Slightly better than its predecessor,
Nello Ferrarese’s lamentable GIVE MY
CHILD BACK (a.k.a. I FIGLI NON SI TOCCANO, 1978), Mario
Bianchi’s I GUAPPI NON SI TOCCANO (1979) is yet another zero-budget
effort, this time headlined by Pino Mauro, a Neapolitan crooner who also vied
for the top spot alongside the more popular Mario Merola.
A corpse is found in a
remote quarry and, to the sounds of Tullio De Piscopo’s rather raucous
disco-funk, the police attempt to get on the case, which involves some sort of
turf war between an outfit out of Marseilles led by Lucien Maurice (Pino Mauro)
and Angelo Jacomino (Enzo D’Ausilio), the boss of the local Italian underworld.
Soon thereafter, Tony Lo Bianco
(Gabriele Tinti), who turns out to be a former FBI agent, meets with Ferrari
(Richard Harrison, discount star of several other Bianchi Italocrime efforts
like PROVINCIA VIOLENTA [1978]), some high-ranking commissario
who wants him to infiltrate Lucien’s gang.
Tony eventually gains Lucien’s trust, and during one strange moment, he
and his henchman gawk at Lucien’s pet snake, whose glass cage is mysteriously
placed in the middle of his living room.
During an attempted heist, most of Lucien’s gang are killed, but Tony
and Lucien manage to get away, but due to his injuries, the latter is
rendered virtually comatose while his daughter (Paola Senatore) tends to his
wounds in some cheap safe house. Even
though Tony seems to be pitting both gangs against each other, a lurking assassin (Tommaso Palladino) is mysteriously appears...
Like most of Bianchi’s
Italocrime efforts, this is bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, but at least Bianchi gathered together a fairly interesting cast; and yes, Tinti’s character
really is named Tony Lo Bianco, which
must have been a deliberate touch on the part of screenwriters Antonio Cucca
and Claudio Fragasso. While Tinti
carries the entire film as the rather scruffy protagonist, Pino Mauro, whose sideburns
seem to have grown ever larger with each successive film he starred in, is also
cast against type as a French mobster. Busy
character actor Tommaso Palladino – who always appeared alongside Enrico Maisto
in most Italocrime flicks – appears as the mysterious killer, whose presence is
always accompanied by a strange assortment of electronic noodling on the
soundtrack, and he is certainly one of the more interesting aspects of the film. At the order of his boss – a disembodied
off-screen voice – he will stop at nothing in securing some indeterminate
‘valuable’ documents from Lucien, which eventually leads to the somewhat
expected but convoluted climax.
This is a pretty downbeat
film, which is nicely scored by Tullio De Piscopo, a talented drummer who also
lent his talents to Pasquale Squitieri’s rather gloomy SNIPER
(1978). For I GUAPPI NON SI TOCCANO, De Piscopo’s music definitely lifts
this threadbare production out of the muck, but to be honest, Bianchi’s film does
have its share of delirious moments interspersed amongst the tedium, and for
those in a particularly forgiving frame of mind, it’s still palatable enough
for Italocrime or Eurotrash junkies, although an English subtitled-version
would be most welcome.
Released on German VHS by
SBS as Die UNGREIFBAREN (roughly
translated as “The Intangible”), this German-dubbed tape is of comparable
quality to the New Pentax VHS out of Italy; both are full-screen and are about
as good as can be expected.
