June 29: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is gangsters.

In Italy, they call this movie Il cinico, l’infame, il violento, which means The Cynic, the Infamous, the Violent. This poliziotteschi is a sequel to another Umberto Lenzi film, 1976’s The Tough Ones, with Maurizio Merli playing the role of Inspector Leonardo Tanzi in both movies.

Luigi “The Chinaman” Maietto (Tomas Milan, The Big Gundown, Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot!) escapes from prison and sends two of his men to kill the man who put him away — Tanzi. He’s left for dead and even the newspapers print that he’s dead, but he’s just biding his time, waiting to get revenge.

Tanzi just wanted to stay retired — it looks like he’s become a giallo author — but now he’s a vigilante who comes up against Maietto and American syndicate boss Frank Di Maggio (John Saxon).

This movie boasts three writers whose work pretty much hits every side of the Italian exploitation experience. There’s Lenzi himself, who made everything from Eurospy films (Super Seven Calling Cairo, The Spy Who Loved Flowers, 008: Operation Exterminate), Westerns (A Pistol for a Hundred Coffins), giallo (Orgasmo, A Quiet Place to KIll, Oasis of Fear, So Sweet…So Perverse, Seven Bloodstained Orchids, Spasmo, Eyeball), cannibal movies (Man from Deep River, Cannibal Ferox), peplum (Ironmaster, Samson and the Slave Queen), horror (Nightmare Beach, Ghosthouse, Demons 3, Hitcher in the Dark) and so much more. Then you have Ernesto Gastaldi, who wrote so many films that I love, including The Whip and the Body, The Possessed, The Sweet Body of Deborah, Day of Anger, All the Colors of the Dark, Torso, My Name is Nobody and tons of other great films. And then there’s Dardano Sacchetti, who wrote just about any Italian genre film worth watching.

Man, somehow Junesploitation has led me to many Italian crime films. For this I am very excited!