June 15: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

I approached this movie with a strange and melancholic blend of joy and sadness. Joy because it’s everything I love about movies: Italian maniacs let loose in Miami making a movie that at once combines Lethal Weapon, Ghost Dad and Tron while being shot on film in the very late for the Italian exploitation film industry year of 1997. Even better, it has the high concept of combining Terence Hill and “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler as buddy cops.

The cheerlessness comes from the fact that this is at the end. This is the last movie that Antonio Margheriti (Anthony M. Dawson in America) would direct, the last that Bruno Corbucci would write and really the event horizon of an era of films that I love with all my heart.

Yet in this bubble of time, you still get Margheriti combining actual car chases with the practical miniature effects that you hope for in his movies. The explosions are as big as they can be. And sure, maybe Terence Hill is thinking about better days alongside Bud Spencer. Perhaps Marvin Hagler is probably remembering when he fought world middleweight champ Alan Minter, who said, “No black man is going to take my title.” Then he hit him so many times so quickly that he opened four gigantic wounds on the champ’s face and Hagler won his first title as the fans in Wembley Arena launched beer bottles his way. How did he end up here in Miami trying to tell jokes and being in his fourth movie for these wacky Italians?* And was Margheriti dreaming of filming cobwebbed staircases being navigated by a candelabra-wielding Barbara Steele?

No matter. Here they are in Miami and a movie needs to be made.

Skims (Hill) is an ex-cop turned computer salesman who comes back to Miami to see his old cop friend Mike Davis (Hagler). But we know why he’s in town. He’s undercover, investigating a microchip stealing plot. He’s also excited to reconnect with former cop — and the widow of his partner — Chelo (Giselle Blondet) and bond with her tech-loving daughter Lily (Jennifer Martinez).

Our hero finally tracks down the villain behind all of the drama in this, a man named Abel Van Axel (Stephen Edward, who showed up in three episodes of Miami Vice), who goes by the even cooler — if unnecessary — name of Mr. X. What is he, the final boss of a Konami beat ’em up?

Despite being informed that Skims is the greatest cop of all time, he gets blown up real good and dies. We even see his funeral. I’m shocked they didn’t run the credits.

Except that Skims has somehow survived and shows up on Lily’s computer, looking like Trinity by way of Automan, fighting dinosaurs and transforming like he’s fueled by Energon. His power set is beyond crazy here, even moreso than the goofball abilities Hill had in my beloved Super Fuzz. He can be invisible unless someone tells him they love him, he can travel through telephone lines and is now a hologram, which is explained as “the result of modern technology and Biblical faith.”

Of course the bad guys pay and Skims carries around the bad guy’s gun, turning it on him, and everyone is all smiles by the end. Even me, as I watch the credits and try not to think that it’s over, it’s over, all the rainbows in the sky start to weep, then say goodbye. Apologies to Roy Orbison, obviously.

The best thing in this whole movie is that Skims forgets that he’s just been killed by techno gangsters and real estate lords and decides to screw around with his fellow cops while they’re lifting weights, playing ghost reindeer games with them like he’s Super Fuzz — “He’s a super snooper. Really super trooper. A wonder cop a one like you never saw.” — and I could watch a 90-minute movie of these antics.

You may ask, who else is in the cast? Well, who isn’t? This is the last movie of Richard Liberty, who unites the decades of Romero films by playing Artie in The Crazies and Dr. Matt “Frankenstein” Logan in Day of the Dead. He plays Captain Holmes. The old lady who pulls out a gigantic handgun and fires it at criminals is Florance McGee, who was also a senior citizen in Super Fuzz and was Phoebe Russell in Empire of the Ants. Tommy Lane was a stuntman who was in Shaft and Ganja and Hess along with playing the trumpet and flugelhorn. Wikipedia thinks that he’s the same Tommy Lane who was in the Rock ‘n’ Roll RPMs with Mike Davis. He wasn’t.

There’s also Roger Callard (Conan the Librarian from UHF), Edoardo Margheriti (who would go from doing effects on Yor Hunter from the Future to being a second unit director for Hudson Hawk) and a lot of folks who were in Florida-based productions such as Wild Things and B.L. Stryker.

Beyond Corbucci, this was written by Terence’s son Jess and executive producer Ferdie Pacheco. It was the only movie that Ferdie ever wrote or produced. He was better known as the personal physician and cornerman for Muhammad Ali. He left Ali’s team in 1977 when after Ali won against Earnie Shavers, he felt that the post-fight physical showed that the boxer was falling to pieces. In the book Muhammed Ali: His Life and Times, Pacheco said, “The New York State Athletic Commission gave me a report that showed Ali’s kidneys were falling apart. I wrote to Angelo Dundee, Ali’s trainer, his wife and Ali himself. I got nothing back in response. That’s when I decided enough is enough.” When they reunited in 2002 and Ali was suffering from Parkinson’s, The Greatest told The Fight Doctor “You was right.”

This also has one of my favorite things about Italian movies going for it: absolutely strange alternate titles. I get Virtual Weapon as it tells you that this is a Mel and Danny ripoff with a tech twist and the French title Cyberflic means Cybercop. But then the Japanese title is Point of Dead, which is a great title that says nothing. Germany got Zwei Fäuste für Miami (Two Fists for Miami), Hungary the very metal Én vagyok a fegyver (I Am the Gun) which spoils the ending of the movie and Italy had Potenza virtuale (Virtual Power).

I always worry that I am going to run out of Italian movies to obsess over but so far, I keep finding new things to write over a thousand words about.

*In case you wondered, Indio and Indio 2 for Margheriti, as well as Across Red Nights for Maurizio Bonuglia.