Le fauve à la mitraillette

Remember the scene in Jackie Brown with Robert DeNiro and Bridget Fonda watching TV and then Samuel Jackson walks in and goes: "Is that Rutger Hauer?" and Fonda replies: "No, it's Helmut Berger."?

Well, it's this movie they're watching.

It's a typical low-key Italian gangster movie with a bunch of evil, skinny, mustached (except Helmut Berger) crooks driving around doing evil stuff. The violence scenes are very brutal but there are many moments where also unintentional humor is present.

Once again, I have a Finnish super rare version of this movie with Finnish title (roughly translated) "Death Obeys No Law" on the front cover and in the back cover it says "Best With A Gun", (obviously a typing error). In the opening credits it says "Furious" (or "Ferocious"). A movie with so many names can't be that bad, can it?

Known as Mad Dog Killer and Beast With A Gun, my print comes up with the title, Furious Mad Dog Killer and I have to say all titles are appropriate. This is not sophisticated film making by any means but does, as they say, what it says on the can. Little story, just an angry young man determined to do with his gun what he is going to do and even rape the co-star along the way. Helmut Berger is excellent in the lead and fully convinces as the near lunatic, Mad Dog or Killer of the titles. Marisa Mell is also effective and not quite as dumb as the females often seem to have to be in these Italian crime movies. The police are as dumb as usual, even if led by the charismatic, Richard Harrison. Tough. Mean and fast moving.

For the time , it is an extremely violent film, Tarentino-like style ,with plenty of murders and rapes ; the director knows only one tempo :accelerated ,and Helmut Berger ,who had not forgotten his master Visconti's lessons is fascinating,terrifying ,almost without overplaying . His opponent , the cop played by Richard Harrison (in the sixties a habitué of sword and sandals and eurospy cheap flicks),is not really up to scratch opposite him ;the same can be said of ill-fated Marisa Mell .

This thriller includes melodrama elements : the killer's sister and the cop's father and young sister are involved ;but it's Berger who saves the film :cold,sadistic to the umpteenth degree , ruthless; too bad he never found another Visconti because he deserved better.

Oof! This is an Italian crime film that really has a nasty edge to it. Helmet Berger is a career criminal who escaps from jail with some buddies, gives a prison guard a kicking and throws him out of car, runs cop Richard Harrison off the road (not before Harrison plugs one of the escapees in the head), beats two men in a petrol station almost to death, grabs the snitch that landed him in jail, rapes his girlfriend, beats the guy to death, and buries him in lime. This all happens within the first fifteen minutes of the film.

Berger's mental with a capital M, and is out to get enough money to get out of the country, so he enlists the snitch's girlfriend against her will to set up a heist involving getting money from her father, but she doesn't take too well to being raped and goes to Harrison, who can think of nothing else but snapping Berger's neck. Much violence, hostage taking, and beatings ensue, and believe it or not the film manages to get even more nasty as it progresses, as the final scenes in a warehouse involve a guy getting shot multiple times in the face and a girl being tortured with a straight razor.

Harrison (of the insanely great Ninja Terminator, and many other films with Ninja in the title) is basically a ball of rage who won't stop till he's got his man, but the film really belongs to Berger, who plays a man who has no rules and barely a soul (although he does meet with his sister and treats her nicely enough). He beats, stabs, shoots, and rapes to get what he wants, and those cold Tuetonic eyes just add to the icy character who'll sink to any level for his own gain.

If you like Italian crime films, there's scores and scores of them that will easily satisfy. To me it seems to be the genre where the filmmakers always hit a home run. I've never watched one I didn't enjoy, and while Mad Dog hasn't got much in way of plot, it sure gets the adrenalin going. While not as nasty as Fulci's Contraband (although I'm sure there possibly might be an Italian crime movie that's more violent than that), I'd place Mad Dog on a par with Almost Human (which is quite similar). The only let down here is the presentation by Mill Creek, which is a severely cropped full screen version, although I must say I'm just glad to see the film at all.

He's mean! He's profane! He's armed and extremely dangerous! His name is Nanni Vitali (Helmut Berger), and he's a one-man hit squad! Boiling over with bitterness and vengeance over his time in prison, Vitali sets out on a mission to destroy those whom he deems responsible.

Anyone in his way will be raped, murdered, or both.

BEAST WITH A GUN is a nasty bit of crime-drama cinema in keeping with similar Italian films of the period. Berger plays his vicious role with gusto. He's pretty scary!

Co-stars the breathtakingly gorgeous Marisa Mell...