Customer Reviews

Beast With a Gun

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Great job again Anchor Bay,this is a great widescreen transfer of "Beast With A Gun" starring cult actor Helmut Berger!!! This is full of action,sex,and violence,etc.,classic exploitaion,70's style!!! Definately for adults only,not for the kiddies!!! Two thumbs up!!! Five stars!!! A+

Helmut Berger plays a violent escaped convict out for sex and revenge. He gets plenty of both in this stylish, fast-paced thriller. Sure, the dubbing is fractured and flawed but it just adds to this movie's fun flamboyance! I would love to have seen this in a 42nd street grindhouse theater back in the day. They don't make tough, manly movies with fierce, rugged characters like this anymore...

Fast-paced Italian crime flick delivers the goods. Psychopaths, guns, violence, cops, and naked womenserved up Italian exploitation style. You couldn't ask for more. This movie is playing on a tv in a scene in Jackie Brown.

He's mean! He's nasty! He's armed and extremely dangerous! His name is Nanni Vitali (Helmut Berger) and he's a one man death squad! Boiling over w/ revenge and bitterness over his time in prison, Nanni sets out to capture and destroy those who dared to convict and incarcerate him. Can he be stopped before he carries out his evil plan? Well, sort of. You see, Nanni is absolutely crazy and fearless. So, anyone in his way will be raped, murdered, or both. Watch this one long after the kids have gone to bed! Yikes!...

Beast with a Gun is Crazy, I saw a clip of it in Jackie Brown, and decided to get the film. I figured if Tarantino liked it, I would too...and I did. If you like a crazy plot, and insanity then go for it ;)

"Beast With a Gun" (also released as "Mad Dog", among numerous other titles) is a repulsive example of Italian cinema at its worst. This film stars the genuinely creepy Helmut Berger as "Mad Dog," a career criminal who enjoys murder and mayhem just a little too much. He and some henchmen escape from prison and seek revenge on those who put him behind bars.

His chief foe is Police Inspector Santini whose own father (the judge who, coincidentally, sentenced Mad Dog) and sister eventually become hostages. The resulting hand-to-hand fight scene, which concludes the movie, is both bloody and gratuitous.

Technically the film is directed and photographed fairly well (excepting the credit sequence and some arty shots so popular in Italian cinema of the period), and the acting of the principals is above average for the genre. One interesting problem was in keeping the action in the final fight scene straight, as the director for some reason chose to dress both Mad Dog and the Not-So-Great-Santini nearly identically, which made for several confusing moments (or maybe I was just bored).

While I have seen many more poorly crafted films, the utter lack of morality and needless violence, especially toward women, made this painful to endure, and totally worthy of a single star.