The Bloody Hands of the Law (1973)

'La mano Spietata della legge' (1973) is sadly a little-known and poorly documented euro-crime that merits re-discovery. That said, any high- octane Italian actioner from the early 70's swollen with a typically phat-sounding, grooved-out score from Stelvio Cipriani, and festooned with an especially muscular performance from Philippe Leroy is going to be anything but a time waster. In addition this zesty euro-crime effort also features tyro screen-gobbler Klaus Kinski who, surprisingly, turns in a somewhat restrained performance here as a blow torch-wielding hit-man; nevertheless still cutting a dashing, violent swathe through the proceedings in his hep-cat sunspex. It might well have been this film that got me to re-view many other titles starring that most swarthy of enigmatic actors, Philippe Leroy...Methinks it it time for a Leroy retrospective!

Finding Mario Gariazzo's landmark Giallo/Erotic Thriller crossover Play Motel to be an enjoyable, pretty sleazy movie,I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I actually had another Gariazzo film in my "must watch" pile of DVDs/Video's,which would give me the thrilling chance of seeing Gariazzo take on the Italian Crime genre.The plot:Learning that the head of a much larger,rival gang group is currently in hospital for an operation,a bunch of low down gangsters decide to team up and perform a special stealth "operation" on the hospital.Checking to see that no one else is around,the gangsters quietly sneak in and quickly kill the mob boss and a near by nurse.Leaving the scene of the crime feeling that they are now on the up and up,the joy of the gangsters is short lived,when they relies that a number of people witnessed them leaving the mob boss's room.Fearing that the witnesses could speak at any time,the gangsters start searching round in the hope of killing all of the witnesses,whilst Commissario Gianni De Carmine attempts to find the witnesses before the gangsters kill every bit of proof connected to the assassination.View on the film:Despite the DVD print from Alfa Digital attempting to make nothing shine out in the movie,(with a 5 minute car chase scene becoming a bit tough to watch, due to Alfa making the screen go to near black!) Klaus Kinski is still able to give a very good performance as lead rival gangster Vito Quattroni,who thanks to not having a single line of dialogue in the film,helps Kinski to make Quattroni a menacing villain,who can start shooting from out of nowhere.Going in a slightly classier direction than he did with Play Motel, (such as featuring no "bedroom" scenes,and only having a beautiful woman appear topless!) director Mario Gariazzo cover his wafer thin screenplay, (which does contain,a terrific,down beat Noirish ending) by making the set pieces short,but very fun and gritty,with two of the main highlights being a man's crotch v a blowing torch and a pre-Resivar Dogs twisting of an ear.

THE BLOOD HANDS OF THE LAW (Italy, 1973) aka La Mano Spietata della Legge). Viewed via UK DVD from Alfa Digital released a couple years ago, English dubbed (poorly) and fairly murky print. Fairly pointless and generally incomprehensible crime thriller which begins unraveled and never gets any closer to lucidity as it goes along, finally ending on a note of intriguing despondency but without any firm resolution to its story. Klaus Kinski plays a silent paid assassin whose connection with the other assassins and the increasingly connected network of Organized Crime who people the film is never made clear. The film is mildly violent (despite its 1970's era reputation for being wildly violent) – there are lots of beatings, stabbings, two fisted interrogations, pointless nudity, and "the ever-popular crotch blowtorching scene" wherein a rapist gets his, if you will forgive the term, comeuppance. In many ways the film hearkens to the DIRTY HARRY style, with Philip LeRoy very good as the cop seeking to use any methods possibly to track down the killers, whose victims increase as potential witnesses to their original crime, and then witnesses to those crimes, etc etc, are sequentially knocked off. Nice 1970s Italo-pop score by Stelvio Cipriani is never really used to stylish advantage. Film plods along and begs for an interesting directorial style that, like the film itself, never really delivers.

Found this title on Danish x-rental vhs-tape the other day. Letterboxed 1:1.70 and uncut. Runningtime is 95.21 mins, pal system. Danish title is....Politiets Hårde Drenge(tuff police-boys...in English!!). It's supposed to be extremely violent,but I fail to see the reason for this rumour as no real graphic violence is shown directly "in y'ar face"!! Ok...Klaus Kinski...looking very very cool in 70´s sunspex by the way....does set a guy's groin area on fire with a small flamethrower. Not a very pleasant scene. There's really no interesting story to follow and the action is rather tame, but we do get lots of truly nice shots of Klaus, who performs with his usual flair for putting on a cruel face. Participating from start to finish,he dosn't speak one single word throughout the entire movie,though!! Recommended for die-hard fans of either Italo crime or the wonderful Mr Kinski. I'm the latter, yep!! Worth a million on the sell/swap/trade scene among collectors worldwide!!