Loaded Guns ( Colpo in canna)
Italy, 1975
Director: Fernando Di Leo
Screenwriter: Fernando Di Leo, Enzo Dell’Aquila
Genre: Polizziesco, comedy
Soundtrack composer: Luis Bacalov
Production company: Daunia Film
Cast:
Ursula Andress (Nora Green)
Woody Strode (Silvera)
Marc Porel (Manuel)
Isabella Biagini (Rosy)
Lino Banfi (Commissario Calogero)
Aldo Giuffrè (Don Calò)
Carla Brait (Carmen)
Maurizio Arena (Father Best)
Plot
Nora Green works as a stewardess for an airline. One of the flights she travels on takes her to the city of Naples. As soon as she arrives at the airport, she bids farewell to the rest of the crew and sets out on an errand: a passenger has asked her to deliver a letter to a certain Silvera. He has his offices in a circus. Nora arrives there and introduces herself to Silvera and his men, a gangster-like and sullen-looking bunch. Silvera, the leader of the group, is a huge mulatto with a face of few friends. When Nora hands him the letter, he pretends to leave, but the gang members hold her back. The letter contained a death threat from a rival of Silvera’s known as “El Americano”. He informs her of his intention to take control of his business in Naples…
Silvera and his men suspect that the Americano is one of the passengers who arrived on the same flight as Nora, and that it was he who personally gave the letter to the stewardess. So, the gangsters interrogate her but only get a very vague description of the individual from Nora. They decide to let her go to her hotel, but they will follow her at all times, convinced that she will lead them to the Americano (they must neutralize the potential enemy and none of them know what he looks like because no one has seen him so far).
As she is leaving the circus, Nora faints (as she has been shaken and mistreated by the criminals). A slimy pervert who works in the circus tries to abuse her while she is unconscious, but a young man saves her and takes her home. He is the trapeze artist Manuel, one of the stars of the circus. Silvera’s men, who are always watching, follow them by car.
Nora, very light on her hooves, soon makes a voluptuous pass at the gallant acrobat, who insists that the police must be notified of what has happened, and the two head for the police station (always with Silvera’s people on the lookout). There they present the confusing case to Commissioner Calogero, a man with little desire to work, who tells them that he can do little for them…
The situation becomes more and more complicated for the poor stewardess. In addition to Silvera and the Americano, there is another candidate to become the “king of crime” in Naples, a brawler known as Don Calò, who wants his adversaries to destroy each other and declares his intention not to intervene. The three bosses, including the mysterious Americano whom no one knows, are on the lookout for the curvaceous blonde, who unwittingly and by chance has become involved in their machinations and power struggles.
Later on, Nora and her protector go to the show of Rosy, a monologue clown friend of Manuel’s who always “knows everything about everyone”. According to her own statements, she has been a lover of Silvera and then of Don Calò (also of the playboy Manuel, by the way), she knows the secrets of one and the other (people who know so much don’t usually last long in the underworld). All three aspire to take absolute control of the lucrative drug business.
Rosy tells Nora that her life is in danger. But the stewardess, instead of being intimidated, flirts with all those who follow her; with Silvera’s men, with Calò’s men, with the police…
Comment
Before watching this film I was already forewarned that it was not a “serious” film like the rest of Fernando Di Leo’s filmography, but a comic, parodic polizziesco, similar in style to those starring Bud Spencer and Terence Hill or Tomas Milian playing his popular character of “Monezza”.
With tangled situations, easy jokes, “sexy comedy all’italiana”, car chases and large doses of slapstick, “Colpo in canna” entertains but doesn’t leave a mark. It is undoubtedly the weakest of Di Leo’s nine films that I have had the opportunity to see so far, but that does not mean that it is bad, because the bar is very high: most of Di Leo’s proposals (from “Milano Calibro 9” to “Avere vent’anni”) are true masterpieces.
Ursula Andress, here a mature but still good-looking woman (she was in her forties at the time of filming), plays the stewardess Nora. Like many of Di Leo’s female characters, she embodies the archetype of the femme fatale, the “emancipated and self-confident” woman, but without losing her femininity; a woman who is not shy about sex and who likes to use men as she pleases… In this sense, Nora’s character is analogous to the one played by Lilli Carati in “Avere vent’anni” (1978) or Paola in “Vacanze per un massacro” (1980).
An erotic myth of the late fifties and early sixties, the Swiss Ursula Andress also performed as an actress in other Italian films such as “La montagna del dio cannibale” (Sergio Martino, 1978).
African-American Woody Strode plays the mulatto gangster Silvera. Strode came to the world of cinema from athletics (similar to bodybuilders Steve Reeves or Reg Park), and participated as a supporting actor in famous films such as “Spartacus” (Stanley Kubrick, 1960) or “Once upon a time in the West” (Sergio Leone, 1968).
For his part, the commissioner (a character that always has to exist in a polizziesco, even if it is humorous) is played by the famous Italian comedian Lino Banfi. It is very curious for the Spanish viewer to note the enormous similarity between his character, the commissary Calogero, and the eccentric humorist from Malaga, Chiquito de la Calzada (in physical appearance and general appearance), who would not become famous until 20 years after this film.
The soundtrack was composed by the Argentine Luis Enriquez Bacalov, Di Leo’s regular collaborator and author of the exceptional music of “Milano Calibro 9” (later recycled for other later films by the same director).
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