat different kind of Italian Poliziotesschi than usual, but a very good one and I even daresay a sadly underrated one. The protagonist for once isn't a tough and unorthodox copper, although has good connections with the local police commissioner, but a personal bodyguard - known on the streets as a "gorilla". Using a sneaky and old-fashioned trick, handsome young Marco Sartori (Fabio Testi) gets hired as the gorilla for a rich construction magnate Sampione (Renzo Palmer), but he rapidly finds out it's not a relaxing job. Sampione receives threatening phone calls from a criminal organization, led by a menacing creep with a German accent, who blackmail him into paying 600 million Lire (which was about 20$ in those days) or else they blow up stuff at his construction sites. When they also beat up Marco, and threaten to hurt Sampione's cute daughter - with whom Marco has a fling - our gorilla starts taking things personal.

The script is excellent, and expert director Tonino Valerii ("Day of Anger", "My Dear Killer") ensures a fast pacing, with a handful of really impressive sequences. There's a suspenseful sequence inside a ramshackle elevator, for instance, and particularly the climax is downright fantastic and hyper-violent. You haven't witnessed genuine Poliziotesschi thrills until you have seen this film's chase between a cop car and a passenger train. Fabio Testi is cool, but performances by both Al Lettieri and Antonio Marsina are even better.

Complex or just confusing? Fabio Testi tricks industrial magnate Renzo Palmer into hiring him as a bodyguard, not for any nefarious reasons, but just because he wanted a job...or did he? Someone needs to clarify that because I wasn't so sure...

Either way, he ends up working for Renzo by pretending to stop him being kidnapped, but then some genuine jerks start trying to extort money from Renzo, damaging his business, and threatening his young sexy daughter. This leads Fabio to launch an investigation into who's behind all the attacks and what mysterious figure is wearing those ridiculous looking cowboy boots. To do this, Fabio will have to get the help of his contacts in the bodyguard industry.

Is Testi smarter than the average Bodyguard (or Gorilla as he's constantly called) and can he get to the bottom of all this treachery and blackmail? Although Tonino Valeri had my head spinning at who was working for who and who was doing to what to what, things straighten out as they do in these films once the violence kicks in, and there's enough stand out pieces in the last half hour to make up for the convoluted plotline in the first hour.

We get Fabio trapped in an elevator while thugs tear off the floor beneath him, a great car/train chase with the shooting and the sirens and the 'you got me, copper!', plus a fine 'getting shot by a high powered rifle' death jump from Luciano Catenacci, who also has a great punch up with Testi.

Claudia Marsani didn't make a lot of films but stands out here as the defiant daughter of grumpy Renzo, plus Saverio Marconi from Contraband turns up as a possibly treacherous brother of Testi.

Funk, 'splosions, death. Me happy.

Breathless activism with Fabio TESTI

He never denied his beginnings as a cascadeur/stuntman. And why? That is the great strength of Italian film star Fabio Testi.

In this film by Tonino Valerii (producer: Mario Cecchi Gori), the 1970s action star acts as an undercover police officer who takes on the role of a bodyguard (a "gorilla") in order to hunt down the bad guys. Quite passable and entertaining, but definitely not a masterpiece of Italian crime films!

A look at the box office results shows how popular Fabio Testi was in those years: ITL 1.8 billion were sold in Italy. That was more than neat! Wherever it said Fabio Testi, there was always breathless action with hand-made stunts.

Definitely worth seeing action flick with an old school action star!

Go Gorilla Go is probably most notable for its strange title, and this carries over into the film; as while it takes obvious inspiration from some big genre classics; the film features some strange plotting and a storyline that is a bit unusual on genre terms. Director Tonino Valerii previously directed the excellent but complicated Giallo My Dear Killer and clearly has a talent for delivering convoluted story lines as Go Gorilla Go features one too! The film focuses on Marco; an undercover police officer who is also working as a body guard for a shady underworld figure. He's also got a brother who is not exactly squeaky clean and has contacts with a few other 'Gorillas' who are in the same line as he is. It's not long before our hero gets involved in a kidnap plot along with his brother and his underworld boss and this plot is ran parallel with a load of others and the whole thing gets rather complicated.

Luckily, however, it's all spun together with a whole load of action scenes; many of which are really well done. We've got the usual compliment of car chases and fist fights, but the main standout is a sequence that sees the lead character trapped in an elevator with the bottom taken out. The final car chase, which involves a train a la The French Connection, is also very well executed. The lead role is taken by Fabio Testi and the actor looks the part and plays it well. The rest of the cast is filled out mostly by lesser known Italian actors, but they get on well as an ensemble and bad dubbing aside, the film is above average in the acting department. The way that the story flows does get a bit too confusing at times as we constantly switch from one thing to another, but at least the proceedings are kept entertaining for most of the duration, before exploding in the final third. This film is not very well known and as such has become rather hard to come by. In the grand spectrum of Italian police films; this one is not one of the more important ones or one of the best, but for anyone that considers themselves a fan of this genre; Go Gorilla Go is certainly worth a look and comes recommended.