The wise and experienced maestro in the arts of love imparting his knowledge and techniques to a younger man before he dies.

Savino La Gastra discovers his wife Celeste has a liaison with an architect: Andrea. Even if also Savino has a story with Elvira, a judge's wife, he decides anyway to ask to a mobster to kill his wife. In the mean time Celeste is organizing a surprise party for Savino's birthday, and that day things start to get complicated. First Savino kills accidentally the mafia killer in charge to kill Celeste; second his lover Elvira arrives to the party with the judge... not to mention the police and the mafia Don...

Opening with a funky 70's concert presumably in Italy, DEATH RAGE is an obscure Italian knockoff of the American action flick starring Yul Brynner in one of his final film performances. Brynner is really the only good reason to watch this movie, as there is very little special about it beyond that. Barbara Bouchet, Brynner's leading lady, is very sexy and does show a lot of skin, so there is some eye candy. Unfortunately, Brynner and Bouchet, in terms of acting, have almost no chemistry together (according to the trivia section at IMDb, they did not get along on the set--it shows). For those not familiar with Italian cinema during the 70's and 80's, keep in mind that the dubbing is never well done in these kinds of movies. The main focus is watching Brynner being a badass (which he does exceptionally well), watching Bouchet's body, and seeing lots of gunfights, car chases, and explosions. The plot is nothing new, and some of the dialogue is out-and-out stolen from other films. The special effects are standard for the time, and there is some animation featured during Brynner's flashback sequences (the "Death Rage" from the title). The movie follows retired hit-man Peter Marciani (Brynner), whose brother was, once upon a time, killed by the Mafia. He is lured out of retirement to hunt the man responsible for his brother's death, and travels to Italy, where he meets a goofy young wannabe named Angelo (Massimo Ranieri). Angelo shows him to his method for manipulating horse races, then takes him to a nightclub where Marciani is introduced to exotic dancer Anny (Bouchet). With his companions by his side, Marciani avoids death and struggles with his eye condition while trying to bring down the mob.

Leave it to Italian sleazemeister Andreas 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 (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 might seem like the good guy, or at least the kind of anti-hero Clint Eastwood played in "Fistful" and other 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. Now I have to admit the description I read somewhere of a naked Bouchet being whipped by a belt did not exactly dissuade me from seeing this, but it's not an accurate one. She is not naked (at least in that scene) and 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.
This scene squanders any goodwill toward Silva's character (which may have been the intention, I don't know), but also toward the film itself--it's pretty hard to take even for someone like me accustomed to the casual misogyny of the genre. It certainly doesn't help that the actress is Barbara Bouchet, who along with Edwige Fenech and Rosalba Neri, was (and still is) one of the most popular European exploitation actresses of the era (although this probably would have been only marginally more palatable if it had been some anonymous Euro-bimbo). To its credit this movie at least can't be accused of glorifying any of its gangster characters like some other "polizieschi" tended to do. Still it might be a little bit too much for many viewers.

The head of the Human Aetiological Relations Machine pits an agent against a flesh-to-fungus spore gun.

A celebration of the genre with interviews by many contributors - a gialli filmmakers.

A shy small-town Ohio girl who loves movies but dislikes reality, discovers the delightfully bizarre films of Federico Fellini, and sets off on a strange, beautiful journey across Italy to find him.

A mental hospital somewhere in Tuscany during the thirties. Far away from fascism, this closed world is rules over by Dr. Bonaccorsi, a passionate benevolent psychiatrist whose dream is to isolate the germ of madness. He is also a very active ladies'man and makes three women benefit from his sexual itch: Francesca the hospital manager's wife, Bianca, his devoted nurse and Carla, a nymphomaniac doctor's wife. His well-ordered universe starts being challenged with the coming of Anna, a trainee psychiatrist, who disapproves of his theory on the origin of madness. Worse, she resists his advances. As Bonaccorsi is more insecure than he looks, what will become of him?

SABATO (first episode): A company receives the visit of a very very important person. This person works for a biggest Japanese society, and this encounter is decisive for the small Italian company.
DOMENICA (second episode): After a hard day of job, a man returns in it's house for sleep. But a series of facts hinder this, and the poor man does not succeed to sleep.
VENERDI (third episode): A famous and rich creator of sexy ballets have various problems with a dancer. She want to leave the theater and marry a Mafia man.

A manufacturer from Milan goes on vacation with his wife Clara and his teenage daughter. In the same hotel stays Fabio Lorenzi, a writer without inspiration and with a depressive crisis, who years before had been Clara's lover.

Castelli is an advertising executive who, having returned home early due to a car accident with Eleonora Rubens, a young Dutch woman abandoned by her husband, surprises his American wife in intimacy with the plumber.

Inspector Tellini investigates serial crimes where victims are paralyzed while having their bellies ripped open with a sharp knife.

Fernando Di Leo's "Milano Calibro 9" is an out-and-out masterpiece of Italian Crime cinema and, in my opinion, one of the most astonishing crime stories ever told. The first film in Di Leo's excellent 'Milieu' trilogy, "Milano Calibro 9" was followed by "La Mala Ordina" (aka. "Manhunt", also 1972) and the brilliant "Il Boss" (1973). The three films are not connected story-wise, but all three are excellent, and highly realistic portrayals of organized crime. As far as I am concerned "Manhunt" is (allthough excellent) slightly inferior to this one and "Il Boss" which both stand out as absolute all-time highlights of crime cinema. "Milano Calibro 9" is the best of them all, a film that is astonishing in all aspects, be it the ingenious plot that, apart from a compelling story and clever twists, includes social criticism, the performances, the gritty atmosphere and suspense or the brilliant score. I can hardly find the right words to express my admiration for this masterpiece which easily ranks among the greatest Gangster flicks ever brought to screen.
Gastone Moschin stars as Ugo Piazza, a tough and elliptical ex-convict who has just been released from prison. Immediately after his release, Ugo is approached by members of the Milan mob lead by the irascible gangster Rocco (Mario Adorf), as they suspect him to be responsible for the disappearance of a large sum of money belonging to their boss, an American (Lionel Stander) who controls the organized crime in Milan...
"Milano Calibro 9" is a film that delivers an astonishingly realistic mood of the underworld like hardly another. The intriguing storyline goes in hand with interesting characters, raw atmosphere, suspense and breathtaking action, social criticism and brutal violence. The film is simply stunning from the beginning to the end, which is even intensified by the brilliant score, a collaboration of the famous composer Luis Enríquez Bacalov and the Italian Progressive Rock band Osanna. Ugo Piazza must be one of the most charismatic gangster characters ever in cinema, and Gastone Moschin was the prefect choice for the role. Moschin delivers a brilliant performance, and the rest of the cast is also great. Mario Adorf is irascible like a rabid dog as the ferocious gangster Rocco, a role that fits him like a glove. The great Lionel Stander fits perfectly in his role of the American Mafia Don.
The two cop characters in the film are played by two of the greatest regulars of Italian genre-cinema, Luigi Pistilli and Frank Wolff (who committed suicide before the film was released). The ravishing Barbara Bouchet is astonishing and incredibly sexy in the role of Ugo Piazza's stripper girlfriend. Bouchet is both a stunning beauty and an excellent actress and this is doubtlessly one of her most memorable roles. This is also a political film and director Di Leo embedded a lot of social criticism about topics like corruption. This film simply has everything one can possibly desire in cinema. Films like "Milano Calibro 9" are the reason why I love cinema. This is an absolute masterpiece in all regards and, without exaggeration, one of the greatest Crime flicks ever made! The ingenious opening scene alone is more memorable than most films get in two hours.

Fr. Hugh O'Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His activities become so large that the Nazis decide to assassinate him the next time he leaves the Vatican.

1969 film by Bob Fosse