Only now does it occur to me... THE BIG RACKET (1976)

Only now does it occur to me... that it's been way too long since I've watched an Enzo G. Castellari film. It's a certain, unique strand of plagiaristic Italo-madness inflected with the pure joy of visual storytelling, á la Sam Raimi or Richard Rush. About fifteen years ago, I first watched a spate of his classicks: 1990: BRONX WARRIORS, THE LAST SHARK, THE HEROIN BUSTERS, KEOMA, TUAREG: THE DESERT WARRIOR, INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, et al., a series of films which rip off and then reinvent everything from JAWS to THE WARRIORS to LAWRENCE OF ARABIA to THE DIRTY DOZEN.

After all these years, I finally took a stab at THE BIG RACKET, which is a reinvention of the original DEATH WISH with enough Roman derangement so as to prophesy the swirly-eyed Cannon Films sequels.

The plot is thus: a gang full of models and character actors destroy bowling shirts and flowers with ball bats. This represents Italian crime in the 1970s.

 

What do they want? Protection money from local business owners.



They're part of a huge operation that goes all the way to the top––a smarmy mobster played by Joshua Sinclair's "Rudy." (He's a member of Castellari's acting troupe who almost always plays a gleefully pompous baddie, and––no joke––he's also a medical doctor and expert in tropical diseases who worked with Mother Teresa.)

But there's one man who will not allow this to happen. A likable man who wears a lot of denim and looks disapprovingly upon property destruction

and spilt sugar.

That's right, it's one tuff cop played by the one and only Fabio Testi. I've referred to him in the past as "Italo-Rock Hudson" and "Eurotrash Hugh Jackman." When he fires his weapon in top-to-bottom, skintight, cinched denim, you had best believe that he's doing a back-strengthening Superman extension as he does it. That's just standard Testi operating procedure.

Most of this movie is glass being broken in slow motion or Peckinpah-style bullet ballet featuring folks in close-fitting bell bottoms set to the wacka wacka beats of De Angelis, basically a nonstop bassline cribbed from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and some random psychedelic guitar tinkering. Or else it's criminal organizations meeting up and sitting around and flashing their eyes at each other and posing while jazz drum solos riff unto infinity (just like in 1990: BRONX WARRIORS). There's a fair amount of ickiness, too, like the comically fascist pro-police agenda and "fridging" tropes and multiple gang rapes, which mainly seem to be in here because Castellari genuinely believes he is making a contribution to the same contemporary ultraviolent subgenre as A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, DELIVERANCE, STRAW DOGS, DIRTY HARRY, and DEATH WISH. In fact, he's making a live action cartoon with some of the best-worst dialogue in his entire canon.

"Holy jumpin' jackrabbits, somebody took a strong dislike to the decor in here!"

 

 "Well look at that, we've got a plainclothes peeping pig in our window!"

"There we were having a couple of quiet beers and these guys arrive and just start beating the bean bags out of us!"

 

"I think I better warn you, if I find one bedbug, you will see me for dust."

"We can't offer them protection 24 hours out of 24."

There's excessive use of the word "diddly." Sometimes it's used to mean "diddly shit/squat," and sometimes the uses are, shall we say, even more imaginative.

"Yeah, you're right, but, uh, but if they cooperate with us, they'll be up diddly creek."

"Pull yourself together before you drop us both into the diddly."

–"If we're gonna get into the diddly, I'm gonna make sure it's because we really earned the right to be in it."

There are moments of the sublime, like when a gang member is pouring kerosene on a small restauranteur's dining room and says, flatly,

"Pity we ain't got some chestnuts to put on this."

"Ya mucker" is a common insult in the world of THE BIG RACKET, and sometimes gang members make spirited and hilariously weird commentary on the beatings they're administering:

"Ah sure, a sizzling face stinger... topped off with a rear-over-headlight turnover!"

All of this is too much for Good Cop Pushed Too Far™ Fabio Testi, who must break the law in order to enforce it.

"Criminal methods, in this case, were necessary. I know my methods are, let's say, somewhat illegal, but if the results are right, don't they justify the means?"

Because Castellari loves a "men on a mission" movie more than anything else, a now suspended-from-the-force Testi recruits a band of avengers to take out the mob, PUNISHER style. He enlists a thief-buddy (Vincent Gardenia––two-time Oscar nominee, DEATH WISH and MOONSTRUCK cast member, and "Mushnik" in LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS)

and other roughnecks to join his "let's say, somewhat illegal" crusade. Along the way, there are darkly comic and socially dangerous vigilante fantasies, like an Olympic skeet shooter being present (by happenstance!) when hero cops are pinned down by a literal army of mobsters. He proceeds to take out half the army while never being mistaken by the cops as a gang member. Holy jumpin' jackrabbits.

Anyway, the film's politics (described by Morando Morandini in Il Giorno as "a fascist film, a vile film, an idiot film"––and he's not wrong!) somehow can't fully drop this film "into the diddly," so to speak, and distract from its glorious, era-defining kitsch and denim-related achievements.

Only now does it occur to me... BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980)

Only now does it occur to me... that James Cameron first encountered the "TERMINATOR font" while working for Roger Corman.

What we have here is a John Sayles (!) scripted, low-ish budget sci-fi remake of Akira Kurosawa's THE SEVEN SAMURAI, starring a hodgepodge of affordable actors, from Richard Thomas (THE WALTONS) to Robert Vaughn (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN) to John Saxon (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET) to Sybil Danning (REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS) to George Peppard (THE A-TEAM). It's more enjoyable than you might expect––slightly better than STARCRASH (1978) or KRULL (1983), but pretty much playing in the same "poor man's STAR WAR" sandbox. I rate it lower than FLASH GORDON (1980), if that says anything.

According to James Cameron (credited as co-art director), he was responsible for most of the film's special effects, which are quite impressive for the budget. For comparison, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK had a $30.5 million budget, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS had a $2 million budget, and there are several spaceships which easily look good enough to be in STAR WARS. (The same cannot be said for the sets, costumes, and makeup effects.)

Anyway, it's notable that this early Cameron effort uses the same font that Cameron would make famous in THE TERMINATOR (I cannot find any interview where this is mentioned––since he had such an outsize role in the art direction, production design, and special effects, it's possible he helped pick out the font.)

It's also where Cameron met composer James Horner,

and the two would go on to collaborate many times before Horner's death––from ALIENS to TITANIC to two AVATAR films. In all, quite a formative experience for the 25-year-old Cameron.

Only now does it occur to me... EXCESSIVE FORCE (1993)

Only now does it occur to me... that Thomas Ian Griffith––performer of THE KARATE KID III's notorious, coke-addled villain Terry Silver––is... an auteur!

Yes, as they say in the action biz, he "pulled a Stallone"––he wrote, produced, and starred in this fine film, called EXCESSIVE FORCE. 

 

Though it wasn't the starmaker that New Line had hoped, I think he deserved this as much as Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris, whose respective films HARD TO KILL (1990) and THE HITMAN (1991) are tonally similar to EXCESSIVE FORCE, feature a similar amount of mullets, and are really no better or worse.

TIG is certainly a better actor, blow by blow, than Seagal or Norris

Also, this movie really capitalizes on Thomas Ian Griffith's piano playing––as COBRA KAI would also, decades later––and while he's playing a tough cop whose real passion is being a jazz musician, it's hard not to think about John Woo's HARD BOILED and its resident, clarinet-blasting Inspector Tequila.

TIG wielding Woo-style double-pistol action, as well

And with its Chicago-set, "mobsters and corrupt cops vs. one last virtuous hero-cop" plotline, it's hard not to see this as a pure mashup of HARD BOILED and THE UNTOUCHABLES. I wonder if TIG was up for the Billy Drago role in that?

 
The "Capone" here is ROCKY's Burt Young

Speaking of which, there are a shocking amount of top-shelf character actors rounding out this film.

James Earl Jones (R.I.P.) continues his '80s run of non-prestige action flicks, continuing in the vein of ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD and BEST OF THE BEST. Here, he plays a pathos-exuding friend of Thomas Ian Griffith, who also plays a mean jazz saxophone.

SQEEEEEEAD-ELLY-DEE

As always, so much pathos

We have the incomparable Lance Henriksen as TIG's creepy, cigar-chomping boss, 

Tony Todd as a (possibly) nefarious fellow cop,

and TIG's leg extension is basically a supporting character, in and of itself.

KARATE KID references abound. TIG's character name is "Terry," just as it is in THE KARATE KID PART III. He also sings "Danny Boy" in one of his first scenes; it's no coincidence that "Danny Boy" was one of the insults he flung at Daniel LaRusso in KK3.

Along the way, there are a lot of high-kicks, explosive squibs, jazz riffs, moody lighting choices, asymmetrical earrings, B-roll shots of the Chicago River, and the whole thing ends with a kitten exchange in a hospital.

TIG and JEJ both love kittens, what can I say

In the end, I am left with a strong desire to see NIGHT OF THE WARRIOR (1991), a film also written by Thomas Ian Griffith and starring... Lorenzo Lamas.

Only now does it occur to me... HIRED TO KILL (1990)

Only now does it occur to me... that HIRED TO KILL is the only movie where female commandos

 

are trained to impersonate runway models 

 

by Brian Thompson (usually a typecast heavy––COBRA, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, LIONHEART, THE X-FILES ––playing a Schwarzenegger-lite hero here) 

 

 

Sorta feels like TRUE LIES, if it were directed by Andy Sidaris

 

on the orders of Oscar-winner and literally phoned-in performer George Kennedy (COOL HAND LUKE, FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX) 

 

to rescue political prisoner and fellow Oscar-winner José Ferrer (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, MOULIN ROUGE)

 

from petty dictator Oliver Reed (GLADIATOR, THE DEVILS, THE BROOD, WOMEN IN LOVE)

 

Essentially doing Wilford Brimley cosplay?

who is, indeed, drunk and generally checked out enough so as to be indistinguishable from a cardboard cutout, a comparison which viewers can actually put to the test.

 

Cardboard cutout Oliver Reed...

versus the real McCoy.

On the whole, this mess––filmed in Greece, and set in the fictitious Mediterranean/South American country "Cypra"–– generally goes out of its way to make COMMANDO look like THE SEVENTH SEAL.