Cry of a prostitute
Henry Silva plays Tony Aniante, an American mafiosi in Sicily. He's called in by the bosses after a horrific car crash leads to the discovery of a Heroin smuggling racket using the corpses of dead children. The bosses are not happy about this and want Tony to find out who has being using dead kids as this goes against the mafia code. Apparently its ok to distribute heroin so long as you bring it in your luggage, but I'm not here to debate the hypocrisy of the mafia. Anyway, there are two gangs in town and Tony doesn't know for sure which one is responsible so begins playing both sides off against the other. He's a nifty gunman and begins shooting people in the head while whistling a jaunty tune. This leads him to working for Don Cascemi, a paternal seemingly good guy (for a gangster) and Don Ricuzzo Cantimo who seems the most likely culprit for the Heroin smuggling racket. Cantimo is married to Margie, played by Barbara Bouchet. She's an alcoholic ex whore from Brooklyn who takes a liking to Tony. Tony is somewhat disgusted by Margie, not enough to stop him having angry sex with her, including a scene where he forces Margie's head into the guts of a dead pig while giving her a 'bully ramming' from behind, and later beating the tar out of her with fist and belt before raping her in a barn. Ironically Cantimo isn't too bothered about Margie screwing other guys, in fact he seems to get off on it. He's the sort of bloke some angry internet nerd would call a cuck and he'd respond, 'yeah so what'. Eventually after numerous massacres and reciprocal massacres things come to a head and Tony sets about destroying Cantimo.
Cry of a prostitute is a jaw dropping slice of sleaze that's strangely well directed while at the same time almost makes one choke on their takeaway at the general luridness of the whole thing. From Tony arbitrarily discovering a steam roller and crushing mafiosi corpse for some inexplicable reason. To a bereaved mother pushing the corpse of another mafiosi through a bandsaw. The stilted dialogue that seems to have been translated to english without anyone actually speaking it as a first or even second language. Also the genuinely misogynistic attitude to women. Its a criticism that's far to readily applied to films, even when it doesn't fit. However I think here its genuinely valid when it comes to the rough treatment of Margie at the hands of Tony. The film probably ranks as one of Bianchi's best pictures. It rips off the plot from Red Harvest/Yojimbo/fistful of Dollars up to and including Tony rescuing a young couple and getting a beating for it. The film is very well shot with great use of location and is very well paced. It goes completely OTT in terms of violence perhaps but for genre fans that's no bad thing.
I watched the Filmart release. Some people have said its slightly longer than code reds. I never know when thats BS or when it isn't with German releases. I still remember being swindled over a hardbox copy of the slayer that bosted of being better quality than vipco's and it clearly wasn't . However in this case it looks good and frankly cost me about the same as what I'd pay for Code Reds.
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