Enzo G. Castellari directing the kind of action you demand from poliziotteschi.

Fabio Testi and David Hemmings as the tough undercover cop and driven agent against unstoppable crime.

Goblin fresh off Suspiria making this movie sound like nothing else.

The Heroin Busters is ready to own you..

Mike Hamilton (Hemmings) is an Interpol agent trying to keep heroin from taking over Italy from his office. And from the streets, Fabio (Testi) is his undercover agent, getting in deeper and deeper into the drug trade until his cover gets blown and the world of crime comes for him. Can Mike save him in time?

That’s also totally Testi flying the plane in this movie.

Years before John Woo gave us bullet romance violence, Castellari has Testi sliding down stairs, blowing people away while looking improbably, effortlessly cool. It takes some time to get the action at the end of this movie, but you know, we could all use a little patience, because the payoff, for once, is more than enough.

The Arrow Video limited edition of Rogue Cops and Racketeers: Two Crime Thrillers has this movie and The Big Racket. Both films have brand new 2K restorations from the original 35mm camera negatives by Arrow Films, with restored original lossless mono Italian and English soundtracks and newly translated English subtitles for the Italian soundtracks. Both movies also have new audio commentaries on both films by critics Adrian J. Smith and David Flint and the limited edition packaging has reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Colin Murdoch, as well as an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the films by Roberto Curti and Barry Forshaw. If that’s not enough, you also get twelve double-sided, postcard-sized lobby card reproduction artcards.

The Heroin Busters also has new video interviews with Castellari, Testi, Vanni, editor Gianfranco Amicucci, retired poliziotto and criminologist Nicola Longo (who consulted on the film); The Eardrum Busters, a new appreciation and career retrospective of composers Goblin by musician and disc collector Lovely Jon; the film’s trailer and an image gallery.

You can get Rogue Cops and Racketeers: Two Crime Thrillers from MVD and Diabolik DVD.

Both of the Enzo G. Castellari movies on Rogue Cops and Racketeers: Two Crime Thrillers push action further than anything we’ll see on screens this year, both films backed with brutality and danger both in the film and in making it, as there are no computers to make these stunts look like they’re spitting in death’s face. They’re all real, all true, pure guts and balls and power.

Nico Palmieri (Fabio Testi) is one man against a crime syndicate that starts with robbing a small town and charging them protection money, but has aims much higher. Nico’s hands are tied by the system so he forms his own squad of vigilantes who have each been damaged by the mob: a criminal named Pepe (Vincent Gardenia); Piero Mazzarelli (Glauco Onorato), who has been crippled by the gang; Luigi Giulti (Renzo Palmer), whose daughter was raped by the gang and who then committed suicide (this scene is Death Wish brutal and it’s even worse when you realize that it’s Castellari’s daughter Stefania playing the role), Gianna Rossetti (Orso Maria Guerrini), an Olympic marksman whose wife Anna was assaulted and killed by the mob — after they urinate all over her and set his house on fire, making them beyond Death Wish 3 goons — and the mercenary Doringo (Romano Puppo).

Nico’s lost his badge to take down crime. Will his gang be able to stop the crimewave?

There’s a scene where Testi is in a car that goes down a hill. We watch it slowly fall apart and glass flies directly at the actor and it looks truly harrowing because, well, it was. When you don’t have budgets and you don’t have time and all you have is guts, you shoot the movie.

The end of this movie is apocalyptic. Bullets fly, cars explode, fire is everywhere and by the end, even the shotgun that Testi grips can’t solve everything. His rage closes the movie, as crime doesn’t go away just because you’re a good man trying to save the world.

The Arrow Video limited edition of Rogue Cops and Racketeers: Two Crime Thrillers has this movie and The Heroin Busters. Both films have brand new 2K restorations from the original 35mm camera negatives by Arrow Films, with restored original lossless mono Italian and English soundtracks and newly translated English subtitles for the Italian soundtracks. Both movies aso have new audio commentaries on both films by critics Adrian J. Smith and David Flint and the limited edition packaging has reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Colin Murdoch, as well as an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the films by Roberto Curti and Barry Forshaw. If that’s not enough, you also get twelve double-sided, postcard-sized lobby card reproduction artcards.

The Big Racket also has new video interviews with co-writer/director Enzo G. Castellari, Fabio Testi, Massimo Vanni and editor Gianfranco Amicucci. There’s also a new appreciation and career retrospective of composers Guido and Maurizio De Angelis by musician and disc collector Lovely Jon, a trailer and image gallery.

You can get Rogue Cops and Racketeers: Two Crime Thrillers from MVD and Diabolik DVD.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey, Currently, in addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, and voice-over artist, he contributes to Drive-In Asylum. His first article, “Grindhouse Memories Across the U.S.A.,” was published in issue #23. He’s also written “I Was a Teenage Drive-in Projectionist” and “Emanuelle in Disney World and Other Weird Tales of a Trash Film Lover” for upcoming issues.

Bingo O’Malley was one of Pittsburgh’s greatest stage actors. For decades, he was the go-to guy for Pittsburgh’s best theater directors, with leads in Death of a Salesman, Bent, The Man in the Glass Booth, Glengarry Glenn Ross, and The Ruling Class. When folks shot movies in Pittsburgh, Bingo was in them: Dominick and Eugene, Wonder Boys, Out of the Furnace, Lady Beware, Bob Roberts, Love and Other Drugs, and so many others. He was also in Pittsburgh-shot TV series and TV movies. But to horror fans, he will always be remembered for the remake of My Bloody Valentine and three George Romero films: Knightriders, Creepshow, and Two Evil Eyes. In Two Evil Eyes, he played the titular M. Valdemar in Romero’s segment. He was born in the Pittsburgh area, and despite his formidable talent, he never left his hometown. For this, he was beloved by Pittsburghers. Thus, it gives me great pleasure to feature the crowning glory of his long career, a little-known Pittsburgh indie film called A Fancy Piece of Homicide.

In 2016, before Bingo’s health took a sharp decline, young local director Joseph Varhola cast him as the lead in something original, a Yinzer noir. Varhola’s screenplay harkens back to the noirs of old with a flawed, but honorable, lead trying to unravel the most complex of mysteries, a mystery that ultimately is inscrutable. The difference, though, was that these mean noir streets were those of the Steel City.

In A Fancy Piece of Homicide, Bingo plays a gumshoe who, years before, had taken the fall for a murder he didn’t commit. Now he’s been released from prison and determined to set the record straight by writing his memoirs. But the past returns to haunt him when he begins to receive cryptic photos and messages. Soon he’s in way over his head as he looks for closure in his life. 

Bingo himself received closure, passing away in 2019, two years after the release of A Fancy Piece of Homicide. It was to be his last acting triumph. Watching the film was a bittersweet experience. Here he was at the height of his powers, giving a performance that, had it been in a studio film with a multi-million-dollar budget, would have received raves, if not awards. He’s compelling as a man determined to understand bewildering events from the past—and now the present—not within his control. He’s also a rare lead: a smart, independent octogenarian, out to solve one last mystery before the final curtain. 

The film is almost completely in Bingo’s capable hands. It’s a nearly no-budget affair (I’m pretty sure everyone brought their own wardrobe to the shoot), which, despite an excellent score, some competent tech credits, and an intriguing plot, tends to meander as a slow-burn with some travelogue padding shots of the Pittsburgh suburbs. And when it gets to its Dashiell Hammett-like revelation, you might be inclined to ask yourself: Is that all there is?  Apart from another Romero regular, Mark Tierno (Knightriders and Day of the Dead), who plays a weasel pretty well, the rest of the cast ranges from serviceable to awful. 

But ultimately, none of this is important. What is important is that A Fancy Piece of Murder memorializes the performance of one of the best of Pittsburgh’s homegrown talent, the likes of which we may never see again, in a film merging the unique Pittsburgh sensibility with a classic genre. May we all be so lucky to go out on such a high note.

Consider the law of diminishing returns: X is the best slasher that I’ve seen all year, last year, the year before and probably for the rest of this year.

It may also be the law of the desert island in that it may be the only slasher in years that approaches the blood-soaked heaven of 1978-1981, yet were it released then, would I feel the same way?

And after seeing tweet after tweet about how debauched and filthy and sexed-up this movie was, did we see the same film? Or am I really the “affable pervert” that Grindhouse Releasing said I was and I’ve become too desensitized? Or, probably more true, has this generation become more puritanical and repressed than we were?

Probably most importantly, I decided to just shut up and enjoy the movie.

What I came away with was a film that actually gave me that uncomfortable and awesome feeling of “I wonder what’s next” and a worry for each of its characters.

Back in 1979, a group of young filmmakers set out to make a dirty film in rural Texas, learning nothing from another Texas-shot slasher. And when their elderly hosts discover what’s happening, the cast find themselves in a way different movie.

Reading that description, I felt sure that I would dislike this movie, but then again, this was Ti West, who somehow took a very basic story in The House of the Devil and made something great and lasting.

I’ve been burned by an A24 trailer before. Come on, we all have. But again, I decided to shut up and watch the movie.

And I’m glad that I did.

Maxine Minx (Mia Goth, Nymphomaniac) dreams of being an adult film star and people knowing her name. This brings her to deepest, darkest New Zealand, err Texas, along with her producer/boyfriend/suitcase pimp Wayne (Martin Henderson), director RJ (Owen Campbell), his assistant/girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega, Scream) and two co-stars, Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow, the Perfect Pitch movies) and Jackson Hole (Kid Cudi!). As they go deeper into the rural world, we’re reminded — of course — of that aforementioned Texas film, what with the van that propels them and the farmhouse they end up in.

RJ has a goal. Just because it’s porn doesn’t mean that it can’t be art, he says, almost like a non-burnt out Gary Graver. Wayne knows something more important: porno chic died because middle America is stil too afraid to go to a porno theater and still blushes when they buy a skin mag. But if they can have that movie in the safety of their home? He’s ahead of the video era, Caballero and VCA before they’d even realized what was next. The themes of this movie are desire and age battling hand in hand and the fact that the new type of entertainment they’re making is based on the oldest joke there is — The Farmer’s Daughters — points to the intelligence of this endeavor.

Meanwhile, there’s Howard (Stephen Ure) and Pearl (also Mia Goth, we’ll get to that shortly), the elderly couple who owns the land. Howard barks at everyone while Pearly stays in the shadows, except for the moment where she invites Maxine in for lemonade, a remembrance of youth, some jealousy and a rebuffed sexual December to May advance.

That afternoon, Pearl watches Maxine and Jackson at work and begs Howard to make love to her one more time, but while the spirit and the emotional heart are willing, the flesh and the physical heart are weak.

That night, Lorraine surprises everyone by asking if she can be in the film. RJ tries to use art as the reason why the script can’t be changed; she defeats his argument and he watches her make love through the eye of his camera. That night, he leaves everyone behind but runs into Pearl and that’s where — nearly an hour into the film — “Don’t Fear the Reaper” plays and we’re reminded of exactly what kind of movie we’re in for.

The end of the film surprised me. I should have seen it coming, but the repeated dialogue, the divine intervention and Greek chorus of televangelists all came together in a way that I had no idea was going to occur. Seriously, that preacher gives Estus Pirkle a run for his money.

I also had no idea that Goth spent ten hours a day in makeup for the dual role, which she’ll take up again in Pearl, a prequel that was shot at the same time as this movie.

Even the soundtrack works, written by Tyler Bates and Chelsea Wolfe, who covers Fred Fisher’s “Oui, Oui, Marie.” What doesn’t, however, is the moment where Snow and Kudi sing “Landslide,” as we’ve already established the closeness of the actors and this seems only in the movie to have them remind us they also do music.

As bad as 2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre is, this is good. It feels closer to Eaten Alive, another Hooper film, what with the alligator scene — I winced when someone claimed this movie had a scene that echoed Alligator — and I love how the final girl is the least chaste character in the movie, continually doing drugs and putting herself first.

Here’s to more horror being committed to only being inspired by the past instead of wallowing within it, pushing itself to new heights. I was worried if West would ever come close to House again; my fears were unnecessary.