San Francisco mafia don Salvatore Francesco (Ivo Garrani) imports a massive, priceless jeweled crucifix from his hometown in Sicily as a gift for a local church. Unbeknownst to him, the hollow cross is stuffed with a fortune in pure heroin. When the shipment is violently intercepted and stolen, a furious feud erupts. And then the local priest (Ettore Manni) excommunicates the Salvatore. To clear his name and track down the culprits, he dispatches his nephew and consigliere, Ulisse (Roger Moore). Armed with a posh British accent and zero apparent Sicilian heritage, Ulisse ropes in his wild-card buddy, a Grand Prix racecar driver named Charlie Hanson (Stacy Keach). What follows is a globe-trotting, bullet-riddled scramble through San Francisco and Sicily where double-crosses multiply and the plot grows increasingly impossible to track.
The production credits read like a runaway train. Street People (originally titled Gli esecutori or The Sicilian Cross) boasts a staggering six credited writers and two directors (Maurizio Lucidi, who also made The Designated Victim and Guglielmo Garroni). The screenplay script-doctoring credits include Ernest Tidyman (creator of Shaft and screenwriter of The French Connection) alongside Randal Kleiser (who would pivot drastically to direct Grease just two years later).
The cultural clash is palpable. American International Pictures (AIP) imported the film to the US, trimming 13 minutes and splicing together two completely different cinematic worlds. The English-speaking leads (Moore and Keach) act in their native tongue while a supporting cast of classic Italian genre veterans (including Fausto Tozzi and Ennio Balbo) are heavily dubbed, giving the movie the jarring sensation of two separate films smashed together.
Street People is a magnificent, borderline-incoherent mess. It’s an Italian poliziottesco stuffed through an American exploitation filter, featuring a pair of lead actors whose performance styles belong in entirely different universes—Keach plays it for breezy, winking escapism. At the same time, Moore tackles it with deadpan, furrowed-brow dramatic heft. Casting a pristine, hyper-refined Roger Moore as a “half-Sicilian” mob lawyer is easily one of the most delightfully ludicrous creative swings of the 1970s.
You can watch this on Tubi.
