The most stomach churning thing about this Italian thriller is the mid-seventies fashion and hairstyles. A couple of models have gone missing and a journalist arrives on the scene to do nothing. The wheelchair-bound, afro-luxe photographer has found a way to photograph people’s minds and then solves the crime. The end. There’s about thirty minutes of movie here and the rest is boring filler.

So, yes, Reservoir Dogs shares a lot with this movie. And by a lot I mean the last ten minutes. The remaining ninety minutes are more about police tactics and Chow Yun Fat’s relationship troubles. It all flows together nicely, but doesn’t feel as imminently re-watchable as a John Woo film from the same era.

The opening five minutes are great: Cynthia Rothrock killing a bunch of ninjas. Then it becomes a lame Police Academy wannabe film about female recruits. The jokes suck, there’s no action, and it all just falls flat. The predictable final sequence offers no thrills and there is no payoff after the hour or so of training sequences.

Stranglehold is the video game sequel to John Woo’s Hard-boiled. What it actually is is a Max Payne clone. That’s not all that bad because Max Payne’s bullet-time mechanic was one of the most fun innovations in gaming and it was itself a rip-off of everything John Woo. What’s missing is the themes of brotherhood and honor that permeated all of Woo’s gun-fu masterpieces. Instead we get a forgettable “rescue the damsel in distress” plot. That said, the action mechanics were enough to hold me through the relatively short single player campaign.

Turns out that people recounting their UFO sightings is not terribly interesting reading. Much of this book is dedicated to such accounts without any visual proof. Fortunately there is a bit more here than that. You do get a pretty detailed history of the various government departments charged with researching these stories.

The final disc in the Years of Lead box set is not so much a poliziotteschi as it is a noir film or even a giallo. The plot is as follows: an average, middle class guy who witnesses a murder. The murderer is a revered intellectual and he goes to the police first to accuse our hero of the crime. The rest of the movie is the hero bumbling around and trying to cover up for a murder he didn’t commit. The lead is played in a comic/tragic way in which you are both rooting for him and angered by his stupid decisions. Unfortunately, the producers forced a “happy” ending which kinda ruins everything. On the disc the original, ambiguous ending is included which I wish they kept. Highly recommended.

Add this one to the growing list of Italian movies about middle-aged men whose lives are reinvigorated by cheating on their wives with women half their age. The soundtrack to this movie is one of Ennio Morricone’s best and I’ve been seeking this out for quite some time. The story is about a rich factory owner who begins to empathize with his striking workers after having an affair with the wife of a killed striker. He ends up in between the two sides and yadda yadda, love story, boom, dead. This is just thinly veiled commie gobbledygook and, worse than that, it’s dull.

The brutality of this Italian crime thriller is way up there. At the same time, it has some of the fakest looking effects ever captured on screen. They did such awful things to that Silly Putty. Henry Silva is a gangster returning to Sicily from America to clean the underworld of drug smugglers who use children’s bodies to transport heroin. He spends most of the movie sweating up his powder blue leisure suit and kicking ass. I would have liked to root for him but then he goes and assaults women the most horrendous ways imaginable. I’ll never look at Chili’s Baby Back Ribs the same way again.

This was one of the better Phillip Marlowe books that I would have ranked higher if not for the overly-long denouement.

I’m getting the impression that Tsui Hark was a much better producer than he was a director. His films come close to being great there’s always something tonally off. Peking Opera Blues does have its moments. I think the final rooftop fight is well executed, as are the scenes of the actual opera performances. Everything else is either too goofy or too poorly written.

The titular She Beast is a really great monster design. Unfortunately she is always filmed in blaring sunlight. Even the night scenes are shot with some of the least dark day-for-night cinematography I have ever seen. If hidden with a little shadow, the She Beast would have been an extremely effective movie monster. There is a little bit of gore and the attacks are definitely horrific but ultimately the tone of the movie is more deliberately comic than scary. That said, the characters are all fairly likable and, besides a five minute car chase, stays relatively entertaining until the end.

As one might expect, this movie is just an excuse to have car chases on tiny Italian streets in tiny Italian cars. The plot centers on a group of bank robbers who use driving tactics to outsmart the cops and how it’s going to take an exceptional driver to catch them. There are themes of honor and brotherhood on both sides of the law. But, for the most part, this is all about the crazy driving.

John Carpenter’s second feature is filled with bad acting and cheesy dialogue but for some reason this tense thriller works. It’s amazing how far a little setup and payoff goes. Cholo forever!

The third poliziottesco in the Years of Lead box set is a kinetic action film with amazing nighttime photography and hand-held camera work. The story centers on a group of five policemen who have formed an elite team of motorcycling cops that are able to get the criminals when the regular cops can’t. The head of the team is committed to taking down the bomb-happy crime boss who killed his wife. Like most Italian films of the era, the plot and characters don’t exactly take center stage. It’s all about the chases, shootouts, and explosions. On that front, this film delivers.

This movie is completely bonkers. It starts off as a teen drama about some Japanese school kids who are trying to be the best ranked students in the class, while others just want to do extracurricular sports activities like kendo. I was ready to stop watching until about a quarter of the way through the movie it is revealed that the main character has psychic abilities and is communicating with a vampiric alien from Venus. I wasn’t surprised to discover that this is the same director as Hausu. The final act is a hallucinatory fever dream of bad special effects, weird costumes, and classical music. The story is a disjointed mess that makes no sense, but that might be the point.