Bye, Bye Darling

I prefer seeing Lee Van Cleef in this kind of euro crime than in a Spaghetti western. Of course that's not the best of Van Cleef, but this one is rather agreeable to watch because without any length, which is a good point. The scheme is over over used but still entertaining for action movies buffs, especially from this sixties and seventies period; very different in the making from the eighties or even later. Back to this one, the hired killer in charge to eliminate one of his friends reminded me VERTIGE POUR UN TUEUR, but I repeat, this topic is not new at all. Maybe the female characters presence was not always adequate to the story but it could have been far worse because of this. Anyway this film is not on the same scale as THE MECHANIC, another close scheme, more or less.

Betrayed by his girl and best friend, thief Harry Chapman (Lee Van Cleef) takes the fall for a racetrack robbery. While in prison, he is offered a chance to participate in an escape plan. What he doesn't know is that once he is on the outside, the group responsible for the prison break has Harry in their debt and they use him as a hit-man. Naturally, he grows tired of the job and splits because he is hellbent on getting revenge on the former partners. So the mob puts young hit-man Luc (Robert Widmark) on Harry's trail.

It is kind of surprising that Van Cleef didn't do more Italian crime flicks in the 70s. To my knowledge, he only did this, MEAN FRANK AND CRAZY TONY (aka ESCAPE FROM DEATH ROW), and THE SQUEEZE. As it stands, this one is just kinda average. It doesn't really pick up until the last third. However, there are some great stand alone scenes like an attack by razor-wielding cross dressers (shades of the previous year's STRANGE SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM) and the final beach showdown. The craziest thing is how every woman seems to find Van Cleef - sporting a really bad rug - to be hot. Tita Barker (aka Carmen Cervera) is the love interest and John Ireland is Harry's confidant. Director Mario Siciliano previously worked with Widmark (aka Alberto Dell'Acqua) on some SARTANA westerns and also did the odd horror flick EVIL EYE (1975).

You may see this film under the title "Satanic Mechanic" I suggest to anyone who likes great bad films to view this little gem. The montage is absolutely insane. Fantastic dialogue. Porkchop sideburns. This film has it all.

Even though the copy of this film I watched was a blurred VHS pan and scan version, the wig on the Lee Van Cleef's head still kind of looked like a stamped badger.

The Perfect Killer starts off with Van Cleef getting ditched during a heist by his girlfriend Kristy, who dumps him for his mate Jack, then bails on him as he's caught by the police. In jail, some guy arranges for him to escape but only if he agrees to kill some people for a shady organisation. This he does, until he discovers that the last victim is the guy who sprung him from jail. He let's the guy escape, but it's too late as hot shot killer Luke (a rare starring role from Alberto Dell'Acqua) finishes the job on behalf of the organisation. This starts a bitter battle between the two men which will results in murder and mayhem.

That's only the beginning of the film, which is a shame because what follows really starts to drag. Van Cleef is given another job by a transvestite who sends him across the Med to kill a mystery person, but not before Luke shows up at the club to kill Lee and gets into a transvestite punch up which is no patch on the transvestite punch up that features in Strange Shadows in an Empty Room, a scene that surely won some award for transvestite punch-ups in 1976. When Lee gets to whatever country he's supposed to go to, he finds out, as you would expect, that his target is his old girlfriend Kirsty.

This is what kills this film pacing wise. Kirsty is still hooked up with Jack, but she's also having an affair with a young guy and plans on killing Jack to get insurance money off of non-chicken eating insurance guy Fernando Sancho, but then she's not really doing that because what she's doing is duping the young guy out of the money by pretending Jack is dead, and with the appearance of Van Cleef things get even more complicated as she then plans on running off with him, and when Luke arrives, he figures on killing everyone and taking the money. In addition, John Ireland turns up in a pointless cameo. Someone does throw a golden pheasant at him so it wasn't a total loss.

Things do pick up near the end when Luke appears to turn psychotic and starts murdering everyone, starting with that horny fashion model who has been stalking Cleef, but in general I just wasn't feeling it with this one. Lee Van Cleef didn't quite look like he was feeling it either to be honest, so it's Alberto Dell'Acqua who is the only actor with any life in him. Fernando Sancho is only in the film a few minutes so don't excited about that either.

Perfect Killer is an odd and rather stupid crime film made in Italy in 1977, although most of the comments that I've read on it seem to be unduly harsh as while the film is silly and trashy, it is at least watchable. The film takes organised crime as its main theme and mixes it with plenty of action. The main selling point is undoubtedly the presence of the great Lee Van Cleef who stars as a hired killer. He's found himself in jail but takes an opportunity to escape after given one by a mysterious 'organisation'. He's then given a job as a killer for the organisation, but decides to leave when he is asked to kill a friend. However, it turns out that there was no 'get out' clause in the contract and the organisation sends out a killer after him. The plot of the film is good in that it moves very quickly, and everything that I've described (and a bit more) happens in the first half hour. After that, however, the film really begins to slide downhill as the action becomes less interesting and things don't flow as well, which is a bit of a shame. The film is mostly satisfying in terms of violence, as there's plenty, and there's a fair bit of sex too. There's also a few silly scenes which manage to amuse; a sequence that sees Van Cleef's nemesis fighting a trio of transvestites is memorable though not necessarily for the right reasons! Overall, I can't recommend anyone going out of their way to see this film; but it's really not all that bad and is decent enough for an hour and a half's entertainment.