Napoli spara

Description: My personal favorite of overlooked director Mario Caiano's films, this movie is pretty much THE formula for an extremely successful Italian crime movie. First off, it's got the exotic Neopolitan locations down pat and does a good job showing how brutal the streets can be with plenty of random bank-robbery and purse-snatching going on. Secondly, it's got a great cast headed up by Henry Silva as a slimy underworld boss who gets a little too ambitious for his own good, robbing a money train and a police station in broad daylight. Of course one shouldn't overlook Leonard Mann, Adolfo Lastretti, Benito Pacifico, Richard Raymond and the rest of the regular euro-crime gang that pops by. Thirdly, this film has tons of action, violence, and random explosions to not only keep the casual viewer awake, but highly entertained! This is probably one of the most violent of the 70's Italian crime films with lots of shootouts, protracted car crashes, people on fire, mutilated faces, a Gino De Rossi-patented decapitation, and such. Fourth, a very memorable musical score by Francesco De Masi, possibly one of his best and most widely copied of all his scores. Fifth, this film has many tie-ins with Umberto Lenzi's NAPOLI VIOLENTA (which starred Maurizio Merli and John Saxon), since it has a reappearance of the Gennaro kid that got crippled in that movie, here he's back and turned to a life of petty crime. The musical cues that follow little Gennaro in particular are very memorable, as they vary on the same theme depending on the situation, creating a very good effect towards the tragic ending.