Escape from Death Row/Dio, sei proprio un padreterno! (1973), Michele Lupo.

Aside from the bathtub electrocution and prison fight scenes, this one plays it mostly for laffs.  Lee Van Cleef is a seasoned assassin, who is idolized by a naive, small-time crook.   We'll call this young man Honda, because that is what his t-shirt said while he was in prison (I guess they let you keep your duds in poliziotteschi prison).  Anywhat, the guys escape and Van Cleef spends the rest of the film tracking down those jerks that double crossed him, ending up in a fish-processing plant in Marseilles.   This one wins for costume design, but the poignant trumpet track gets a bit annoying after a while.  There's about a half-dozen alternate titles, but I think my favourite might be Mean Frank and Crazy Tony!

Prisoner #439527 in the mesh shirt is SO not impressed.  Prisoner #95847 looks like he escaped from mime school.

The Cynic, The Rat and The Fist / Il cinico, l'infame, il violento (1977), Umberto Lenzi.

So, the other day across the river I'm sitting at a red and in the next lane in a purple '95 neon is a dead-wringer for Bill Pullman in Ruthless People with a bleached blond 'do and dark roots (+ mustache) chomping on a wad of gum.  On the other end of the spectrum we have the hero of this movie, whose manages to pull off this same look but maintains a studly aura.  I mean, he's talking on a communal phone in a ratshit hotel and even I would let him buy me a drink.

The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist (don't ask me who is who - all I could figure is that our hero, ex-police inspector Tanzi, is probably the Fist) is a pretty tight poliziotteschi.  No languid scenes, no romance: just straight, gritty action.  In this one, Tanzi's life in danger when the sleazeball he testified against in court (inexplicably nicknamed The Chinaman - he's not Chinese) is released.  To get rid of him, Tanzi plays him off against a more powerful criminal organization, lead by an Italian-American mafioso, played by David Sawyer (who is one of those "hey, it's that guy" actors).  Dubbed, yeah, but the dialogue is excellent with lots of hilarious, well-translated lines. 

Being female, I always pity the women in these flicks.  They try weakly and unsuccessfully to outsmart the more powerful male characters and always lose out and are punished physically for it, typically by getting punched in the breasts or shot in the groin. 

 Yes, my dvd has Greek subtitles, you wanna make something of it? 

Quel Pomeriggio Maledetto / The Perfect Killer / The Satanic Mechanic (1977), Mario Siciliano.

A fifteen-year hunt for this, which - YAHOO! - has resulted in getting my hands on a crummy bootleg copy with Spanish subtitles probably sounds like mental illness but low-budget Italian crime flicks have a special place in my heart. Two years ago I thought I finally had this film, but The Lee Van Cleef Collection issued by St-Clair Visions that claimed to include it turned out to be only some kind of cruel fake-out. Damn you once again, St-Clair Visions!

There's a few things I love about this genre. There's the strange pace: quick edits to fast action alongside dawdling pauses as little interludes of nothing are filmed. The music is fantastic. And completely bizarre scenes (let's talk about the bird collector in Quel Pomeriggio). The credits claim Richard Widmark is a co-star of Lee Van Cleef - oh wait, that's ROBERT Widmark (!) ... Although these flicks get brutalized by most critics, I think the dialogue and action scenes are just fine, better than most multi-million dollar movies. Personally, I think Van Cleef had it figured: hang out, make movies along the Costa Brava... doesn't sound so bad if you ask me.