Poliziotto senza paura also known as Fearless, Fatal Charm, Fearless Fuzz and A Matter of Honour is directed by Stelvio Massi (Convoy Busters, Highway Racer), who wrote the screenplay with Gino Capone from a story by Fulvio Gicca Palli.

In the lead role of Walter Spada is poliziotteschi star Maurizio Merli, who was encouraged by Massi to act like Phillip Marlow and only shoot his fun once in the entire film, to which the actor replied, “Come on, he must be shooting like mad, or else nobody’s going to watch this movie!”*

Wally and his partner Benny (Massimo Vanni) are off the police force and now private detectives who make their own kind of law for criminals. This takes them to Austria, where a child prostitution ring has already taken one of his friend’s daughters. Unlike other Merli films, Wally is more of a fan of action movies than one himself, as he smiles and laughs more in this movie than in all of his others put together, even if this gets really grim.

Once Walter saves Annalize von Straben (Annarita Grapputo, Don’t Look In the Attic, Like Rabid Dogs) twice — criminals take her back from his apartment at one point — he gets on the case of a dead girl and her still-living friend Renata (Jasmine Maimone, Nancy from Demons) and gets seduced by the mystifying Brigitte (Joan Collins). And yes, if you love Joan Collins, well, this is the movie for you, as she’s not only an evil seductress, she actually does an exotic dance, the kind that never showed up in  I Don’t Want to Be Born even though her character is a stripper.

This has Merli wearing overalls, which is certainly odd, in the beginning action scenes. After an entire movie waiting for him to go nuts, man, he sure does, busting through windows and fist fighting his way through an entire film’s worth of bums. Even after — again — all this darkness, it still has a wacky sitcom ending too.

I loved this movie so much that I yelled out loud at one point and my wife thought I was having some kind of medical emergency.

You can watch this on Tubi.

*Credit to Roberto Curti’s Italian Crime Filmography, 1968-1980.