#43 - Escape From Death Row

Like The Cop in Blue Jeans, you shouldn't be confused by the poster. Apparently this movie had a couple of titles and I couldnt find a good picture with the other title. You see, this movie was also made in Italy, except it was made in '73 as oppossed to '76. But the great thing here is that we have two movies from the same era, genre, and country seen close to each other, and I gotta say, you could take most of my review of The Cop in Blue jeans and transplant it into this review. This wasn't the best script, or the best story, but it was just fun to watch. It didn't take itself too seriously, but wasn't completely tounge in cheek. Just fun to watch these older movies with a unique style that has since been replicated or satarized in various ways.

You wanna know what was really great about this movie? Lee Van Cleef. Apparently being a good villain in a couple of spaghetti westerns will get you work in Italy for a few years. He is so smooth and cool as the bad guy who is the good guy. I guess you could call him an anti-hero, but that term is too fancy for a movie like this. This guy goes to an illegal gambling party and calls the police so that he can arrested in order to have an alibi for when he sneaks out and kills somebody. Now thats just cool. Of course he gets set up by the boss of the guy who gets killed and he gets thrown into serious lockdown. But this man is gonna get even, and he does so with the help of Crazy Tony(look back at the poster). Tony is the stubborn comic relief sidekick who admires the work of Frank. Normally this part is completely annoying and a waste of everybody's time. But in this case it's okay because Tony isn't written as an annoying idiot, he's just eager. Fun duo to watch.

The big difference between this movie and The Cop in Blue Jeans is that this one had better editors. Much smoother, much cleaner, and the dubbing is much better. But it was clear that this had a bigger budget so you can understand it a little. One thing I noticed with these Italian movies is that they use the same music over and over and over and over and over again. I think The Cop in Blue Jeans had one, maybe two songs re-playing through the whole thing. I don't remember offhand, but I think Escape From Death Row wasn't much better.

This was the first movie in a boxed set titled Mob Hits. I think that "Hits" is probably the wrong word to describe the movies in this set, but there are four movies on two DVD's. I was tempted to write a review for each DVD, but I wanted to give each movie it's due, so four reviews of four movies on two DVD's. Oh boy, now you have something to look forward to. It must be spring sweeps.