Street Law (1974) + The Big Racket (1976) + The Heroin Busters (1977) – DVDs

STREET LAW
Il cittadino si ribella
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Franco Nero, Giancarlo Prete, Barbara Bach, Renzo Palmer
screenplay by Massimo de Rita and Dino Maiuri
directed by Enzo G. Castellari

THE BIG RACKET
Il grande racket
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Fabio Testi, Vincent Gardenia, Renzo Palmer
screenplay by Arduino Maiuri, Massimo de Rita, Enzo G. Castellari
directed by Enzo G. Castellari

THE HEROIN BUSTERS
La via della droga
*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Fabio Testi, David Hemmings, Sherry Buchanan
screenplay by Massimo de Rita and Enzo G. Castellari
directed by Enzo G. Castellari

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There comes a point in every man's life when he finds himself pushed too far. By "too far," I naturally mean the moment where a) criminal thugs are roaming the streets, and b) innocent bystanders are completely expendable in their apprehension and/or bloody death. And if Blue Underground is to be believed, Enzo G. Castellari long ago reached that point. The champagne of exploitation labels has lavished infinite care on three of the master's most lurid exploits: the Death Wish precursor Street Law; the police-vigilante epic The Big Racket; and the relatively routine drug drama The Heroin Busters. Each of these films does away with such nuisances as due process and respect for public safety. Castellari's oeuvre reveals the dark underbelly of '70s permissiveness, which on one hand extended the hippie mandate to less shaggy extremes but on the other encouraged right-wingers to embrace police-brutality extravaganzas.

Minutes into a Castellari film, we're immersed in the filth of crime. Early montages treat us to random misdeeds (Street Law), protection-racket intimidation (The Big Racket), and international drug trafficking (The Heroin Busters). Strangely, this doesn't cause us to recoil–instead, we clap our hands and lick our chops, as this is a sure come-on for rueful rampages of revenge. Like a tabloid newspaper trading in moral rectitude while gawking at the thing it condemns the most, a Castellari ensures the sordid goods are there in the service of kicking ass and taking names. Despite The Big Racket's keepcase promise of "some of the most amazing stunts in '70s cinema," they're wasted on a director incapable of capturing their impressiveness or, for that matter, adhering to any kind of geography. (In fairness, his fast cutting never falters.) The very opposite of Don Siegel's efficient, tense, well-managed mise-en-scène, Castellari's aesthetic is a drunken stagger towards getting the job done.

Street Law is perhaps the purest example of our man's stumblebum approach. Franco Nero lends his earnest disbelief to the role of "average" Carlo Antonelli, who is traumatized when he's taken hostage by thugs robbing a post office. ("Average," in Carlo's case, means a job with flexible enough hours to pursue his violent attackers relentlessly.) The film ticks off depravities like cops on the criminal payroll and the sad-sack small-timer (Giancarlo Prete) whose hard-luck story guarantees he'll have to help Carlo bag the baddies in record time. What's remarkable about the set-up is that the criminals are indistinguishable from the lawmen–and thus a vigilante needs a criminal to get justice and the actual law twiddles its thumbs while Rome burns. Everybody's in bed with illegality, so why bother with the line at all?

If you're a liberal, you know that the answer is "because there would be fucking anarchy." But as Castellari is not big on organizing concepts, his whole enterprise seems self-contradictory. (If laws are outlawed, only outlaws…wait a minute…) Of course, he doesn't manage to make his freaked-out logic stick, chiefly because he's not director enough to make it work–although if he were more of a director he might grasp that he's not playing with a full deck. Nero acquits himself quite well as his perpetually-astounded character (at least, before the atrocious dubbers go to work), but the action scenes are so poorly choreographed and clumsily performed that you're constantly reminded that this is an arrested adolescent's revenge fantasy. Though Barbara Bach puts in an appearance as the cautious wifey-girlfriend, this is a boy's movie: her commonsensical admonishments are blown off for pure jingo jabberwocky.

Good thing she's not around for our subject's subsequent effort, The Big Racket. This one depicts, yes, a massive protection racket that's threatening to paralyze Italy–never mind that there are barely a dozen unruly thugs spanning a couple of city blocks at best. We are assured by Inspector Nico Palmieri (Fabio Testi) that a rich English no-goodnik is plotting to unite various criminal factions in order to own the nation, so it's off to unethical work to weed out the syndicate. His illegal means include arresting various racketeering victims to facilitate clandestine meetings and allying with criminals like affable pickpocket Pepe (Vincent Gardenia) in order to penetrate the evildoers' lair. People die needlessly, of course, meaning Nico gets his walking papers and has to finish the job with a rag-tag group of misfits who, criminal and victim alike, are past victims of the syndicate.

The fascist shape-shifting of Street Law is equally pronounced here, and possibly even more ludicrous. By the time of the risible finale–in which it's clear that people are getting shot purely through the miracle of montage and not because they're actually within shooting range–you've been put through your paces with a film that is disgusted with crime but somehow can't look away when a prominent skeet-shooter's wife is raped and burned alive or Pepe's nephew is crushed to death under an angry mob. The lead-up to the final shootout is basically contrived to destroy any respect for the rule of law–which is bizarre, considering that lack of order is precisely the target of his rage. Castellari childishly wants things both ways (protection for himself regardless of whether it means trampling the rights of whomever gets in his way), and he looks pretty silly in light of the resulting mishmash. Which can be entertaining, but it doesn't hold his argument together.

The director manages to keep his lines somewhat straight in The Heroin Busters. Testi returns as deep-undercover cop Fabio, backed by barking-dog superior Mike Hamilton (Blow-Up's David Hemmings) as they try to smash the nerve center of a heroin ring. To be honest, many of their methods (such as dressing criminals up as cops and raiding the evidence-room stash) aren't kosher, but at least they're calling it by-the-book: in the Castellari universe, this is something approaching progress. Fabio convinces drug management that he's the real thing and figures out who the top dogs are, but naturally his cover is waiting to be blown, thus occasioning a pointlessly extended chase-and-shoot scene that gets more poorly staged as it progresses. While things may not strictly speaking be legal, this is the only law the director can get behind–one without all that pesky red tape.

Unfortunately, this means that his one trump card–logical derangement–is nowhere to be found. Where Street Law and The Big Racket are amusing for the complete lack of sanity involved, this one's more button-down, less ridiculous and thus less entertaining. Hemmings earns his paycheck in the pissed-off superior role, yet the whole thing is just too earthbound to be much fun; you mark time as the baddies get wind of the truth and the whole production trots across the countryside in hot pursuit. You'd think that a film scored by Goblin would at least have a pulse, but as the band has provided exactly twelve bars of music, you wind up groaning when the same repetitive percolation blasts through the soundtrack. If there's a title among this trio that completists can live without, it's The Heroin Busters–not that completists are listening to mere critical clay.

THE DVDs
The three films look alike on DVD, where they're accorded Tiffany transfers from Blue Underground largely indistinguishable from each other. Letterboxed at 1.85:1 (and enhanced for 16×9 displays), the presentations share deep, lustrous tones (especially important with the sticky hues of 1970s stock), excellent fine detail, and superb saturation. Only The Heroin Busters falls down slightly, with a hint of edge enhancement on bright colours. All three have terrific Dolby 2.0 mono soundtracks, uniformly clear and round without lapsing into tinniness or muffled tones.

Extras break down as follows:

STREET LAW

"Laying Down the Law: Interviews with Franco Nero and Enzo G. Castellari"
In separate interviews, the director and star discuss the various threads of production. Not surprisingly, Castellari immediately pledges allegiance to American pop and claims that his films are actually westerns "with alpha Romeos." He and Nero also try–feebly–to defend the film's non-political-position, Nero embarrassing himself by relating a story of a lawsuit that dragged on for 15 years. Still, they're all business when it comes to production details, and they clearly have affection for one another and the undertaking of the film.

Director's Commentary
Blue Underground head honcho William Lustig prods Castellari (and son Andrea Gerolomi) to discuss the vagaries of Street Law, though what sticks is Lustig's incredulity at the director's shooting auto stunts in the middle of real traffic and the fact that Death Wish came out after the film discussed. This isn't a terribly detailed yakker, more about enthusiasm–for the fast cutting, for the people of main location Genoa–than about solid technical information.

A trailer and a TV spot round out the platter.

THE BIG RACKET

Director's Commentary
David Gregory moderates the memory-jogging this time around, to better effect: the interviewer gets more out of the pair, such as an explication of the opening crime montage, the decision to shoot in Italian rather than English, and the deployment of stunt performers as actor/thugs. Castellari remains imprecise, but a few choice tidbits surface.

Also included: the film's theatrical trailer.

THE HEROIN BUSTERS

Director's Commentary
Gregory does the honours again–there's even a joke about the commentary they've recorded for The Big Racket–but with less happy results. The track is completely unfocused, and there are precious few pieces of important information. Expect to hear that David Hemmings is a nice guy (and surprising action performer) as well as some trainspotting of regulars and family members. A disappointment.

Again, the trailer caps things off.

• Street Law
  103 minutes; NR; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Mono); DVD-9; Region-free; Blue Underground
• The Big Racket
  106 minutes; NR; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Mono); DVD-9; Region-free; Blue Underground
• The Heroin Busters
  93 minutes; NR; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Mono); DVD-9; Region-free; Blue Underground