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Mad Dog Murderer - aka "Beast with a Gun" (1977)

Dir: Sergio Grieco.

Sleaze master Helmut Berger stars as Nanni Vitali, the leader of a group of escaped Criminals, with cheesy Richard Harrison as the hard boiled, hairy chest on show, Cop on his trail...

 

A great slice of Euro Trash, with Berger in top nasty form. Nanni is indeed a Mad Dog, with Berger having a ball during his numerous 'doing bad things' scenes. He seems to spend half the film beating people up (in graphic, drawn out Italian fashion), raping, shooting and slicing.
He's a truly deranged creation.

Harrison is of course all stern looks, with his porn star moustache bristling in outrage at Nanni's dastardly deeds (which as well as beatings include buying a man alive in quick lime, blowing away numerous Policemen and having a nasty time with a razor and a female captives breast - sadly trimmed in this widescreen/Italian language print off British Cable TV). He even gets to perform some of his infamous 'bad 70's white dude kung Fu' in the finale. Cheesy moves that would become legendary to bad movie fans in his various, edited into 100 different movies, flicks with one man HK trash factory Godfrey Ho.
But he does the job well in true 70's Euro fashion.

Marisa Mell (all cleavage and classic 70's Italian black eyeliner) plays the girlfriend of Nanni's quick lime victim, who Nanni kidnaps (after raping her in a strange fashion that would seem to suggest, given the position of this body, that he actually penetrated the right side of her stomach!!) and keeps as a trophy whore. His rape scenes with her are sleazy and totally unPC in that 70's way. Sleaze hounds will sit up and take notice of her brief full frontal nude shot.
She is not given much to do, but shows just how classy Female Euro Stars can be.

Some great slow motion scenes of people being shot and car crashes...and 2 very long sequences of people walking...one Berger towards Mell and one of 2 Cops...sequences that work because of the excellent music they are scored with.
In fact the music is a major part of the films success, full Morricone type thriller tunes and delightfully cheesy guitar riffs.
Top work by Umberto Smaila.

Directed with gusto and pace by the late Sergio Grieco (this was his last film, he died 5 years later) this is a fine example of delightfully trashy and violent Italian crime films.
Recently released on DVD, so go a-searching Euro Hounds!