Agostina Belli Movies

This Italian mafia melodrama stars two American-expatriate leading men, Arthur Kennedy and John Saxon. Kennedy stars as a mafia don known as Ferrante. The crimes committed in Ferrante's name are monstrous, and at least one of them is bound to boomerang disastrously. While its derivative plotline is unremarkable, Family Killer is distinguished by its number of alias. Originally released as Baciamo Lemani, the film was also shipped out as Ferrante, Mafia War and (presumably very briefly) Kiss My Hand. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

During the five years he was in prison, Alfredo's (Johnny Dorelli) wife Adelina (Agostina Belli) and son have gone to live with a stable, non-criminal man -- a taxi driver. Now that Alfredo is out, he wants her again. After a series of failed attempts even to meet with her, she finally meets up with him as he attends his dying mother. Despite his past betrayals, his vast charm and the numerous examples of his devotion to her warm Adelina's heart to him again, and she begins a series of secret "liaisons" with her own husband. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A doctor turned detective (Claudio Gora) tries to cure a young alcoholic from his disturbing thoughts of suicide. David (Renaud Verley) is traumatized when a woman he picks up for sex kills herself in his presence. The doctor's only clues are the nude photos of the dead woman in various states of bondage. Knowing the killer must be the photographer, he hires a woman to pose for erotic pictures in an effort to locate the killer and stop the young man from sliding into irrevocable insanity. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In a provincial town, before Mussolini's Ethiopian adventure, Camola (Aldo Maccione) a card-playing lothario, scores comedic points in his pursuit of the town's attractive women. Somehow this charming rogue maintains his personal and amatory independence amid the apparently strict social rules of his locality and his times. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Claudia is on a pilgrimage to the mountain site where her son was killed in an auto accident. Once in the area, she begins to see a young lad who closely resembles her lost son. Except for footprints in the snow, no one else sees him, and it begins to appear that she is either haunted or crazy. When she returns home, it becomes necessary to ask who poisoned her husband and family dog. When she later leaves town, was the boy in the car seat next to her there all along, or did he just appear? ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

American and Venezuelan foreigners try to steal coveted seeds from a rubber-tree plantation in this action-adventure saga. They battle crocodiles, Indian attacks, slave revolts, and a director who insisted on putting disco music to a 19th-century setting. The two heroes are hidden by a concubine who seeks vengeance against her cruel plantation owner. A rape scene appears to have been added merely for exploitation value. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

A man facing a possible brush with death decides to help another in a similar situation in this drama from Italy. Lorenzo (Fabio Volo) grew up in a working-class household, and from a young age he was determined to make something of himself. By the estimation of most people, Lorenzo has succeeded; he's a lawyer with a lucrative practice, he owns a fine home, and he has a beautiful girlfriend, Silvia (Anita Caprioli). However, one day Lorenzo has a sudden blackout, and wakes up in a hospital where doctors are giving him a battery of tests, believing he may have a serious brain tumor. Spending his days in the hospital doesn't agree with Lorenzo, but the days pass a bit more quickly when he finds himself sharing a room with Giovanni (Ninetto Davoli), a truck driver who strikes up a fast friendship with the lawyer. Giovanni isn't sure how long he has to live, and confesses that he wants to mend fences with his daughter Tresy (Tresy Taddei), who he hasn't seen in years. With nothing to do but find out if he has a tumor or not, Lorenzo checks himself out of the hospital and travels to Umbria in hopes of finding Tresy and arranging a reunion between her and her father. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The luridly titled Italian/French/German thriller Blood in the Streets went into production under the more restrained cognomen The Revolver. Oliver Reed plays a prison official whose wife is kidnapped. The price for her return is the release of incarcerated criminal Fabio Testi. When it becomes obvious that Testi's former cohorts plan to murder him once he's set free, Reed and Testi team up to foil the baddies. Blood in the Streets poses as an anti-gun tract, but its plot is still resolved by Oliver Reed wielding a weapon. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A young woods-walking female scientist tangles with a roving murderer when she's just trying to do her job. ~ All Movie Guide

Lina Wertmuller's fifth feature, The Seduction of Mimi, stars the director's favorite leading man, Giancarlo Giannini. Giannini plays the muddler of the title, who can't keep apace with the exigencies of a cruel, callous society (this character would be honed to perfection in Wertmuller's subsequent Seven Beauties); his political and sexual ignorance land him in hot water time and again. Wertmuller devotes much of the picture's running time to lengthy monologues and diatribes involving sex and politics; the film attained notoriety for its infamous sequence of Giannini bedding an obese woman. Wertmuller won a Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her work in this picture. Originally titled Mimi Mettalurgio Ferito nell'Onore, the film has also been released as Mimi the Metalworker and Wounded in Honor. It was remade (very loosely) by Richard Pryor as Which Way Is Up? (1977). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide