SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL (1958) *** OUT OF ****

 The bounty hunter ranks as one of many stock characters in both American westerns and European horse operas. Universally reviled in virtually every American western until Sergio Leone's "For A Few Dollars More" (1965), this stock character emerged as a protagonist rather than an antagonist during the Spaghetti western craze. In most Hollywood westerns, the bounty hunter was almost always unsavory, untrustworthy, greedy and more often peripheral. This murdering scum had no qualms about shooting his quarry in the back rather than bringing him in alive. One of the early 'sympathy for the bounty hunter' westerns was director Gene Fowler Jr.'s "Showdown at Boot Hill," a Regalscope release. Lensed in glorious black & white by John M. Nickolaus Jr., this low-budget oater looks simply spectacular with its 2.35.1 widescreen imagery. Chiefly known for his prolific television work, Nickolaus Jr. served as a lenser on some vintage 1960's westerns, horror chillers and sci-fi sagas. Among them Roger Corman's "The Terror" (1960), "Young Guns of Texas" (1962), "The Day Mars Invaded Earth" (1962), "House of the Damned" (1963), "Guns of Diablo" (1964), and "Four Fast Guns" (1960). Sure, these low-budget, drive-in movies amounted to nothing memorable, but "Showdown" stands out from the pack. Fowler, Jr., and Nickolaus Jr., have taken Louis Vittes' intriguing premise and enhanced it with suspenseful pacing and attractive visuals. There are no bland compositions in the entire picture. The dusty little hamlet of a town that "Showdown at Boot Hill" plays out in has an authentic touch to it. Of course, since this is a Regal Pictures release, a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox, the town now appeared previous Fox horse operas and later in Edward Dmytryk's star-studded "Warlock" (1959) with Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, and Anthony Quinn. Actually, the Anthony Mann western "The Tin Star" presented a sympathetic portrait of a bounty hunter who

"Showdown" boasts Charles Bronson's solid, steely-eyed performance as a tough guy in his first starring role. Long typecast as a villain, Bronson now played a sympathetic protagonist, Marshal Luke Welsh, who had tracked down a desperado, Con Maynor (Thomas Browne Henry of "The Domino Kid"), to the sleepy hamlet. He confronts Maynor in the dining room of the hotel and kills him in self-defense. Unfortunately, for Luke, nobody wants to identify Maynor, so our hero cannot collect his $200 bounty money. Virtually everybody in town loathes Luke vigorously except Sally Crane (Fintan Meyler of "Zero Hour!"), a plain-Jane type who waits tables in the hotel dining room. Unbelievably, Welsh winds up taking Ms. Crane to a town dance, but townspeople shun them and drive them out. During one scene in Crane's hotel room, we learn Luke has always felt self-conscious about his short stature. Similarly, Sally is ashamed of herself, because she was the illegitimate child of a dance hall tramp, Jill Crane (Carole Mathews of "Swamp Women"), who warbles songs for her customers in her saloon. Poor Sally struggles to live under the stigma of disgrace in the town's eyes. Before long, Luke and Sally are attracted to each other after a brash first encounter where Welsh barges into her hotel room. Of course, by this time, Welsh has outdrawn every foe in a gunfight and has established a reputation. He displayed his lightning swift draw as one gunman, Sloane (Robert Hutton of "The Slime People"), could later attest from first-hand knowledge. Welsh blew Sloane's gun out of his hand in a duel. Moments before this shooting, Welsh had gunned down his quarry in a saloon shootout. Scenarist Louis Vittes' screenplay contains psychological elements, tragedy, violence, and romance. The ending is rather offbeat, and what happens to our hero is a welcome change, though hardcore western afficionados may feel cheated by the outcome.

WHITE COMMANCHE **1/2 OUT OF ****

 William Shatner plays a dual role as half-breed twin brothers in Spanish helmer José Briz Méndez’s hell-bent-for-leather sagebrusher, “White Comanche,” co-starring Joseph Cotton and Rosanna Yanni. Shatner made this low-budget oater while on hiatus from “Star Trek.” Although neither Méndez nor co-scripter Manuel Gómez Rivera earned any writing credit as scribes, they must have retooled the original screenplay by longtime Hollywood writers Robert I. Holt and Frank Gruber. These two Yanks boasted far more writing credits than Mendez and Rivera together. Indeed, apart from writing with Méndez, Rivera had only one earlier script credit, and it was for a short subject! Comparably, Holt had penned teleplays for many popular, prime-time television series, including “Hunter,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “Cannon,” and “S.W.A.T.” Comparably, not only was Frank Gruber a published author with several western novels to his credit, but he also inked scripts for several episodic western television shows, among them “Shotgun Slade,” “Tales of Wells Fargo,” “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp,” and Rory Calhoun’s “The Texan.” Presumably, since he was a specialist in the field of frontier western fiction, Gruber may have polished this horse opera. 

Neither brother backs down from their inevitable clash in “White Comanche,” and the conflict ends efficiently with a showdown about a half-hour into the action. Basically, a Native American chieftain who craves Peyote with a passion, Notah (William Shatner of “The Outrage”), wants to wipe out all whites! Incidentally, for those who know little about it, peyote is a hallucinogenic substance containing mescaline. Moreover, apart from a renegade or two, Notah’s tribe stands behind him. Unlike his bad-tempered brother, Johnny Moon (William Shatner) remains the level-headed one of the twins. Nevertheless, he realizes with grim fortitude he must kill the bloodthirsty Notah before his unhinged sibling incites a frontier holocaust. 

Mendez introduces us to Notah as he waylays a stagecoach. The chieftain orders his braves to kill the passengers in the coach as well as the driver and the shotgun guard. Just before he is about to depart from the scene of this cold-blooded carnage, Notah catches a whiff of perfume and discovers a lady, Kelly (Rosanna Yanni of “Sonny and Jed”), hidden in the coach. Predictably, after he chases her down in the rocks, Notah rapes this frightened dame but then surprisingly turns her loose! Afterward, she manages to make it back to the town of Rio Hondo on her own where she works in a saloon. She swears the town lawman, Sheriff Logan (Joseph Cotton of “Citizen Kane”), to silence about her ordeal. Clearly, Kelly doesn’t want her boss to know about the unfortunate circumstances of her encounter with the renegade Comanche who defiled her. 

Meanwhile, Johnny Moon is tracking down his nefarious twin brother when a group of vigilantes jump him. Mind you, this constitutes a case of mistaken identity since these owlhoots plan to string up Johnny because they believe is Notah. In their struggle to slip a noose around his neck, Johnny manages to escape his fumbling captors. The hangmen catch up their mounts, but they fail to capture our hero. Later, Johnny rides into Notah’s village and challenges to him to a duel in Rio Hondo.

 

Shatner does an adequate job as both hero and villain. Literally, he turns in a performance reminiscent of Robert Lewis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." When he is decked out in cowboy duds, his Johnny Moon is "Dr. Jekyll." Johnny is the good guy, while Notah is "Mr. Hyde." Hollywood had not perfected the technology to place an actor facing himself in the same shot when “White Comanche” came out, or the producers couldn't afford it, so we never see the faces of both brothers eyeballing each other in the same shot. The writers do furnish some expository information about their lives. Eventually, Johnny Moon reveals his eyes are blue, while Notah has black eyes. Essentially, Shatner appears to have performed all his stunts. Watch the saloon brawl. During one moment in this fracas, Shatner and his opponent swap blows with each other in real time, and the camera follows them without cutting away from them as they demolish saloon. Shatner’s face is always visible during this white-knuckled donnybrook. He spends quite a bit of time also in the saddle. At one point, Notah hurls himself from the horse he is riding to one of the team pulling the stagecoach. He brings those horses to a halt, while his braves start slaughtering passengers. 

 

The final showdown in this nimble, 94-minute opus resembles a Medieval jousting tournament. The twins charge each other on horseback down the main street of Rio Hondo, slinging lead at each other. To heighten the suspense, the filmmakers have Shatner riding bare-chested, so it isn’t immediately clear who dies until the moment of revelation. Nevertheless, Johnny Moon does kill his blood brother. “White Comanche” boasts solid production values. The rugged Spanish scenery substituted suitably for the old West, but some goofs are apparent in the frantic production schedule of his western. Meantime, Joseph Cotton is still spry enough to indulge in a shootout or two and intervene on Johnny’s behalf when everybody in town believes Johnny is Notah.

Altogether, the formulaic “While Comanche” is hardly Oscar winning material, but at least it isn’t an embarrassing oater. Since this low-budget film was shot quickly to accommodate Shatner, he doesn’t adopt the traditional, fright wigs worn by his braves. Instead, Shatner maintains his “Star Trek” haircut as Notah, with the mere addition of a tribal headband. The only concession is Notah wears war paint smeared. Veteran lenser Francisco Fraile’s cinematography is flawless. Between Fraile and Méndez, the camera is always in the appropriate place to cover the action. Unfortunately, composer Jean Ledrut’s mundane orchestral score consists of somebody thumping monotonous cords on a base fiddle. Otherwise, production values stand up to scrutiny for a movie that amounts to a curiosity piece in Shatner’s resume.

STRANGE ALIBI (1941) *** OUT OF ****

 “Bullet Scars” director David Ross Lederman’s ballistically-paced, B-movie thriller “Strange Alibi” casts Warner Brothers contract actor Arthur Kennedy as rogue detective Joe Geary. Geary staggers the chief of police with a punch in the face in front of departmental witnesses after the chief questioned his moral integrity. Police Chief  Sprague (Jonathan Hale of “The Black Parachute”) refers to Geary’s chummy rapport with known criminals. Naturally, our hero is suspended. However, things aren’t as incriminating as they appear. Later, we learn Sprague conjured up this elaborate ruse in a desperate effort to unearth corruption within his department. Unfortunately, our hero cannot risk letting his devoted girlfriend, Alice Devlin (Joan Perry of “Shakedown”), in on this secret, so she worries about him. Meantime, the mob welcomes Geary with open arms, and he proves his worth as a tenacious bill collector.

Meantime, notorious gambler King Carney (Herbert Rawlinson of “Dark Victory”) has returned to town. Carney has agreed to sing like a canary for the grand jury! No sooner has he arrived than somebody mows him down in a barrage of scorching lead. When Carney dies, the prosecution’s case collapses. At the same time, the police search for Carney’s driver Louie Butler. However, before they can grille Butler, the guy hangs himself in his cell! What nobody knows until the end is Reddick killed both Carney and Butler! The coroner has his suspicions, but he cannot prove Butler didn’t kill himself. As it turns out, another hoodlum fresh out of the pen, Benny McKaye (Joe Downing of “Danger in the Air”), may know something but he refuses to talk. Geary is poised to expose the corrupt officials in the department when he arranges a secret rendezvous with the Chief. Tragically, everything goes to haywire. Another high-ranking but corrupt cop, Lieutenant-Detective Pagle (Stanley Andrews of “Cry Terror”), barges into the room, blasting away at Sprague and hitting him. The chief gets off one shot, but his bullet accidentally strikes Geary rather than the diabolical Pagle. Strewn face down on the floor with a head wound from where Sprague’s stray slug grazed him, Geary lies unconscious at Pagle’s feet. Naturally, Pagle puts the gun that he riddled Sprague with in Joe’s hand, so when the police swarm into the premises, they believe Geary killed the police chief. Predictably, Geary protests his innocence vehemently at his trial. He divulges Sprague’s decision to use him as an undercover agent to smoke out corruption. Nevertheless, the jury sentences him to life!

Mind you, this scenario about a cashiered flatfoot infiltrating the mob is as antiquated as Methuselah. Nevertheless, time after time, Hollywood has resorted to this proven formula with success. Typically, the hero and his confidante are the only people privy to their plan. The chances of their best laid plans backfiring on them is ever-present. Moreover, if anything goes amiss, the hero will find himself knee deep in danger, unless his confidante stashed evidence of their collusion. Since Sprague trusted nobody, both Geary and he were running an extreme risk. Since nobody can corroborate Geary’s revelations, our hero cannot convince anybody of his innocence.

Geary lands in prison where he tangles with a sadistic guard, Monson (Howard Da Silva of “1776”), who terrorizes him enough that our hero plans to break out of stir with another convict, Tex (John Ridgely of “The Big Sleep”), who unbeknownst to anybody has stashed a car for this very occasion. During their careening getaway with cops racing after them like maniacs on motorcycles and in cruisers, Geary risks their lives with his daredevil driving. Recklessly, Geary avoids a collision with a speeding train at a railroad crossing. Quickly, the authorities resume their pursuit. Sadly, the second time Geary tries to pull this death-defying feat, our protagonist cannot beat the locomotive and careens off the road and skids to a halt. Alas, Tex doesn’t survive this close encounter. Nevertheless, Geary manages to get back to town into one piece. Imagine his chagrin when he learns McKaye, the only man who can clear him, has died! For all practical purposes, Geary’s goose looks cooked!

Nevertheless, our hero improvises and sets McKaye’s corpse in a car and then parks the vehicle in plain sight on a city street. Now, the audacious Geary surprises the reform-minded governor, Phelps (Charles Trowbridge of “The Paleface”), in the latter’s hotel room. Holding him at gunpoint, Geary dopes out in detail his own outlandish ploy. Although McKaye is kaput, Geary persuades Phelps to notify the police about the gangster’s presence in a parked car and prompts them to send out men to arrest the hoodlum. Since the police believe McKaye may still be alive,  Reddick and Pagle decide to handle it themselves but they end up incriminating themselves. Imagine Phelps’ shock when he watches the cops dispatched to arrest McKaye blast the car with a fusillade of gunfire nobody could survive. Mind you, not only does Phelps witness this homicidal act, but he can also identify both Reddick and Pagle. Now, the shoe is on the other foot, and the foolish villains have incriminated themselves!

Clocking in efficiently at an adrenaline-fueled 63 minutes, “Strange Alibi” lives up to its title. In fact, the words ‘strange alibi’ appear in the newspaper flashes inserted during Geary’s trial. Arthur Kennedy delivers another charismatic performance as the wronged hero, while Howard De Silva stands out as Geary’s abrasive guard in the prison scenes. Director David Ross Lederman never lets the momentum slacken during this slam-bang, white-knuckled, hellbent, urban crime saga.

 

"THE BIKERIDERS" (2023) ** OUT OF ****

Danny Lyon's 1968 photojournalistic book about a Chicago biker club inspired "Mud" writer & director Jeff Nichols to make "The Bikeriders," starring Austin Butler, Jody Comer, and Tom Hardy. This nostalgic but lackluster, 116-minute epic chronicles the evolution of the fictitious Vandal's Motorcycle Club from its origins in the 1960s to the 1980s. Nicholas pays tribute to Martin Scorsese's classic Mafia crime thriller "Goodfellas" (1990) with the pervasive use of flashbacks, a gabby narrator, and patch work of character interviews to forge an ethnographic portrait of early biker subculture. Although Nicholas humanizes these counter-culture ruffians, letting then chew the scenery about themselves, the film seems to start and stall out and it never maintains sufficient headlong momentum. "Midnight Special" cinematographer Adam Stone, who has shot many of Nichols' films, lenses scenic long shots of these bikers as they cruise through sun-drenched, mid-western America. You can savor the spirit of freedom they bask in on these open roads. Nevertheless, the spectacle of these steel horses cannot compensate for the dire lack of drama. Mind you, gearheads and car-geeks will drool over vintage bikes and cars. Several bikers die tragically. Like Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper), the cross-country heroes exploring America in "Easy Rider," the Vandals suffer fates nobody could foresee. One biker who swears he would die first rather than shed his colors capitulates at fadeout. Nobody is really happy long in this journey from one era to another.

"The Bikeriders" shares little in common with those genre-flavored exploitation biker pictures that followed the 1969 success of "Easy Rider." Primarily, Nicholas illustrates the origins of this Chicag0-based club. While watching the iconic black & white biker saga "The Wild One" (1951) on a small television in his family living room, trucker Johnny (Tom Hardy of "Venom") decides to launch his own bike riding club. Whenever anybody wants to challenge his leadership, Johnny promises to give them a chance to topple him. Eventually, Johnny buys a bar and holds meetings there with suds flowing. He installs a phone so anybody who gets arrested or injured in a fight can contact club members. Occasionally, we see Johnny and his followers rumbling through Chicago's concrete canyons in an impressive display of bikers riding in formation. The sight of these noisy choppers growling like mechanical lions captures the heart of a discontented twentysomething who shares Johnny's aspirations.

Meantime, the second protagonist is Benny (Austin Butler of "Elvis"), a quiet loner who would rather die than shed his colors. The opening scene in "Bikeriders" depicts the danger of wearing colors in a hostile setting. Benny suffers grievously at the hands of two obnoxious blue-collar thugs. The scene is brutal, perhaps the most visceral in the film, and Nichols reprises this gripping scene later. Watching that scene unfold when Benny refuses to forsake his colors looks like something in "Easy Rider." This is the show-stopping scene in a film that lacks narrative focus. Basically, Benny, Kathy, and Johnny amount to triangular protagonists. Benny and Kathy are an amorous couple, while Johnny is Benny's best friend. Meantime, a gallery of fascinating characters jabber about their exploits, but we rarely see them doing anything more than drinking and boasting. Occasionally, fights break out, but Johnny doesn't line up any kind of genre style enterprise, such as selling narcotics or robbing businesses.

"The Bikeriders" amounts to an inventory of scenes that resemble excerpts from a photo album. The chief drama here is Johnny's fateful decision to turn over the club to someone else since he lacks the vision to take it beyond a social group. The Vandals neither stick up convenience stores nor banks. They don't molest citizens, etc. Benny's worse crime is evading the police during a high-speed chase. They capture him because he runs out of gas! The early Vandals reminded me of Boy Scouts compared to those psychotic cretins that followed in their footsteps. Nicholas indulges in a peripheral kitchen drama when he introduces the chief villain, the Kid (Toby Wallace of "Dark Frontier"), who hails from a broken inner-city home. His father beats his wife without mercy. Repeatedly, the frustrated Kid approaches Johnny about joining the Vandals. Johnny rejects him twice. Eventually, the Kid challenges Johnny. Meantime, Nichols explores the lopsided romance between Benny and Kathy (Jody Comer of "The Free Guy"), with Kathy talking about them during her interviews. Largely speaking, "The Bikeriders" is filtered through Kathy's eyes. Most traditional biker movies are told from a male perspective, but everything here has a feminine slant. More often than not, these interviews feel like repetitive commercials that interfere with the flow of the action.

Mind you, the cast is impressive. As the Vandals' head honcho, Tom Hardy rules his riding club with a passion. Indeed, Hardy gives a marvelous, Marlon Brando-infused performance. After Benny is beaten down at a bar, Johnny and his riders destroy. Spectators stand in a crowd around the bar with firefighters and watch it go up in smoke. Benny emerges as Johnny's closest confidante, but he refuses to replace Johnny as the Vandals' leader. Most of the picnics that the Vandals have amount to garrulous, booze-fueled, gripe sessions. Michael Shannon has a wonderful scene where he explains how he was rejected for military service because he was branded "an undesirable." Ultimately, little about "The Bikeriders" qualifies as either nostalgic or dramatic. Not only does Benny refuse to be the leader, but he also lets Johnny and the Vandals down by not punishing the Kid. Altogether, "The Bikeriders" leaves you feeling indifferent about the fate of these hellions.

"THE GLADIATOR" (1986) MADE FOR TELEVISION *** OUT OF ****

 Any movie veteran director Abel Ferrara of "Bad Lieutenant” fame helms is worth watching at least once, and his competently made-for-TV revenge melodrama, "The Gladiator" proves no exception to this rule. "Wiseguy" star Ken Wahl plays the hard-bitten protagonist, and he delivers a sturdy performance. As older brother Rick Benton, Wahl struggles to raise his younger brother, Jeff (Brian Robbins of "C. H. U. D. II: Bud the Chud") without their parents. He decides to coach Jeff about how to drive since the lad has landed his learner’s permit. Buckling up and cruising out into Los Angeles traffic, Rick reminds the fifteen-year-old to obey the rules of the road. Suddenly, out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, a sleek, black, 1969, Dodge Charger, looking souped up and sinister as a phantom, careens in behind them. After the aggressive Charger rams Jeff twice, the youth accelerates in a desperate effort to elude the homicidal driver. Sadly, Jeff speeds through an intersection, and a semi-truck smashes into him. Not surprisingly, Jeff dies, while Rick wakes up a couple of days later from a coma. Now, our embittered protagonist embarks on a self-appointed mission to track down this anonymous felon known only as “The Skull.” With the help of his long-time buddy Joe Barker (Stan Shaw of "Daylight"), Rick relies on his genius as a custom car designer to modify his two-door, pick-up truck, installing stronger suspension and heavier bumpers as well as equipping it with a police band radio. He searches for the murderous motorist who wheels around town deploying savage “Ben-Hur” blades that telescope from his front hubs during his death dealing escapades. Sometimes, this madman terrorizes other drivers for nothing more than either accidentally bumping his car or he careens up behind them and plows into them, running them off the road.

Meanwhile, an overworked detective, Lieutenant Frank Mason (Robert Culp of "Hickey and Boggs"), has little success with the case. After he recovers from the accident, Rick sits in on a support group of people who lost family members to drunk drivers. Initially, Rick suspected the dastard who brought about the death of his brother was a drunk. Later, he comes to the realization that this isn't the case. Here's the deal, however, the genuine  culprit of this above-average, television quickie doesn't abuse alcohol! Instead, he is a hopeless psycho who preys at random on innocent, unsuspecting victims. By this time, Rick has begun a relationship with a late-night, radio talk show host, Susan Neville (gorgeous Nancy Allen of "RoboCop"), who juggles phone calls from a variety of listeners that are split along the lines of whether the self-professed "Gladiator" as Rick dubs himself is either a vigilante or a menace to society. Inevitably, he emerges as a celebrity in the sense that he patrols the roads to dissuade  drunken drivers from swerving across lanes and killing people. Finally, Rick manages to thwart this madman during a climatic, slam-bang, demolition derby in an automobile junkyard. Moments before this showdown, Rick had phoned Detective Mason and identified himself as the "Gladiator." Like Michael Winner's "Death Wish" starring Charles Bronson, Rick takes it on himself to find his brother's killer. Unlike Bronson, Rick succeeds in bringing the lawbreaker to justice. Unfortunately, not only do we never get a glimpse of this fiend, played by professional stunt car driver Jim Wilkey, but also we never learn what fueled his road rage. For the record, Wilkey drove some of the vehicles in "Mad Max: Fury Road!" This is the only flaw in an otherwise white-knuckled thriller. Although it is a made-for-TV movie, Ferrara never lets the momentum stall in this gripping 94-minute tire shredder of an epic. Interestingly, Ferrara’s film was initially supposed to unspool on the big screen instead of television.

"THE SICILIAN CONNECTION" (1972) *** OUT OF ****

“Blindman” director Ferdinando Baldi’s violent, mafia-themed, narcotics-trafficking thriller “The Sicilian Connection,” starring Ben Gazzara, Steffen Zacharias, and Fausto Tozzi, qualifies as a slam-bang, action-packed saga. Gazzara plays Joe Coppola, an audacious New Yorker who flies to Sicily to establish an opium/morphine/heroin pipeline from Turkey via Sicily, with the Big Apple as the final destination for his contraband. Gazzara is ideally cast as a smiling, thick-skinned criminal of considerable resource who has been engaged in the illicit drug trade for years. Now, Coppola sets out to make a big splash. Nevertheless, in the tradition of all mafia-themed, Euro crime stories, treachery is rampant, since nobody can trust anybody, and surprises constantly keep both criminals and the authorities on a tightrope. The shocking opening essentially foreshadows the shocking finale!

When Baldi helmed this exciting little actioneer, he stuck to the venerable Hollywood edict that ‘crime cannot pay.’ In other words, nobody succeeds in this complicated, multi-million-dollar venture which could serve as a companion piece to Robert Stevenson’s “To The Ends of the Earth” (1946) with Dick Powell, a Treasury Agent who follows the trail of opium from China to Egypt and finally New York. Baldi collaborated on the script with “Hell Raiders of the Deep” scenarist Duilio Coletti, and they keep the surprises coming in this 100-minute gangland opera but never wears out their welcome.

The opening scene of “The Sicilian Connection” is a genuine showstopper. Indeed, this gruesome encounter serves as a template for everything that ensues. An intrepid police inspector interrupts the funeral of a respected high-ranking mafia figure. He demands to examine the funeral permits without considering the plight of the grieving mourners. Not surprisingly, the mafia soldiers and the family attending the funeral are not amused. Nevertheless, they endure his painstaking interference without protest. Just when they think this suspicious cop is going to let them proceed with their funeral, he demands to eyeball the corpse. It seems the corpse was embalmed in Turkey, so now the inspector insists they strip the body. According to the dead man’s papers, he died of a respiratory ailment. Imagine the cop’s curiosity when they open the funeral shroud and discover the pale corpse has a gash running from his throat to his navel. Whoever stitched the dead man’s chest together did a shoddy job. You can see through the crevice in the corpse’s torso to something inside his chest cavity. As it turns out, the inspector was correct in assuming that packets of cocaine were stashed in the corpse. By this time, the mafia lieutenants overseeing the funeral have had enough of their nosey cop. Just as the inspector is congratulating himself on his discovery, he seems to have forgotten that he is alone, by himself, surrounded by the mafia. Suddenly, the mafia soldiers seize him and thrust his protesting arms and legs atop the dead man. Despite his cries of protest, the fear-stricken man struggles in horror as the mafia thugs screw the nails down on the coffin lid and bury their soldier with the crying inspector in the ground.

The next thing we know, we are introduced to Joe Coppola in a Sicilian restaurant. He asks for some coke, and the owner of the restaurant slips him a couple of packets of coke in a folded napkin. Coppola inquires about the whereabouts of a mafia kingpin with whom he can conduct business. Everything treats Coppola with considerable suspicion until they establish his credentials and then they educate him about not only the difficulties of selling him the large quantities that he wants but also the extreme cost and the various people to whom he must ingratiate himself. No, “The Sicilian Connection” is not without some shooting and killing, but it covers the logistics of smuggling the narcotics from Europe into New York.

This is truly an insightful thriller with an ending that you won’t expect.