Notable actors: Ivan Rassimov! Stephanie Beacham! Giacomo Rossi-Stuart!, Patricia Hayes! Others!
You're never really sure for the duration of the film, but Ivan Rassimov is either a corrupt cop or a straight cop pretending to be corrupt. What's for sure is that he is undercover as a button man for Marco (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart), who are up against Mama The Turk, a psychotic gangster granny whose on children have written her her own theme tune! Mama shows she means business by quickly dispatching a hitman sent to kill by taking him out during a car chase, in Beruit.
Ivan, whose been doing his own hit man thing in Beruit, heads for London and works at an escort agency for Morrel, who is into blackmailing politicians and forcing them to go to Paris to buy statues filled with drugs. We see one escort girl (Beacham) take a politician home, while he indulges in his favourite aberration - that of dressing up and acting like a rabbit. This liaison is filmed through a wall in the room, but when Beacham and Morrel play it back, it's like a multi-camera Hollywood production! Obviously Ivan muscles his way into the business, and, subsequently, Stephanie Beacham's pants.
Ivan's plan goes a bit pear-shaped once his police contact gets a bullet to the back of the head in rather gory fashion, and of course Mama's no fool and sends her own hit man to London to take care of business, but Ivan's playing the long con and all he has to do is get every gangster in the one place in New York so they can be all gunned down, but is he doing it for business or something else?
You know you are good hands with Massimo Dallamano, director of Bandidos. He's got a great eye for a unique shot, including in this one a point of view shot from underneath a frying pan. So you get his visual skills in a film filled with the usual Euro-crime traits - double crossing, nude women, car chases, and extreme violence. This is a very bloody film and violent film, especially when a minor character is savagely beaten by Mama's children, while one of the plays a tune on a guitar, and then, while laughing, they graphically run the guy over and kill him.
Special shout goes out to Patricia Hayes, who is one of those actors you see in eighties films (like Willow and Never Ending Story) but you never really remember her name. She's great here as Mama, and seems to be doing quite a lot of the driving during the car chases sequence! She kind of overshadows Rassimov, but Stephanie Beacham is rather good too as the hooker who falls for big Ivan. You get to see her naked, if anyone's interested.
Another good one from a genre full of good ones!
