Banana-Man struggled to get up, but eventually got to his feet. Edwige, my kangaroo companion from misadventures in North America, growled again and looked ready to pounce on the man. I stood in front of her, wagging my finger in her face. Kangaroos don’t understand that street vendors have a right to refuse a fifty dollar bill for any item being sold under five dollars. I turned around to face the Banana-Man to offer an apology, but I went perfectly still when I saw he had a revolver pointed directly at us.

— To be continued.

Since I’d been spending so much time on the Ghoulies saga, I see no point in doing a Satan Month for June as there was a whole lot of Satanic activity going on in those films. This leaves the Poliziotteschi genre as the only other alternative. Tonight’s movie is 1973’s Big Guns from director Duccio Tessari and I think this movie is a fine introduction to the Italian gangster genre so popular in the 1970s.

The movie begins with a birthday party for a young boy and I keep expecting some vile criminals to bust into the apartment, toss in some grenades, and a very unhappy birthday for all will be had. But that doesn’t happen. The boy’s father, Tony Arzenta (Alain Delon), leaves the party because he has to go to work. What is his job? Killing people for the mob. The next scene involves him assassinating a rival boss and his underling who had the unfortunate luck of entering his boss’s office right after the assination happened.

Tony has decided he doesn’t like the whole “killer for hire” career path.  He offers his resignation to his bosses, but they warn him that this is not a position that you walk away from. Tony insists on leaving anyway and we in the audience know this won’t end well. Tony’s wife can’t get her car started one morning and sends their son up to get the keys to Tony’s car. Tony looks out his window as his wife and son get into his car for a trip to the grocery store. 3-2-1. The car explodes, Tony’s wife and son are incinerated by a bomb that was left for him.

Tony’s former boss yells at his henchmen to finish the job knowing full well that Tony will be seeking vengeance. At his family’s funeral, his parish priest warns him against seeking vengeance for what happened to his family and to leave it for God to take care of. Okay, but right after the funeral, some hitmen try to gunning Tony down. Tony gets in a car and chases after them. Can I just say how much I love chase scenes in Italian movies from the 1970s. Every automobile seems to be made out of cheap plastic and tin foil.

I guess I’m kind of confused by the moral lesson of this film. Is Tony supposed to ignore the mob and get on with his life after they killed his family? The mob is trying to murder him anyway. Am I supposed to care about these scumbag gangsters that deserve to die? Maybe the lesson is don’t become a hired assassin for the mob. It’s a dead end. An alternative title for Big Guns is No Way Out which I believe is a more apt description of what this movie is about. 

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, episode 645, and episode 670) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.