In a flash, the Revenging Manta sliced his blade into the bullet flying toward my heart, cleaving it in two. The ninja vigilante of downtown Orlando then directed his attention to the man in the banana costume, cutting the fabric to ribbons until all that was left standing was a hairy man wearing nothing but white boxers with little hearts on them. Something else fell from the man besides his pride, a ziploc bag filled to the brim with candy-colored units of fentanyl, the same kind we saw the goons of the Goose Lord prepping for distribution.

— To be continued. 

Tonight’s movie is 1973’s The Violent Professionals from director Sergio Martino. The Poliziotteschi genre makes me wonder what was actually going on in Italy during the 1970s. These motion pictures make it seem like the decade was a violent free for all. No one is safe from the disorder, even the children. I’m still reeling from The Kidnap Syndicate. Who ever said being a Curator of Schlock was easy?

In an early scene in this motion picture, scummy prisoners being transported by train revolt against the guards and gun them down with the guards’ own machine guns. We then cut to a scene of a father with his young daughter going for an afternoon drive. The father sees the escaped prisoners approaching the car, thinking they may need help. They gun him down, throw him out the car, and speed off. Of course, there’s still the little girl who’s bawling over the death of her father. The driver tells the other criminal in the back seat to take the little girl out and he reluctantly obeys. Fortunately, the camera cuts away before we see him do the deed.

Our hero is Commissioner Giorgio Caneparo (Luc Merenda) and he leads the cops to a quarry where the escaped prisoners are hiding out. Giorgio is told by his mentor on the force, Gianni (Silvano Tranquilli), that he’ll be up for promotion if he handles the situation right. As the prisoners are about to surrender to the authorities, Giorgio plugs them both. He gets suspended from the force because his killing the prisoners was apparently not handling it well. All I can think of is that little girl waiting for those two prisoners when they get to hell. 

Anyway, no sooner is Giorgio suspended than Gianni gets assassinated by the mob. Giorgio then goes undercover and works his way into the belly of organized crime. He does this by touring brothels and smacking around pimps which I guess brings him to the attention of a mafia boss named Salassolio (Richard Conte). Giorgio gets hired as a driver and gets involved in a particularly nasty bank heist. One of the hooligans guns down a civilian woman that was screaming too loud during the robbery. Wouldn’t that make Giorgio an accessory to her murder since he’s the getaway driver?

We get a nice high speed car chase where plenty of European vehicles get trashed as the bank robbers try to get away. Giorgio manages to duck out of the way as the police open fire upon the robbers, killing the one criminal Giorgio was hoping to use as a witness against Salassolio. Giorgio still gets a commendation for his undercover work, but he learns that there’s a much bigger conspiracy that threatens to destabilize all of Italian society. Will he persevere and put an end to the conspiracy or be another casualty of it? Since it’s a Poliziotteschi movie, you shouldn’t expect a happy ending. 

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.