I rented this along with most of the Japanese "The Style of Italian Action Films" series. A decent if somewhat soft and washed out looking print. The film's the thing, however. This Franco Prosperi may not lead anywhere too dazzling (just a hunch based on lessening energy level and thickening cliches), but it sure starts out with a bang. And the date of origin is very surprising.

I assumed that it must be post-DIRTY HARRY crime. The elaborate roof top through scope, gun unpacked from lunch pail and assembled by a rather youthful looking Robert Webber set-up suggested as much, but, even so, it was damned tight as a prelude.

The credits following, though, started to disturb me. "Frank Nero" in a secondary role? And where were the Twin Towers in the familiar city profile as seen from the Zombi bridge??? This was getting disconcertingly post-9/11, too close to the present for escapist comfort.

Woops, it's 1966! Back into the distant past. Nero hadn't yet made DJANGO (and I've yet to find him in the movie).

But this seems way ahead of its time as regards Italian crime and gangsters, hotter on the heels of POINT BLANK's style than the American competition I've seen, let alone Italian pre-1971.

Any background or thoughts on this? Maybe being one of the MONDO men put Prosperi ahead of the curve at this date for being a worldly wise avant garde surfer of the best new genre/exploitation waves? (And WHY doesn't IMDB notice that the Prosperi who worked on the Mondo movies is the same as this guy?! The E. as middle initial in some credits? This just adds to my confusion. They are the same, aren't they?)

This is one of my favourites, a really underrated gem that should get a lot more attention than it does. Robert Webber is fantastic as the doomed hitman, and Franco Nero a perky, uppity goon on the make. Much as I like the seventies vintage Italo-crime film, I'm growing more and more fond of these mid/late sixties epics. They seem to mix aspects of noir, spy film, giallo in an existential, jazztastic wrap. They also bely the rather convenient supposition that the genre was kicked off solely by The French Connection and Dirty Harry; influenced - yes, started - no.

Was this one of the ones produced by Jolly Films? They did a handful of these Italo-American co-productions (I think that the Miraglia double bill of Assassination and The Falling Man were others they had a hand in). They all have a similar 'feel', with lots of driving around, shots of US cityscapes and a mature American star (Robert Webber or Henry Silva).

Franco Prosperi and Franco E. Prosperi are - as far as I'm aware - the same person. Prosperi also made another thriller, Every Man is My Enemy the following year. It also stars Robert Webber, this time as an ageing safe-cracker who's coerced into doing one last job (sound familiar?) In Germany, it was marketed as being a sequel to Professional Killer (with Webber playing 'John Harris' in both), but I couldn't see any real connection in there. Prosperi also made a decent - if messy - spy film called Dick Smart 2007 with Robert Wyler and the gorgeous Margaret Lee.

God knows how he ended up making these after his Mondo films, and they're very different to his 70s output (Deadly Chase and Pronto, for instance, are enjoyable but more standard polizioteschi). I have the feeling he'd make a very interesting interviewee!

Matt B

Guess what, Matt? We were both wrong about Prosperi singular. There ARE two of them according to Gremese's director guide. This one is aka Francesco and was born in 1933 (IMDB has him born in 1926, though). He's a former assistant of Bava and "is not to be confused with Jacopetti's collaborator of the same name".

I guess that answers that ;-)

Mondo or no mondo, this film alone makes Prosperi worthy of further notice (and a decent profile)

The early history of Italo-crime is indeed baffling. Already in 1962's MAFIOSO (Alberto Lattuada), otherwise not really a 'crime movie', we have one long, remarkable episode with Alberto Sordi packed off to New York on "family business", and into the eventually to be typical tour of the Manhattan skyline by Cadillac as gritty be bop plays and skyscraper reflections slide down the windshield. Curious.

As luck would have it, I also rented Miraglia's ASSASSINATION, one of the Jolly productions from ca.1968 you mentioned. Also in the same Japanese DVD series.

This is even POINT-BLANK-er than PROFESSIONAL KILLER with a dose of SECONDS, and every outlandish-expressionist late Warners Noir-Gangster tossed into the blender.

And it's very impressive. Silva has never been better. He looks like a mannerist comic book painter's attenuated impression of Jason Robards morphing into Humphrey Bogart, an anime existential lonely place dweller-killer. His count down to annihilation on death row in the prelude ("I want you to see what a dead man looks like!!!") is unbelievably cool. The Robby Poitevin jazz score timed to the then ultramodern flipping seconds-counter of a clock, (the drip, drip, drip of death) is at least as pulpily romantic as the Bernard Herrmann music of TAXI DRIVER years later. The whole resembles the 'graphic novel' style of following years's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST's prelude or the stuff Suzuki and Melville were or would be up to in the immediate vicinity. Not sure how this will progress, but I'm very glad to have been exposed to what I've seen so far (First half hour).

Very interesting about Prosperi. So Franco E. (the Mondo Prosperi) directed Wild Beasts? Which makes it his only 'fictional' film. And Franco (no E.) was the more 'tradesman' director, who made all the cop films, Conan rip offs and so on. And what the hell's he doing credited as co-director on Hercules in the Centre of the Earth (on IMDB, so it's undoubtedly rubbish, but...) This chap needs investigating!

Also check out The Falling Man, this is even more bizarre than Assassination. It has virtually the same cast, Henry Silva as a cop who's gunned down in the first minutes and his story is told entirely in flashback. Or, that's the case in the US version - in the Italian print he isn't gunned down until the end, and it's all pretty linear. Other ones that I think of as belonging to the same 'existential' crime sub-genre include Rome come Chicago, The Insatiables and Date for a Murder. Most of them begin with that helciopter shot of The Golden Gate (?) bridge.

Matt B

ps I've reviewed Falling Man just here: http://www.europeanfilmreview.co.uk/eurocr...falling_man.htm

My fantasy about these films is that Sergio Leone was sending his troops into the field to do the advance work on what would become ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, then slated for a 1969 or 1970 release.

Italo-Crime was supposed to be the natural and fast flowing successor to the spaghetti western. Leone hesitated. A couple new Corman films (where the genre had left off in its most modern cheap-commercial incarnation, shortly before); BONNIE AND CLYDE; and, eventually, THE GODFATHER (first bequeathed to Leone; after all) left him kind of high and dry, having to do the last rather than the first word in this mini-cycle (as with DUCK, YOU SUCKER, vis a vis Neo-Mexican-Revolution films). Also worth mentioning, "99 and 44/100% Dead", a similarly fragmented movie made by POINT BLANK's Frankenheimer, which bootlegged the originally scripted prelude of Leone's ONCE...AMERICA!!! (That's documented, by the way.)

What Di Leo and friends did after was something else, also good. This, though, comes from the vital sixties-center of what-might-have-been. Don't overlook them if they come your way, and be aware of the historical context.

Update on ASSASSINATION:

Just when I was getting comfortable with it as a neo-noir crime film, it turned into a secret agent movie as it shifted location to Hamburg!

And it's equally good as such, even better if you put a high cinematic value on skilful genre multitasking in the course of making the most of one's international funding (which amounts to 'damn the torpedoes, full entertainment ahead!').

I highly recommend it.

Mr. Cheney. Without knowing anything at all about you other than what I've read of your postings on this forum, please allow me to make an observation.

While other members have written outstanding essays, reviews, and articles, many of which are brilliantly backed by technical information and knowledge of the subject material, you sir are an artist. Gently and carefully choosing each stroke before the final brilliant work can be unveiled to the joy and amazement of all, you never cease to amaze me with your expansive paintings of the written word. To whit, "He looks like a mannerist comic book painter's attenuated impression of Jason Robards morphing into Humphrey Bogart, an anime existential lonely place dweller-killer.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. I only hope a talent such as yours is being shared on a far wider scale.

Thank you, sir! Not only have you made my day, you've allowed me to go bed at last, my conscience clean, my job done for now, with one potential convert to the goodies in store for euro cult yet unseen(and every day
is a longer one when it comes to drumming up interest, so it seems sometimes ;) Thanks again!)

I have been happy with most of the King Records releases like Professional Killer and Assassination. My only grip is that like most euro-cult titles released in Japan is that they are usually non-anamorphic and for their hefty price tags they should not only anamorphic but they should include more extras.

Professional Killer is a fun movie that has some nicely paced action. I just wish that they would have used Franco Nero more. Assassination is one of my favorite Italian crime films and Henry Silva’s performance is simply amazing.