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!

I'm not much at home in the poliziotteschi genre, but this was a fun, fast-paced film of international allure, playing in New York, Athens, Paris, Beirut and mostly London, though the filming locations here on IMDb indicate partly differently. Anyway, things start out with loads of action, but for the rest of it, there is only some in the middle and the end.In between there's a lot scheming, blackmail and intimidation to and fro, plus some murders, sexy time, fine female nudity and singing, all performed by a lot of colorful characters, with 'superbitch' taking the lead. The rather dramatic conclusion came as bit of a surprise; what preceded was much exploitation oriented. Add a very nice score by Riz Ortolani as the final icing on the cake, and what we have here is a more than enjoyable crime (/action) flick.Unfortunately I saw a mediocre VHS-rip with English dub, but what the hey; a good 7 out of 10.

Cunning undercover cop Inspector Cliff (an excellent performance by Ivan Rassimov) infiltrates a drug trafficking syndicate run by formidable old lady Mama the Turk (a fabulously feisty portrayal by Patricia Hayes). Cliff pits the members of two rival gangs against each other. Director Massimo Dallamano, who also co-wrote the intricate and tough-minded script with Sandy MacRae, relates the complex and compelling story at a snappy pace, maintains a hard, gritty, no-nonsense tone throughout, stages the lively car chases and fierce shoot-outs with considerable aplomb, and delivers plentiful jolting outbursts of sudden brutal violence. The fine acting from the tip-top cast keeps the movie buzzing, with especially stand-out contributions from the ravishing Stephanie Beacham as Cliff's spunky and charming girlfriend Joanne, Ettore Manni as the weak Morell, Luciano Catenacci as the fearsome Gamble, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart as the equally redoubtable Marco, and Verna Harvey as spitfire teenage trollop Eva. This film warrants extra points for the pathetic old geek with a bunny rabbit fetish and the guy who plays jaunty acoustic guitar during a savage back alley beating. Cliff makes for one supremely bad-ass anti-hero: He's cocky, corrupt, and completely amoral. As a tasty extra plus, both Beacham and Harvey bare their yummy wares (Beacham even goes full-frontal in a shower scene!). Great surprise bummer ending, too. Riz Ortolani's funky throbbing score hits the get-down groovy spot. Jack Hildyard's slick cinematography gives the picture an impressive polished look. A very cool flick.

Massimo Dallamano is a criminally underrated Italian director, most famous today for "What Have You done to Solange?, one of the very best Italian gialli. But he also directed its equally excellent sequel "What Have They Done to Your Daughters?", the Laura Antonelli erotic classic "Venus in Furs", and "The End of Innocence", one of the better "Emmanuelle" knock-offs. This British-Italian co-production is his only foray into the Italian crime thriller genre that I know of, but it rivals anything by Ferdinand DeLeo or Umbeto Lenzi.The great Ivan Rassimov plays an undercover cop who falls somewhere between a heavy-handed "Dirty Harry"-type rogue and a flat-out corrupt bastard--and by the end he has pretty obliterated the line between the two (if nothing else making this film a lot more honest than the American-style vigilante cop movies). He inserts himself "Yojimbo"/"Fistful of Dollars" style between two hilariously colorful drug-smuggling gangs. One gang runs an escort service which it uses to film powerful men in compromising positions with girls (and boys)and then blackmail them into helping out with the trafficking via a whole Rube Goldberg scheme involving art auctions. This is all totally ridiculous, of course, but highly entertaining. The other gang is lead by "Mama", an old lady (she's supposed to be Turkish, but looks a lot more Italian and even crosses herself at one point), who wields a gun and leads the police on high-speed chases! Her gang are all aspiring musicians, wielding musical instruments as well as guns, and quite literally providing their own theme music. After the gang kidnaps Rassimovs main squeeze (Stephanie Beacham) and tortures her with their music, he responds by kidnapping "Mama's" jailbait daughter (Verna Harvey, who definitely does not dress like a Turkish girl). At the end, another, American gang shows up lead by "Tony Accardo" (which was the name a real-life Chicago gangster at that time).This movie has everything fans love about the genre--crosses and double-crosses, gun-play, high-speed car chases, sadistic brutality, and extreme moral ambiguity. Beacham and Harvey (who had appeared together a few years earlier as governess and charge in Michael Winner's misbegotton "Turn of the Screw" prequel "The Nightcomers") provide some nudity. (Well, so does Rassimov actually, but "Mama" stays dressed at least). There's also a GREAT musical score and the kind of nice cynical 70's ending you'd never get away with today. Highly recommended.