A young man named Ricco(Chris Mitchum)gets a year off his sentence after serving two years in prison, and quietly sets out to even a score against mafioso king Don Vito(Arthur Kennedy), the man responsible for murdering his mob boss father so that he could have control over the entire city. What erupts is a blood feud where many tragic casualties, innocents whose blood are shed, lie in the wake of Ricco and Vito's rivalry. Ricco finds an ally in an old friend of his father's niece, Scilla(Barbara Bouchet)..Scilla, at first, participates for kicks, but soon finds that she's in love with Ricco and realizes that his feud with Vito will only leave a lot of innocent people dead. Once Ricco gets mixed up with a crooked partner of Vito's, Cyrano(Eduardo Fajardo), once a pal of his father, there's no turning back. Diamonds, and collected dues of those benefactors for whom Vito "protects", soon play into matters as does Ricco's old squeeze, Rosa(Malisa Longo)now "property" of the Don. Vito cherishes Rosa, and anyone who dares even attempt to touch what is his will inherit a trip into his vat of acid. The climax is a shoot-out at Don Vito's factory with Ricco seeking revenge when those he loves are slain in horrific gang-land style fashion.Ultra violent crime thriller with Christopher Mitchum walking tall, saying only what needs to be said..like his father Robert, Chris doesn't overexert himself. He's quite the cool customer, approaching even the most violent situations with a laid-back calm staring down possible death at every turn. Kennedy inhibits the sadistic Don Vito as if born to play him..having portrayed villains in westerns with ease, playing the heavy in "Ricco" is a piece of cake. The true star of this film, besides Barbara Bouchet who always knows how to make a scene, is Malisa Longo as Rosa, who takes you completely away from the film immediately casting your eyes towards her. She's quite a feast to salivate over..the kind of sex kitten who would have you turning cart-wheels and barking like a dog. She's "to die for" and one does, but I certainly understand why one would risk the chance to bed her. Whether walking around in lingerie or bathing top-less, she's a tasty dish..no a gourmet meal. Matter of fact, she's the best part of the meal..she's the desirable dessert. I found that Mitchum and Bouchet had good chemistry and that both knew the wattage they carried on screen. Mitchum carries that effortless cool and Bouchet is so damn sexy, and knows it, I never questioned why I liked watching them together on screen. Bouchet even performs a nice little strip-tease for the viewer..thanks dear for providing another memorable scene(..like Bouchet hasn't provided ample memories already!)I can carry away into my fantasies.Getting away from the babes, I have to mention the castration scene. One fellow, Tony(Manuel Zarzo)can not resist Rosa's sexual advances(..given the situation, I can see why he succumbs to her wiles)and is caught by the Don. Tony fights three of the Don's goons before getting his privates sliced off with a knife..he then gets his penis and testicles shoved down his throat before being tossed in Vito's acid vat! If the opening scene where Ricco's father's face is shot in point-blank, then this gory sequence of events does. When it comes to subtlety, you'd better look elsewhere because the Italians always go for broke.

That sure was fun! Ricco (or The Mean Machine or whatever you want to call it) may not be the best, most dramatic, or grittiest Euro-crime film I've run across, but it is one of the most entertaining I've ever seen. Ricco (Christopher Mitchum) is a young man out for revenge. He's just finished serving a two year prison sentence for attacking the man he holds responsible for killing his father and assuming control of his criminal organization. And now that he's been released, Ricco discovers that Don Vito (Arthur Kennedy) has also taken his girl. Let's get this out of the way up-front – Ricco has its fair share of obvious weaknesses and problems. Chief among them is Mitchum. He may look a lot like his father, but that's where the comparison ends. I'm guessing he was going for introspective and brooding, but unfortunately Mitchum comes off as vacant and robotic. His fight scenes are often hysterical. Watching him go through his kung-fu moves, I can just imagine the director off-screen giving him step-by-step instructions. I've never seen someone move so unnaturally.But I've always said that I rate movies based on entertainment value and Ricco provides a good test of that statement. Looking past Mitchum's shortcomings, Ricco is wildly entertaining. It's a trashy good time. The movie has a feel to it that I found unique for this kind of movie. It never seems to be taking itself too seriously. I may be way off on this one, but to me it's as if the director, Tulio Demicheli, realized how absurd some of the situations were and just let everyone have fun with it. The plot is actually little more than the standard revenge theme, but it held my interest throughout. There's hardly ever a dull moment. Ricco has the violence I've come to expect from this kind of movie – including one particularly nasty scene that makes something like the cut-off ear in Django look like child's play. The supporting cast is top notch. Arthur Kennedy makes for a wonderfully slimy villain, complete with a ridiculous looking mustache. Ricco's old flame is played by the insanely gorgeous Malisa Longo. And genre favorite Barbara Bouchet's surreal stripper routine in the middle of the road is another of the film's highlights. What more could you ask for?

A young man (Chris Mitchum) gets out of prison to find that his mafia don father has been brutally murdered, and that the man that who did it (Arthur Kennedy)has also taken his fiancée (Malisa Longo). This sounds like the perfect set-up for a revenge movie, but this is actually a very atypical one. The young man had little respect for his gangster father and after years in prison is not all that desirous of revenge, but is drawn into it by his vengeful, invalid mother, his father's crooked business associates, his promiscuous former fiancée, and, above all, the utterly ruthless paranoia of the new don. This movie also takes the saying that "if you go seeking vengeance, dig two graves" to whole new extremes. The hero should have dug many, many graves since his vendetta gets practically everybody in the cast, sympathetic or evil, killed. Of course, digging graves is largely unnecessary since the evil don gets rid of most of HIS victims by putting them in an acid bath and turning them into soap for his soap factory (hilariously, he is therefore, afraid to use soap). This movie is VERY violent including graphic scenes of castration, a guy getting his face caved in with a rifle butt, ad infinitum. It was actually first released in the US as a horror movie called "Cauldron of Death".What's interesting though, without giving away the end, is that the final revenge is strangely unsatisfying, and the movie ends up being more a tragedy like "Hamlet" than a revenge flick. It's more violent than your average American revenge flick, but also ironically a lot less fascist. Violence is not the answer to every problem and only begets more violence that ultimately stains the "good guys" as well as the "bad". (Also, even the ruthless don is humanized a bit in that he does seem to genuinely love his faithless mistress). Although certainly not all Italian crime/revenge movies are like this, I would still maintain that Italians seem to have learned something from their dark, fascist past that has been lost on many Americans.But if all that's too left-wing for you, here's something that should appeal to ALL crime movie fans--the women. Barbara Bouchet does a sexy striptease that'll have your tongue unspooling onto the floor, but she also has an especially meaty role for a woman in one of these films as the protagonist's partner as well as his lover. Malisa Longo (whose body, uh, of work I was previously unfamiliar with) is a more the typical piece of meat (she's naked in every one of her scenes), but she does get to do some acting in her brief screen time. Ditto with future porn star Paola Senatore playing the protagonist's sister (who spends a hilariously amount of her time in bed with her husband)--I didn't even recognize her until the credits because I've never actually seen her actually ACT before. I would definitely recommend this one.

Whoo-hoo, what a film! This film is lots of fun. Of course not in the masterpiece kind of way. Tulio Demicheli's "The Mean Machine" is a pretty bad flick indeedy. But it's such a perfect example of Euro-Trash, that I felt someone had to mention it. First off, it has Christopher Mitchum (where else can an a major actor's son find work? In Italy of course!) giving such a wooden performance, that my roomate mearly rolled his eyes, snickered, and walked out of the room shaking his head (c'mon Tony, you know you did). Christopher with his Dad's droopy eyes just stares off with that same blank expression through out the entire film. Of course he must have known it was a pretty bad script, so I won't fault him too much (I haven't seen his other artistic efforts). But it really cracked me up that on the video box there was this drawing of him looking handsome and muscular, which he definately is not. He was pretty wimpy looking, and evertime he tried to give a macho pose, or flex his authority, I nearly laughed myself silly. Though I excuse all of this, because the real reason I rented this flick was because of the wonderful and beautiful Barbara Bouchet! And this film delivers! She does this great little strip dance in front of these gangsters in a car, right before Chris (Rico the "Mean Machine") throws them into a lake! It's so funny, that Italy will take any oppertunity they can to show off Barbara's attributes. Of course it gratuitous, but it's just too much fun! And of course even after the big ambush, Chris looks to Barbara and she's still has no clothes on. She's having a good time tackling gangsters in the nude! Well, at least Barbara looks to be having fun. Another Euro-babe favourite Malisa Longo (as Chris' ex-girlfriend)also likes to spend her time flirting with Bodygaurds and sitting around in the buff. But unfortunately she meets with a very grizzly end, and becomes the film's sacrificial lamb (what else was gonna come of her character? Chris Mitchum was now with Barbara Bouchet.) in a tub of Acid! This film contains all the unnecessary violence (gory stuff as well), nudity (lots of it), macho posturing (Chris' Ricco is not opposed to giving a lady a smack if she's not behaving), and crummy acting that 70's Italian cinema is so famous for. Would I recommend it? Hardly! Did I laugh my fool head off? Yep! After this review, I'll let the reader make their own call. Barbara Bouchet is amazing!