A documentary concerning the violent Italian 'poliziotteschi' cinematic movement of the 1970s which, at first glance, seem to be rip-offs of American crime films like DIRTY HARRY or THE GODFATHER, but which really address Italian issues like the Sicilian Mafia and red terrorism. Perhaps even more interesting than the films themselves were the rushed methods of production (stars performing their own stunts, stealing shots, no live sound) and the bleed-over between real-life crime and movie crime.
An office employee, pretending to be weak and crippled, reveals himself as a ruthless criminal.
A robbery at a nightclub goes wrong.
An ex-Vietnam vet is forced to become a hit-man and gets caught in the middle of a conspiracy.
Three young hobby archeologists witness a satanic ritual in a secluded villa. Instead of helping poor female victims they decide to secretly document the events.
Detective Baldassarre spends his forced exile sorting criminal records. He gets a chance to return to the line of fire when two people, an aristocrat and a worker are struck by lightning inside a fancy mansion. The incident would be relegated to freak accidents, but Baldassare's attention is drawn to the strangeness of the events and he begins to investigate.
Sadistic no-count killer Nanni Vitali and three other equally brutish hoodlums escape from prison. The foul foursome embark on a savage rape, murder, and robbery spree. Vitali even abducts and defiles frightened hapless lass Giuliana Caroli. Meanwhile, rugged police inspector Giulio Santini is determined to bag the despicable Vitali.
A young man, accused of murder and theft, escapes to Venezuela. His fiancée and her brother join him, only to find he had the loot with him. But was he guilty?
A drug deal goes bad and the heroin is stolen. One mob boss doesn't have his drugs and the other doesn't get his money. People are going to die until they discover who double-crossed them. Into this backdrop, Inspector Dario Mauri arrives from Milan to help clean-up Naples. His mission – find the drugs and stop the killing.
When a crime boss sends out his thugs to terrorize an entire city, they do whatever they want, which includes anything from petty theft to robbing the police station in broad daylight. Napoli spara! (internationally released as Weapons of Death and Naples shoots) is a "poliziottesco" film directed by Mario Caiano in 1977. It is an unofficial sequel of Napoli violenta, of which reprises the character of Gennarino (still played by Massimo Deda).
The city of Turin is in the grip of a brutal crime boss known as "Il Marsigliese" and plenty of cops have good cause to want him dead — none more than Inspector Vanni, whose wife was murdered by the ruthless gangster. Having exhausted every other avenue, Vanni forms a crack squad of motorcycle-riding, Colt .38-toting elite officers, tasked with meting out justice on the margins of the law. But when "Il Marsigliese" launches a bombing campaign designed to extort a vast ransom from the city's authorities, Vanni finds himself in a race against time to exact his revenge and avert disaster.
A gang of robbers takes possession of a load of diamonds.. Only one of them, Mark Lemmon, is arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. But before being captured, the gangster had managed to hide the loot in a sewer. Five years later, Mackenzie, an insurer, pretending to be a mafia boss, assigns three petty criminals to arrange his escape. Once free, Lemmon finds the booty but now he has to deal with his new 'partners'.
An Ottawa police captain searches for the person who poisoned his sister, who was attending the university in Montreal. So desperate is he for revenge that he begin to use his own brutal methods to find the killer. Soon he discovers that not everything is what he thought it was.
An airport employee switches a pack of drugs for baking soda and absconds to Barcelona, meanwhile the drug-runners are on his trail.
By day, Ovidio (Joe Dallesandro) and his two friends work at a data center. After work, they blow off steam by committing random acts of savage violence, swiftly graduating from sparking a riot at a football game to vehicle theft, rape, and murder. The police are convinced this recent spate of crimes is politically motivated, but world-weary veteran Commissario Santaga (Enrico Maria Salerno) suspects a far more terrifying explanation: that these young men are motivated by nothing more than boredom and disaffection at civilized society. As Ovidio's behavior escalates, a psychological game of cat-and-mouse ensues between the two adversaries, building towards a shocking final confrontation.
A detective sick and tired of the rampant crime and violence in his city, and constantly at odds with his superiors, is finally kicked out of the department for a "questionable" shooting of a vicious criminal. However, he is soon approached by a representative for a group of citizens who themselves are fed up with what they see as criminals going unpunished, and they make him an offer he may very well not refuse.
A man's daughter is killed by thieves during a bank robbery. Due to the incompetence of the corrupt authorities, he decides to take to law into his own hands and track down the killers.
The investigation of the bombing of a hotel lobby as seen through the eyes of a young detective.
Paolo Mancuso is a gang boss whose rivals want dead. During a failed assassination attempt, he is bitten by an infected lab rat. In the short time he has left to live, he tracks down his enemies and kills them one by one.
After a phone call has been intercepted (an industrialist is going to receive a huge amount of money from a foreign bank), Mafioso Luca Albanese is assigned to set up a big robbery. He and his gang (three men and three women) then hide-out in a remote mountainous region, but soon at each other's throats. Moreover, someone is killing Albanese's men one by one, leaving white paint on the victim's faces...