Dagli archivi della polizia criminale

You know an Italian genre pic is going to be obscure when it doesn't even appear to have an English title listed. This is such a film and, having seen it, its obscurity isn't really hard to understand. Set in Tunisia it concerns a microfilm that contains incriminating evidence about a major drug peddling operation; needless to say both the police and gangsters want to get hold of it.

It can perhaps best be described as a poliziottesco with spy film elements. It's typified by quite a messy plot-line unfortunately, with a lot of poorly defined characters with their own agendas. The MacGuffin is of course the microfilm and all of the action revolves around the whereabouts of it. It isn't in truth the most interesting idea for a film and it does mean that things never get all that exciting to be perfectly honest. The direction feels a little slapdash, although the music was at least a little bit distinctive with its amalgam of Italo-cheese with a North African sound. The lead actor is Edmund Purdom who made a fair few low budget genre pictures in Europe at the time and there is also Andrea Montchal who played the corrupt cop Larsen who will be familiar to some from his roles in various Jess Franco films such as Vampyros Lesbos.