Kills On Wheels (2016)

Thoroughly Entertaining Hungarian Wheelchair-Based Action Thriller

Here's something different, and if you fancy a change from the usual Hollywood multiplex fare this is well worth checking out. Attila Till's gritty, brutal and yet ultimately uplifting thriller is getting a dual format release from Eureka.

Best friends Zoli (Zoltan Fenyvesi) and Barba (Adam Fekete) both suffer from congenital physical developmental abnormalities that mean they spend their dull days in a long-term rehabilitation facility. Zoli needs life saving surgery because his spine is starting to curve to such an extent that his internal organs are beginning to crush one another. 

Zoli's long-absent father is willing to pay for the operation but Zoli doesn't want him to. Enter wheelchair-bound hit man Rupasov (Szabolcs Thiroczy, looking like an older Jeremy Renner) who has just been released from prison and who still has connections to various crime syndicates. He has a scheme to help make Zoli the money he needs - by the two friends helping him bump off the hits he gets assigned. 

Gritty and grim, and pulling no punches as regards the abilities (and disabilities) of its three leads, KILLS ON WHEELS does a marvellous job of giving centre stage to the kind of characters that are too often only on the sidelines in movies, if present at all.  

A lot of the PR for KILLS ON WHEELS calls it a comedy. I didn't find much of it very funny, which is not to do the film down at all - it's really very good indeed - but don't go in expecting barrels of wheelchair-based laughs or you're going to be disappointed. 

Refreshingly uncategorisable, the film swings from downbeat to funny to blood-soaked to incredibly emotionally warm and moving by turns with never a mis-step. Eureka's disc only has the trailer as an extra but don't let that put you off getting this - I wouldn't be at all surprised if this turns up on best of lists in years to come, although best what I'll leave to the list compilers to decide.

Attila Till's KILLS ON WHEELS is out on dual format DVD & Blu-ray from Eureka on Monday 15th January 2017

Inspector de Luca (2008)

Following in the wake of a series of successful DVD and Blu-ray releases of crime shows from Scandinavian countries (THE BRIDGE and ARNE DAHL have been my favourites so far and I’ve yet to catch up with THE KILLING) Arrow Films now gives us something a little more Mediterranean, in the form of these four movies made for, and aired on, Italian TV back in 2008. These shows are six years old, and therefore the last thing you want to do is start watching them thinking you’re going to get the Italian version of so-called ‘Nordic Noir’ because INSPECTOR DE LUCA isn’t like that at all. 

Based on a series of novels by the famous detective author Carlo Lucarelli, Arrow’s DVD set presents all four feature-length stories that were made at the time, and these span a narrative time period of ten years between 1938 and 1948. The fascist and early post-war setting give an added resonance to these police procedurals and allow our fictional detective hero to move seamlessly amongst real-world events and characters.

The first story ‘Unauthorised Investigation’ takes place in 1938. The body of a murdered prostitute is found on the beach near one of Mussolini’s holiday homes. Her pimp is arrested and found guilty of the murder but if that were truly the case it would make for rather a dull 110 minutes of television. de Luca gets the usual ‘stay out of this’ and ‘you can investigate all you want but you’re on your own with this one’ from his boss that we’ve seen many times before as it gradually becomes apparent that the untouchable Italian aristocracy might be involved with the girl’s death. Could Mussolini himself have anything to do with it? After all, you don’t introduce an infamous fascist dictator in Act I and then not have him instrumental in proceedings by Act III.

      Far from the grim contemporary settings of modern Scandi-crime ‘Unauthorised Investigation’ feels more like Poirot but with nudity and a more run-of-the-mill hero. If your tastes veer towards period ‘cosy crime police procedurals’ with subtitles then this could well be the thing for you.
      The second story ‘Carte Blanche’, takes place seven years later in 1945. The war is coming to an end but because the area of Italy in which he works is still fascist de Luca is considered a hero for once saving Mussolini.  We stay in 1945 for ‘The Damned Season’ a couple of months later, where opinions have changed and de Luca is now thought of as a villain for his political connections. The series concludes with ‘Via Delle Oche’, set in April 1948. The changing political climate adds spice to the otherwise straightforward crime stories, whose plots I won’t describe here as if you like this kind of thing hopefully you know by now whether you’ll want to watch these. There are no extras.

Arrow Films released Inspector de Luca on DVD on 14th April 2014

Super Bitch (1973)

      Proof, as if it were ever needed on this site, that a film doesn’t have to make a whole lot of sense to be a whole lot of fun, here’s a 1973 EuroCrimes exploitation flick that originally went under the title "Si può essere più bastardi dell'ispettore Cliff?" I can’t find a decent translation of that online anywhere but it has the words ‘Bastard’ and ‘Inspector Cliff’ in there somewhere that suggests it might be a DIRTY HARRY ripoff but with Inspector ‘Bastard’ Cliff instead. Certainly the film takes pains to call the title character (played very much in Clint mode by Ivan Rassimov) a bastard as often as possible so that might have been the intention. Other titles for this Massimo Dallamano directed little crime opus include BLUE MOVIE BLACKMAIL (which makes sense), MAFIA JUNCTION (which kind of makes sense) and the title it goes under on its DVD release from Arrow Films, SUPER BITCH, which makes no sense at all until you realise it’s the film’s re-release title from when it was shovelled out onto VHS for the delectation of Stephanie Beacham fans everywhere after she’d just made it big in TV spin-off series DYNASTY: THE COLBYS. The series also starred Charlton Heston, but a slew of obscure Heston re-releases did not occur at the same time, partly because of rights issues but mainly because Mr Heston did not end up nude in any of them.

Whatever its title, the plot of SUPER BITCH (let’s call it that shall we as it’s quicker to type) does take a fair old bit of following. Patricia Hayes, player of a million Cockney tea ladies, cleaning ladies, and bag ladies in British sitcoms not worth revisiting unless you have some kind of masochistic taste streak, is cast here as a Turkish drug Lord who is trying to get a consignment of drugs shifted from Beirut to New York. A London-based escort agency is trying to do the same thing. In the middle of all of this is Cliff (Ivan Rassimov) an undercover policeman and complete bastard who isn’t above arranging for villains to be machine-gunned to death in out of the way English farms if they’re in his way. Cliff’s having it off with the escort agency’s star attraction Joanne (Stephanie Beacham) who is also involved in the drug trafficking. 

I’ll leave it there for plot because most of this film is taken up with double and triple crossing, extremely violent murders that outdo movies like THE SWEENEY, and Stephanie Beacham naked, when she’s not wearing a sexy skimpy bunny costume with rabbit ears. Yes a bunny costume. With rabbit ears. For anyone interested (and I bet there are quite a few out there) this occurs very early on in the proceedings presumably to helpfully suggest that if you’re taking any of this film seriously you really should stop now. If that’s not enough Miss Beacham’s hair changes length and style from virtually scene to scene, suggesting that this film was made in at least two and possibly three different time periods but seeing as no-one making this seems to be bothered about that, then neither should you. Finally there’s the cast. Look out for Camille Keaton, Michael Sheard getting his head blown off graphically in a park, Gareth Thomas getting pushed by Bastard Cliff, and Cec Linder (the original Dr Roney from the BBC’s QUATERMASS AND THE PIT) in another bunny costume. For fans of Euro daftness SUPER BITCH is worth every penny of what Arrow Video is currently asking for it, and to top it all you get a Graham Humphreys cover as well. Marvellous.