From 1976 to 1984, Tomas Milan starred in eleven movies in the Squadra antiscippo series. Starting with The Cop in Blue Jeans, these films include Hit Squad, Squadra antitruffa, Little Italy, Assassino sul Tevere, Delitto a Porta Romana, Crime at the Chinese Restaurant, Delitto sull’autostrada, Crime in Formula One, Cop in Drag and The Gang That Sold America.

It all starts here with Milan as an undercover cop named Marshall Nico “The Pirate” Giraldi. A former street hood gone good, he works on the anti-mugging squad which puts him on the case of Norman Shelley AKA Richard J. Russo, a criminal played by Jack Palance.

Unlike every cop on the force, Nico dresses like he’s the guitarist in a Britpop band and has an unkempt beard. He even has a mouse named Captain Spaulding, named for the Marx Brothers’ movie Animal Crackers years before Rob Zombie did that. Actually, his look is a lot like Rob Zombie, come to think of it.

Nico gets even deeper into the mugging case when his girlfriend (Maria Rosaria Omaggio, The Tough Ones, Nightmare City) loses her latest manuscript to a snatcher. He’ll have to get to Shelley or Russo or whatever his name is, but that guy is busy choking out his underlings in the back seats of cars. This is a comedy and Palance is still terrifying.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.