Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (Ruggero Deodato, 1976)

Dark-haired Alfredo (Don't Torture a Duckling's Marc Porel) and blond Antonio (Django Kill...If You Live, Shoot!'s Ray Lovelock, who sadly passed away on Friday) are mellow Special Force cops who manage to get results despite their incredibly reckless methods of bringing down crooks, to the chagrin of their captain (Danger: Diabolik's Adolfo Celi). Besides muggers and hostage takers, they attempt to bring down ruthless gambling club owner Roberto "Bibi" Pasquini (Rocco and His Brothers' Renato Salvatori), who has the Superintendent of police in his pocket.

Italy is one of my favorite countries in term of cinema, and they are just as adept at the crime genre as horror and Westerns. This is a film that could only have been made by Ruggero Deodato, the man behind the unbelievably brutal but thought-provoking Cannibal Holocaust. Just as Robert Kerman's character in that film wondered who the real cannibals were, Live Like a Cop... will leave you wondering who the real psycho criminals are. Alfredo and Antonio get into a high-speed bike chase through the streets of Rome (something Deodato did not get a permit for, which was more common than you might think for exploitation films of that era), talk dirty to the Captain's secretary (who reciprocates, calling men "phallocrats"), set a bunch of cars and two tied-up thugs on fire, apparently have sex with their cleaning woman's niece (did I mention they share an apartment?), and torture two of Pasquini's men by giving their genitals a good hard squeeze. Alfredo also shoots one of Pasquini's men in the mouth, and before that he slaps the gangster's sexy sister Lina (Flavia Fabiani), after which he and then Antonio have (consensual) sex with her. I have often thought that television cops get away with shit real cops would be at least suspended for, but our two heroes-by-default take the cake. Luckily, Porel and Lovelock are good enough actors that they manage to make their characters somehow likable despite making Dirty Harry look like Joe Friday. Of course, as with Cannibal Holocaust, Deodato manages to get in a lot of gore. Besides our leads' methods, the chopper-riding muggers' victim gets her head bashed against a lamppost, a blind man's seeing-eye dog gets run over in the subsequent chase (not sure if they really killed the dog, like the genuine animal slaughter in Holocaust), and Pasquini puts out the eye of a gambler who owes him a substantial debt, though surprisingly the latter is not shown in much detail. And of course lots of people get shot. Plus, the ending is literally explosive, if somewhat out of left field. The screenplay by Fernando di Leo (himself an adept writer of Italian crime films) is entertaining, and the music by Ubaldo Continiello (Deodato's Last Cannibal World) is quite competent, even if he's not on the level of the great Riz Ortolani of Cannibal Holocaust fame, and Lovelock himself delivers two cool folk songs. Lovers of trash cinema all'Italiana cannot miss this one!