Mean Frank and Crazy Tony (Italy, 1973) 100 min color DIR: Michele Lupo. PROD: Dino DeLaurentiis, Franco Cancellieri. SCR: Nicola Badalucco, Sergio Donati, Luciano Vincenzoni. MUSIC: Riz Ortolani. DOP: Joe D’Amato, Aldo Tonti. CAST: Lee Van Cleef, Tony Lo Bianco, Edwige Fenech, Jean Rochefort, Fausto Tozzi, Mario Erpichini, Jess Hahn. (Produzioni De Laurentiis International Manufacturing Company; Aquarius Releasing)
It is a pity that Lee Van Cleef didn’t make more Italian crime pictures, like his American contemporaries Henry Silva or Telly Savalas. Based on his fine work here, he would have been darn good at them, and they would’ve given his 1970s career a boost. Instead, he finished off his European leading man career in westerns that diminished in size and quality.
Mean Frank and Crazy Tony transposes to the crime genre the “older man and inexperienced youngster” pairing seen in the actor’s westerns For a Few Dollars More or Death Rides a Horse. (Not coincidentally, they were written by this film’s co-scripter, Luciano Vincenzoni). Here, this formula is also distilled through Godard’s Breathless– not just for its wildly erratic mixture of styles (as violence clashes with slapstick), but that the Tony Breda character (played by Tony Lo Bianco) channels Belmondo in his portrayal of a two-cent hood who idolizes criminals. In Tony’s flat, a huge poster of gangster Frankie Dio (Van Cleef) dwarfs other images of mobsters on his wall. Whereas Belmondo’s Michel emulates Bogart’s chin scratching, Tony attempts the cosmopolitan gangster pose by holding cigarettes between his pinky and ring finger.
There is trouble brewing among mob bosses, as a turf war is being waged. Smooth criminal Frankie Dio deliberately gets himself imprisoned, so that when a rival mobster is killed, he appears innocent because the murder would be perpetrated while Dio is behind bars. (Little do the authorities know that with the help of accomplices on the inside, Dio managed to sneak out of prison to commit the crime.) Alas, the tables are turned on Dio, when his insiders fink him out, and his short prison term instead becomes a life sentence. Suddenly Dio’s privileges of having a cell to himself, his newspapers and cardigans, are removed, and he is in general population, where suppressed homoeroticism and social class mutterings run beneath the surface. Tony, meanwhile, has landed in the clink for a minor sentence and befriends the crime lord, and when the younger man is back on the outside, he orchestrates a way for Dio to get out of jail to get revenge on the mobsters who double crossed him and also killed Dio’s brother.
Like many Italian genre films, this too is wildly inconsistent in tone, ranging uncomfortably from grisly violence to goofy slapstick, given a jaunty air with Riz Ortolani’s ragtime jazz score, made even more bizarrely cartoonish by the English dubbing. Still, it is never dull. Michele Lupo has demonstrated himself as a fine director of action and suspense elsewhere- unsurprisingly, the film’s highlight is the aftermath of the jailbreak, when Frank and Tony flee the law in a confiscated truck, destroying anything in its path.
The film works because the key character relationships remain grounded and realistic. Regardless of Frankie’s warning, Tony willfully follows his idol into a world of death and danger. When the young man sees Frankie kill someone, his reaction is appropriate horror. There is also a nice addition of European cinema sex siren Edwige Fenech as Tony’s girlfriend Orchidea. Although she is given little to do, there is a memorable scene where Tony steals something from her purse while she’s taking a shower (and yes, the scene is also memorable because the actress is in her birthday suit). Once she notices that he has pinched something and runs away like a mischievous child, she smiles to herself. Although Tony gives her nothing but grief in their few screen moments together, a subtle moment like this reveals that deep down she has a soft spot for the guy.
Little touches like this elevate this effort above the standard caricatures in similar genre fare. Lee Van Cleef is marvellous in saying so much with little to no dialogue- where a glance or sideways smile gives us so much insight into Frankie’s character. His simple gestures suggest a surrogate father-son relationship between the two men on the lam. Although the actor had more films to come, this one feels like a “last movie” of sorts, as it is a valedictory to the familiar patriarchal relationship found in many of his Italian vehicles. Fittingly, we last see him in a longshoreman’s coat, standing at the stern of a boat, which journeys into the background, and into the fog of memory and legend, having lived a full life as an adventurer.
Although many Lee Van Cleef films circa 1968 to 1977 have questionable North American copyright status, lending to many poor quality so-called “public domain” copies on VHS and DVD, none have had such a bizarre track record as this. Terry Levene’s Aquarius Releasing acquired the title for America. After debuting it with this title, they later re-released it as Power Kill (trading on a scene where Frankie exacts revenge with a power drill), and again as Escape from Death Row (no doubt to capitalize on Van Cleef’s role in Escape from New York). For whatever reason, Escape from Death Row opens with a bizarre credits sequence featuring some cartoonish silkscreened stills, and listing a completely different supporting cast, omitting co-stars Tony Lo Bianco and Edwige Fenech! Who are these Barbara Moore and James Lane people displayed in these credits? This was released as Mean Frank and Crazy Tony on VHS through Sybil Danning’s Adventure Video series, and as Escape from Death Row (with those crazy credits!) on VHS by good old Paragon. This film cries for a legitimate DVD or Blu-ray restoration. The Mean Frank version was released unofficially by Videoasia; Escape from Death Row appeared in one of those cardboard sleeve offerings by the short-lived label Dollar DVD, from back when there was a plethora of companies releasing DVDs to the market for a dollar each. (I however paid a whopping $1.99 for my copy! That was still a bargain price in those days.) Whatever version you find may be missing the above-mentioned power drill scene, or the moment with Ms. Fenech au naturel. No matter, there is a solid film lurking underneath whatever the bizarre packaging may be.