7/10
Myopic Terrorists
14 June 2018
The director of Death Walks On High Heels tries his hand at the crime genre and gives us a film that to me has the same tone and pace as his gialli. That's not a bad thing, mind you, but this is a more realistic film that you'd expect from the Eurocrime genre.

Cassanelli plays a narcotics detective who keeps caught up in something more complex than drug trafficking when, while tailing a dealer, a young myopic kid runs into the hotel the dealer is staying at, trying to get everyone to run from a bomb he claims is planted there. He runs off before the bomb explodes, killing a dozen people and setting Cassanelli on a path to find the short sighted kid based purely on the glasses he left behind. Trouble ensues as Arthur Kennedy is put in charge of the investigation...and he still playing the stubborn cop from the Living Dead At the Manchester Morgue! That means he hates Cassanelli and won't listen to him, by the way.

We also get to meet the bombers and a shadowy organisation that seem to be behind it all, a plot device that's occurring quite frequently in 1975's Italian crime films. Director Ercoli does throw in the odd bit of quirkiness, like the blind kid having to go to an opticians for new glasses and nearly getting caught, only for him to spend the rest of the film with those steel frames they make you wear while testing lenses. There's also a lot of focus on Cassanelli's investigation and a lot of time spent on his partner's nervous disorder following someone holding a gun on him, so don't expect massive shootouts or car chases.

HD is not kind to Arthur Kennedy I notice. Cassanelli still looks hunky though.
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