Cry Of A Prostitute

Cry Of A Prostitute (Quelli che contano) Directed By Andrea Bianchi, starring Henry Silva (1974).

Besides Tomas Millian in The Rat, Cynic and The Fist and Rabid Dogs, we've completely neglected to review any Poliziotteschi (or Italian Police Flicks) at all. So to try and include a few choice chunks of meaty italian Bolognese, I went to one of the most trusted sources on the web, the Video Junkies (Thanks William for the recommendation)! I was told that this might be one of the most brutal and vile films in the subgenre. That's how I came to discover Cry Of A Prostitute, which was directed by none other then the man who made the genius decision to cast dwarf Peter Bark as a perverted pint sized cannibal in Burial Ground. 
   Right after a seaside country jaunt, we are delivered a severed head in a car wreck and a child corpse packed with bags of heroin. Some Mafioso goons show up (who's language in this Youtube presentation goes from Sicilian to dubbed American) and a few beastly looking detectives are out stalking every rat infested corner for Henry Silva (Chained Heat, "Mr. Bull Shit Or Not"). They manage to never return again, the authority is totally useless in this film.

Get me to a hospital!

   Most of the Italian horror heavyweights have a few Westerns and Police flicks under their belt (Deodato, Fulci, Lenzi), but I didn't expect the inept direction of Bianchi to come off so captivating as it does here, keep in mind visually everything is perfect, but the dialogue leaves much to be desired. Piero Regnoli wrote the screenplay for this and one of the most incoherent zombie flicks possibly ever--Nightmare City (let's give him the benefit of the ESL doubt).

Don't laugh at my sweet, high class donkey ride!

   Two peasants out on a mule drawn cart are blown away, as Tony Anianti (Silva) hops aboard and makes deals with different mobsters. He stops off in a wine bar and pummels a few trouble makers that call him "queer". While hanging out with a priest and settling more scores with Dons he finds a sultry blonde, washing herself in a barn. The blonde is married to a bastard named Ricco (Fausto Tozzi) who gets turned on by the thought of his wife, having interracial sex with other men. Margie (Barbara Bouchet) the crying prostitute doesn't really weep as much as suffer every kind of abuse for her extreme lustiness (she's constantly punished, while corrupt mob enforcers rip open children and stuff them with heroin). Bouchet was in Don't Torture A Duckling a few years before this and does a pretty effective job. The society depicted in Cry Of A Prostitute is a dismally abhorrent one.  

   Silva pounces on a thug who tries to blast an innocent kid's head off, he crushes the perpetrators skull and then runs him over with a bulldozer! How's that for subtle?

   Later on, Ricco's wife fellates a banana at the dinner table and wants to trap Tony and piss off her husband, the men trust each other on a slimy business level.

She also uses those super strong lip muscles to set the table

   There's an extremely depraved scene of Ricco's whorish wife, who aims to seduce Tony while a gutted pig hangs. He turns the tables and rapes her as Margie's face becomes smeared with the blood of the carcass. The level of misogyny in this film is off the charts and all of it is directed at the low class blonde. Immediately after, there's an all out blood bath as sawed off shotguns are emptied and heads are caved in by shrapnel.

Do you suffer from severe lock jaw during forced entry?

   The level of sadistic violence in this police flick is high, as the mother of a child takes revenge by using a ban saw to split a killer's head open like a mushy cantaloupe. There's a tense shoot out at the end, a reoccurring surreal dream sequence and as made men are iced, Tony moves up in authority.
 

Cut it out, you're gonna hurt somebody!

   There's no real police element to step in like Maurizio Merli and toss all these jag offs into the clink, so is it really an Italian Police flick? It's a freewheeling category, where the anti-hero is in charge and like most Neo Realistic Italian films, its nihilistic and no one is safe from corruption.   There is alot of female slapping and male chauvinism (enough to satisfy scumfucks in the same league as Ike Turner). That being said, most women would not enjoy this film, it's hard edged and brutal. I immensely enjoyed it, the dialogue could be alittle stronger and coherent for sure, but what can you expect from the man who penned Demonia and The Bronx Executioner! Check it out to see what professionalism certain schlock meisters are capable of beyond Fulci derivative walking dead shenanigans.  

WATCH HERE 

 

Thanks, I needed a facelift

I learned my bitch slapping technique from James Brown