Weapons of Death (1977)

Simply Perfect

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

In all honesty, I must state that my rating and review of "Napoli Spara!" perhaps aren't 100% reliable. Reason for this is because I watched the film in Italian language, without any subtitles, but I don't speak Italian at all! In my defense, the film had been standing on my must-see list for an awful long time and the only version available for purchase was this cheap Italian DVD-R without any extras or language options whatsoever. Here's a word of advice: if you ever, like me, assume that you don't necessarily need to understand what's being said in a Poliziotesschi film, think again! Of course these movies are primarily about wild action sequences, explicit violence and guerrilla stunt work, but the plot and the dialogues are still very important! What I did understand is that the ultra-charismatic Henry Silva depicts a real bad SOB! He commits an extremely violent armed train robbery, with naturally lots of civilian casualties, and even organizes a heist on the evidence room of a police station! Leonard Mann is the devoted police detective tailing him, but Silva is the smart and slimy type of gangster who always comes up with a waterproof alibi. Mann is also looking after a clever street kid, to prevent him from becoming a juvenile delinquent. Standard poliziotesschi stuff, in other words, but there were also other things going on in "Napoli Spara!" that I couldn't follow properly, like a Maurizio Merli lookalike taxi driver assisting the police and mafia retributions on the parking lot of an illegal casino. I also spotted many familiar themes, like corruption (within the police force as well as in prison), bloody attacks on genitalia and the kicking of pregnant women in the stomach. Auch! But "Napoli Spara!" was also released in 1977, and from this year onwards the poliziotesschi began to lose its overwhelming force and impact. There are still many car chases and shootouts, but they are approximately 25% less raw and gritty. To compensate for this, the directors started throwing in comic reliefs, like in this film when Mann's little protégé-kid carjacks a sports car and goes on a joyride through the crowded streets of Naples. He can hardly even reach the pedals or look over the steering wheel, for crying out loud!

I'm not sure I agree this is a classic example of the '70s Italian crime film genre, but it certainly is a solid example of one. Personally, I felt that the classic examples, the best of the genre, were put together better. I agree with the comment that said it was a bit slap-dash. Has an odd combination of interesting plot twists and real agonizing drawn out "you know xyz is going to happen". The latter are pretty trite and that's not something I'm used to seeing in the genre and I think it's weak that way. But for all the other reasons you watch one of these, it's a solid example, so I'm giving it 6/10. The scenes of Naples are fun and stitch the whole thing together. Food suggestion: pizza margherita and a cheeky red wine

Surprisingly tolerable poliziottesco thanks to its action-packed narrative (with robberies, shoot-outs, fistfights and chases galore) and vivid locations (this was one of a long list of such thrillers revolving around a specific Italian city); Francesco De Masi’s score is also serviceable. Leonard Mann, however, is no substitute for Maurizio Merli (or even Luc Merenda) – at one point, he takes on two thugs in a bar, but he’s just too skinny to be a credible tough guy! On the other hand, while Henry Silva isn’t particularly taxed by his overly familiar criminal boss role, he always proves to be good value for money in this type of film.A number of seemingly irrelevant subplots are eventually nicely integrated into the main storyline: Mann occasionally looks out for a likable juvenile delinquent who subsequently saves his life from the clutches of Silva’s minions (the boy’s own sacrifice at the end was rather unwarranted, though); Alfredo Lastretti appears as a would-be child kidnapper who’s put behind bars and castrated by his fellow inmates (an incident which serves as a diversion for Silva’s own escape); and Evelyn Stewart appears very briefly at the end as Silva’s old flame (whom he now wants dead), brought back from abroad by Mann specifically to bait his old nemesis.The film is quite violent: apart from the afore-mentioned castration, a pregnant woman is kicked in the belly during the opening bank robbery, a squealer is decapitated, and Silva himself is graphically trampled by a train at the climax. There isn’t that much of the typically hard-boiled dialogue (which actually sounds even funnier when spoken in the almost unintelligible Neapolitan dialect) but the standout is when a bank robber tries to persuade his associates to give themselves up rather than shoot it out with the cops, because if they’re caught “not even the Virgin Mary could prevent them getting a life sentence”!

My personal favorite of overlooked director Mario Caiano's films, this movie is pretty much THE formula for an extremely successful Italian crime movie. First off, it's got the exotic Neopolitan locations down pat and does a good job showing how brutal the streets can be with plenty of random bank-robbery and purse-snatching going on. Secondly, it's got a great cast headed up by Henry Silva as a slimy underworld boss who gets a little too ambitious for his own good, robbing a money train and a police station in broad daylight. Of course one shouldn't overlook Leonard Mann, Adolfo Lastretti, Benito Pacifico, Richard Raymond and the rest of the regular euro-crime gang that pops by. Thirdly, this film has tons of action, violence, and random explosions to not only keep the casual viewer awake, but highly entertained! This is probably one of the most violent of the 70's Italian crime films with lots of shootouts, protracted car crashes, people on fire, mutilated faces, a Gino De Rossi-patented decapitation, and such. Fourth, a very memorable musical score by Francesco De Masi, possibly one of his best and most widely copied of all his scores. Fifth, this film has many tie-ins with Umberto Lenzi's NAPOLI VIOLENTA (which starred Maurizio Merli and John Saxon), since it has a reappearance of the Gennaro kid that got crippled in that movie, here he's back and turned to a life of petty crime. The musical cues that follow little Gennaro in particular are very memorable, as they vary on the same theme depending on the situation, creating a very good effect towards the tragic ending.I can't recommend this movie enough. It's too bad NAPOLI SPARA is just so hard to find.