Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘Hold on baby, Daddy’s going to take you on a cosmic ride’
If you’re looking someone to play a Mafioso taking care of family business and personal vengeance,
there’s only one actor you want.
‘Ciao, did you sell your car yet?’
In fairness they do justify the casting of Roger Moore as Ulisse.
‘Smartest thing I ever did was getting you out of Sicily and into that English law school’
Well my disbelief is suspended.
‘Come on, let’s step on stones as we say in Sicily.’
Did I mention I’m Sicilian?
It’s as unlikely as casting Stacey Keach as Huggy Bear.
‘Come on, Mamma, don’t you jive me’
If you’re a low budget Italian production then a few big stars might help sell your film abroad but damn.
‘Don Giuseppe (Speaks Italian)’
This is Street People a film which Roger Moore claimed neither he nor Keach understood
while they were making it, and still didn’t understand it when they watched it.
‘What does it mean?!’
And I can’t help them, I haven’t got a clue.
‘This will be a goodie’
But I’ll do my best.
We open with what seems to be a reference to Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.
The cross is a present from Roger Moore’s uncle, mob boss, Salvatore
to his old friend, Francis who is a priest, but…
'There's got to be at least a million dollars of dope here.'
it’s been used to smuggle drugs and Francis blames Salvatore.
‘I’ll never forgive you’
The mob then enlists Moore’s Ulisses to find out who done it,
with the help of his racing driver friend Charlie.
‘What’s happening?’
That is the question.
‘He could have rigged this whole job as a cover then double-crossed himself just to make it look good’
That seems unnecessarily complex.
From here on, this is The Godfather, meets the Persuaders.
‘You called for a car, sir’
with Keach standing in for Tony Curtis,
and that is not a natural Venn diagram because while Moore and Keach are trading good-natured barbs.
‘Oh please your grace this jealous streak in your nature has got to stop’
and hitting on sexy ladies,
‘Would you like something else over here?’
‘I certainly would’
the other half of the plot is strangling girls
and whacking old men
'Men of honor!'
and when these two sides meet,
well that’s the end of Roger.
My mistake he has survived. Without a scratch.
As for what they are doing, honestly, they might as well be on a quest to learn the plot of the film.
‘I don’t know anything about it.’
With exchanges that veer from the utterly baffling.
‘Why don’t we have all the junk taken off the street?’
‘Ulisse, you are a true genius of the world.’
to the unintentionally ironic.
‘Because there is a man over there who is considered the best in the business’
‘What business?’
‘What are we talking about?’
Don’t you know either?
Obviously this is alongside fights
and enough high speed chases to make Roger Moore car sick.
But even here we run into the same problems.
Maybe I missed a line but I have no idea what they did to piss off the trucking industry.
Also; that tonal imbalance.
'I don't mean to butt in, but only the this morning a good friend was asking where I could get good deal on a used car.'
Through a piece of tortured plotting it becomes necessary for Keach to bust up the bad guys’ car,
so he pretends to want to buy it then takes it for a vigorous test drive.
It’s meant to be a funny sequence, but look how many other people’s cars the bastard is wrecking.
'Oh I better test the breaks'
'It's not bad, I just don't really like the colour.'
Could have just slashed the tyres
'What can I say, sorry.'
and you would accept this level of carnage if this was James Bond trying to save the world but this is a mob war.
‘This is a family matter’
And I’m obviously part of that family.
And that’s another problem.
‘I’ve got the box and the junk’s still in it’
Leaving aside the fact that Roger Moore is as convincingly Mafia as me,
if you cut the actor in half, he would have hero written through his middle like a stick of Blackpool rock.
‘You can kiss my ass’
and the film does play like these are the good guys, but they’re not.
‘First we ask questions, then we drown him’
Finally we reaches what seems to be the climax.
I think that’s the other families taking revenge on Salvatore for pretending not to know about the drugs.
‘I think I figured it out’
Which, incidentally, is exactly what Stacy Keach said an hour ago.
‘He could have rigged this whole job as a cover then double-crossed himself just to make it look good’
But, honestly, I couldn’t be sure.
‘I’d give my left arm if it was as simple as that’
Thanks for watching. Please whack the like button.
Roger Moore as a Mafioso is one of the more peculiar pieces of casting we’ve seen,
what are some other improbable casting choices? Let us know in the comments below.
'That's not good enough, Caio.'