Mario Bava
Cani arrabbiati

This May 1st in quarantine, we revisit one of those classic films considered "cursed" before it forcefully entered the collective imagination of Italian cinema and beyond: "Cani Arrabbiati," better known as "Semaforo Rosso" from television broadcasts, is the twenty-first official feature film by, in my opinion, the most scandalously underrated director ever in Italy: Mario Bava. By underrated, I mean in Italy, because in other countries in Europe, especially France, he is considered a true craftsman, especially in the field of cinematography. Although the film dates back to 1974, it had to wait a full twenty-one years to be released, thanks to actress Lea Krueger (God bless her) who took an interest in distributing it in physical copy.

Rome, the seventies: four bandits commit a robbery, one of them is killed, the remaining three take a woman and a man named Riccardo, with a sick child he is taking to the hospital, hostage in a car. The genius of the plot is all here in the end: a road movie as a narrative structure, where the characters and the nuances of the characters will be thrown out little by little through the situations the film will encounter along the way, with unexpected bursts of violence, a couple of truly memorable scenes up to one of the best endings in the history of cinema.

The film is almost entirely set in a car; this car becomes a macro-dimension in which our characters will move. Mario Bava stretches the times, stuns the two hostages, a man and a woman, through the violent language and unhealthy behavior of the three criminals, all with fictitious names: on one side 32, played by George Eastman (a fetish actor of another great like Joe D'Amato), the largest of the group, not to mention obsessed with women, to sum it up in a few words; on the other side Bisturi, played by an anthology Don Backy, a cold, deranged, bipolar character but with a massive background. Both are led by the group leader Dottore, played by Maurice Poli (thankfully still alive), deliberately kept mono-expressive because of his position, although he is the most reasonable of the three. The two hostages are Maria, played by the aforementioned Lea Krueger, who, despite having few dialogues, manages to communicate her continuous discomfort through her gaze, and a very good Riccardo Cucciolla in the role of Riccardo, initially a role entrusted to actor Al Lettieri, fired on the spot for showing up drunk on the first day of shooting. Ironically, perhaps it's better this way.

The atmosphere breathed in the film is not just rotten but manages to immerse the viewer in a scorching and suffocating climate, starting simply from the details of the soaked clothes of our characters to the foreheads dripping with sweat. But besides the characterization of the characters, the strong point of the film is precisely the staging of the direction: Bava proves to be a timeless monster, accompanied by his son Lamberto as assistant director. It's absurd how, despite being from 1974, even though shot with a budget that's not even half of "La Vita è Bella," it manages to overturn the rules of Italian police films, maintaining an out-of-time quality and endurance, and how it has greatly influenced the pulp and action style in international Series A cinema, just as "Reazione A Catena" did for the slasher genre. The internal irony in the dialogue of the characters with their fictitious names, as well as the structure of the screenplay itself, will be a study source for Quentin Tarantino, and especially for his "Reservoir Dogs" (with the term "dog" within, not by chance), with its breathtaking twists and sequences of violence shot with impeccable mastery, particularly the murder in the first minutes at the supermarket parking lot. The sequence of the initial heist instead seems a cross between the grand staging of Walter Hill, the action timings of Michael Mann, and the "badassery" of Bigelow, particularly in the future cult "Point Break." Stelvio Cipriani's music helps heighten the tension of the sequences, especially in those where the suspense skyrockets (and there are many). The characters in their cynicism remain consistent from beginning to end, that car becomes the spider's web in which the prey themselves will find themselves metaphorically and paradoxically in the same boat, despite being victims and perpetrators of their own actions without even being aware of it, just like the viewer in feeling complicit. No moralism, no random dialogues, or moments of directional downturn, everything is tremendously perfect.

"Cani Arrabbiati" is therefore an absolute masterpiece in the history of cinema: cruel, incorrect, controversial, bizarre, which anticipated the stereotypes of characters exchanging jokes about showbiz figures (Greta Garbo), sexually suggestive double entendres, and moments where the unpredictability of situations becomes the true core of the film. Bava once again demonstrates being the greatest genre terrorist in Italy, followed by Castellari and Fulci, and since the DVD is fortunately still available on the Internet, I absolutely recommend purchasing it if you're a fan of the genre, especially to discover a shining pearl that deserves to be rediscovered, just like most of the master's films.