Director: Mario Caiano
Script: Gianfamco Clerici & Vincenzo Mannino
Cast: Leonard Mann, Henry Silva, Jeff Blynn, Evelyne Stewart, Massimo Deda, Adolfo Lastretti, Kirsten Gille
Running time: 90.5 minutes
Year: 1976
Certificate: 18
Weapons of Death is an unusual sequel to the Lenzi hit Violent Naples. Sadly, Lenzi doesn’t return for this production, although Mario Caiano is a more than capable replacement. Maurizio Merli also doesn’t return for this follow-up, of sorts; instead he’s replaced by Leonard Mann, who’s still a tough cookie in his role of investigating officer. The one returning character is the street-wise kid, Johnny.
Weapons tells the typical Italian story of an ever increasingly violent crime-wave, which includes the always captivating Henry Silva playing yet another bad guy, namely Salvatore Santoro, head of a particularly ruthless crime gang, based in Naples. The story is a fast-moving one and the action even faster, with plenty of stylish vehicle chases through the streets of Naples and all manner of shoot-outs and punch-ups.
Beginning with a violent bank robbery, where a pregnant woman is kicked in the stomach, Weapons of Death gets crazier by the minute. For example, the robbers initially outsmart the cops by some of their number pretending to be cops themselves and arresting the bank robbing elements of the gang thereby escaping the law for a while, before some are captured anyway, after a police road-block traps them.
In a nutshell, Salvatore Santoro (Henry Silva) is the leader of a gang that’s committing many violent crimes all over Naples, and Antonio Belli (Leonard Mann) is a senior police inspector who refuses to call it quits in his pursuit of Santoro. As an amusing side-line, he also spends some of his time scolding the street kid mentioned earlier, who goes around the city engaging in illegal behaviour such as stealing wheels from cars and selling tap-water to unwary punters, them thinking that the bottles they’re buying are fresh spring water! Unfortunately, this parallel storyline can be a bit annoying and unrealistic after a while, especially after the street urchin jumps into a race car and actually drives it like a racing driver through the busy streets of Naples. In reality, the inspector would have placed the kid in youth detention by that point so that kind of silliness takes the viewer out of the film. The boy does prove to be an anti-hero towards the end of the film and provides an emotional punch-line to proceedings.
However, ultimately, you don’t watch a film called Weapons of Death for characterization, arbitrary comedy routines or domestic issues being cleverly addressed through time-consuming legal routes; you want to see great action sequences, and lots of them, and this film has that in spades. In fact, this is one crazy mother of a film with not five minutes going by before the next insane vehicular stunt or shoot-out. And, it’s made clear from the extras that most of the stunts were done on-the-fly, guerrilla style, which makes them even more frighteningly impressive!
And when the filmmakers were taking a break from setting up vehicular mayhem or shoot outs they included a sub-vignette where a paedophile tries to abduct a young girl in the park, behind her mum’s back, and is subsequently chased and caught by a group of onlookers who then, understandably, beat the crap out of him. Then, later, when he’s in jail, he gets attacked by a group of prisoners, and graphically castrated by one of them.
The main focus of the film is the ‘cat and mouse’ nature of cops and robbers trying to get one over on the other, leading to some tense face-offs between our two main protagonists, who seem to have a degree of admiration/respect for one another, despite being on opposite sides of the law. I wouldn’t be surprised if Michael Mann had seen this film some years prior to this same trope being used, somewhat more successfully, in his classic heist film, Heat. Although Heat isn’t nearly as violent as this film and certainly doesn’t feature a motorbike decapitation, or not one that I can remember anyway!
All in all, if you like Italian crime thrillers, and like them full of over-the-top action then you’ll certainly get a kick out of this one, which is one of the most action-packed that I’ve seen; most definitely worth a look. Plus, it helps that Studiocanal have done a great job in cleaning the film up and have also included two versions of the film for our delectation. Obviously, I went for the longer version, but next time I watch it – and I will – then I’ll check out the shorter version too.
Extras include:
Audio commentary with filmmaker/historian Steve Mitchell, historian Troy Howarth and Mondo Digital’s Nathaniel Thompson – The three commentators are all very knowledgeable and drop in lots of interesting facts about the film and those responsible for making it. For example, they talk about the composer, Francesco De Masi, who also wrote the score for Lucio Fulci’s infamous The New York Ripper. None of them particularly like the score to Weapons of Death preferring the composer’s score to Crime Boss, which allegedly has a more Western theme vibe going for it. They also talk about the director who apparently wasn’t a fan of the crime subgenre, although he did go on to direct Violent Milan. They also note that some of the incidents played out in the film were based on actually true stories. Quite rightly they also point out that the leading lady doesn’t actually show up until 85 minutes into the film. Easy work, if you can get it!
Stills Gallery (2.49 min) – Mostly stills taken directly from the movie, but these help to demonstate how well the film was shot.
Original Theatrical Trailer (4.10 mins) – Sadly this overlong VHS quality trailer reminds us of what the quality of trailers on tapes used to be like, but it’s still a lot of fun; just don’t watch it before watching the movie!
