Rare 1985 "Prism Entertainment" release in a hard to find un-cut, un-faded, original clamshell case in mint condition!
"Prism Entertianment"
English language release of aka 'Quelli che Contano/Guns of the Big Shots' the 1974 Italian crime thriller directed by Andrea 'Zombie 3 Nights of Terror' Bianchi.
She's a woman with a past: a former prostitute, now married to a gang boss dealing in black market currency and illicit drug traffic. He's a cold-blood killer: a mob hit man dispatched to Italy to pacify two rival gangs which are impeding Mafia operations. When the ex-hooker falls for the underworld assassin, the sparks begin to fly - and the heat is on the hired killer, as the rival gangs turn the tables and make him their moving target!
Barbara Bouchet stars as a reformed hooker in this Italian crime thriller. For reasons uniquely her own, Bouchet joins forces with professional assassin Henry Silva. Her aim is to put an end to an Italian gang war. Silva doubts that it can be done, but what the heck, the money's good.
Leave it to Italian sleazemeister Andrea Bianchi (here co-directing with his brother) to take a brutally violent and borderline misogynist genre like the Italian "polizieschi" and actually up the ante considerably. This movie begins with drug dealers trying to smuggle drugs into Italy sewed up in the body of a dead child(!), and it only gets more gratuitously violent from there. A brutal gang war is going between a traditional Italian mafia family and an Americanized godfather who has been deported back to Italy. Injected into this conflict is another Italian-American gangster, the protagonist Tony Aniante (Henry Silva), and he begins to play the two rivals off against each other in the style of "A Fistful of Dollars" or "Yojimbo".
Silva's character Tony might seem like the good guy, or at least the kind of anti-hero Clint Eastwood played in 'A Fistful of Dollars' and other Italian Westerns (and later in 'Dirty Harry' which was a big influence on the Italian polizieschi). But the Silva character himself is quite psychotic when it comes to women, specifically the masochistic prostitute/mistress of the American gangster (played by Barbara Bouchet). The first time they meet he violently sodomizes her. And when she comes back for more he beats her with a belt. He literally beats her to a bloody pulp. Even her boyfriend, who otherwise is content to throw the promiscuous girl at his erstwhile partner, is horrified by the brutal beating and vows revenge.
An excellent Italian crime film with a good musical score.
Starring Henry Silva as Tony Aniante, Barbara Bouchet as Margie, Fausto Tozzi, Vittorio Sanipoli, Mario Landi, Mauro Righi, Dada Gallotti, Patrizia Gori, Pier Maria Rossi, Alfredo Pea, Pietro Torrisi, Armando Bottin, Giancarlo Del Duca and Carla Mancini.
Also contains a great trailer for 1974 European thriller 'Beyond Erotica' aka 'No es Nada, Mama, Solo un Juego'.
In mint condition with flawless playback!
PRODUCT TYPE: USA VHS videotape
VIDEO LABEL: Prism Entertainment
VIDEO FORMAT: NTSC
LANGUAGE: English
SUBTITLES: none
SCREEN RATIO: Fullscreen
RUNNING TIME: 82 minutes 41 seconds (exact)
TAPE CONDITION: Excellent
COVER CONDITION: Excellent
NOTE: This tape is in the NTSC (USA) video format.
Make sure you are able to play the NTSC video format in your VCR before buying.
