DON’T
SHOOT ON CHILDREN (1978) is yet
another crimeslime obscurity that turned up in English thanks (!) to the once-indispensable
wonders of Greek videocassette.
As the opening credits unfold, various newspaper
headlines flash across the screen, which detail the exploits of children
throughout Italy, but this rather arresting credit sequence rapidly goes
nowhere, and its relation to the rest of the film is only tenuous at best. Instead, the film focuses its attention on
Dino (Giancarlo Prete), who works at a ceramics factory trying to support his
family, which includes his ailing father (Giampiero Albertini) – who has cancer
after years of working in the mines – and his delinquent brother Marco (Marco Gelardini). When
Dino is laid-off from work, his father’s condition takes a turn
for the worse and he is admitted to a hospital, but at the same time, he is also reacquainted
with Beaumont (Italo Gasperini), an old friend who forces him to re-think the straight-and-narrow with a quick-scheme robbery. Meanwhile,
in a not-so-interesting subplot, Marco and his buddies merely loiter in the
streets getting up to no good – either smokin’ dope or buzzing aimlessly
through the streets on their motorcycles – which only frustrates both his
brother and father. As expected,
Beaumont’s plan begins to fall apart, and in a last-ditch effort, they take a group school kids and their (Antonella Lualdi) hostage.
Like his fellow compadre Demofilo Fidani
(a.k.a. Miles Deem), director Gianni Crea directed several low-budget
westerns, and like Fidani, Crea was somewhat out of his element when
helming non-western fare. DON’T SHOOT AT CHILDREN is his only crime film and, like his many lowly westerns, it’s also a decidedly threadbare production. Upon closer inspection, this rather poorly-paced effort has more in common with the overly melodramatic sceneggiata or cinema napoletana than your typical urban crime picture; Dino losing his job with his father in
the hospital, and forced moralistic coda about one’s choices in life are typical plot points of any sceneggiata.
Future action star Giancarlo Prete (sometimes billed as Timothy Brent for much of his '80s output), tries in vain to inject some pathos into his role, but
ultimately the tired screenplay – also by Crea – gives him very little to do. Frequent crimeslime character
actor Giampiero Albertini is also completely wasted as he lays in a hospital
bed for most of the film’s duration while the usually captivating Eleonora
Giorgi is given a throwaway part as Dino’s girlfriend. Italo
Gasperini, who also ‘starred’ alongside Richard Harrison in Mario Pinzauti’s
rarely-seen CLOUZOT E C. CONTRO BORSALINO E C. (1977), is suitably scummy
as the primary – and very manipulative – villain Beaumont, the pronunciation of
whose name sounds more like “Bimbo” (!) than Beaumont in the clumsy English
dubbing.
This decades-old VHS tape from Video Alsen
was, like most Greek videocassettes, in English with Greek subtitles and
fullscreen, cropping Maurizio Centini’s photography from the intended 1.85:1
aspect ratio. This was also available on Italian language
videocassette from New Pentax.
