Massacre Mafia Style (1974)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Absolutely Fantastic

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The travails and exploits of a Sicilian hit-man, one could accurately refer to The Executioner as a classic example of deservedly obscure and very sleazy 70s exploitation. It's poorly written and it's badly acted. Thus, what this film really needed was more action and fewer lines. The story takes into account the rise of XXX pornography, as the main character in The Executioner considers entering into the porn industry as its taking off with the success of Deep Throat, which kind of connects the film's violent content to sex, both prime exploitation ingredients. As a 70s exploitation film, The Executioner has too much of the downside and not enough of the upside that that term carries with it. Still, for fans of borderline bad movies, it may not be a total disappointment.

Just saw this movie and I gotta say it was a pretty fun hour and a half of goomba gore and senseless mafia shananagins. And although it's a little incoherent at times, overall it's not a bad B movie. It's a Grindhouse feature and it's straight out of the "exploitation" genre so its got all the guilty pleasures that you would expect (eg: naked women, Afros, bloody violence and lots of political incorrectness). If you're looking for an Oscar winning mafia film like the "Godfather", "Casino" or "Goodfellas" then "Fah git about it" but if you enjoy movies that inspired writers and directors like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to make their own films then you'll dig this one. After all who doesn't enjoy a senselessly violent B movie with questionable acting and naked broads once in a while...I know I do.

A DVD release of this has been promised for a longtime, though old video releases can still be found (usually under the a.k.a. title The Executioner) for those who want to see what all the fuss is about. More than living up to both its name and reputation, Massacre Mafia Style opens with two tough guys played by Vic Caesar and the film's director Duke Mitchell electrocuting a wheelchair bound mob boss in a urinal. Just for the hell of it they also shoot everyone who happens to be in the same building at the time, and I do mean everyone, office workers, secretaries, even the cleaners, all of which is scored to a Dean Martin-like song about being in love.It transpires that Mitchell's character, nicknamed 'Mimi', is the son of a mob boss who wants revenge on the American Mafia for exiling his old man 16 years earlier. Teaming up with buddy Vic to form "a small army of guts, balls and trust", in order to raise cash they kidnap a mobster and demand a ransom, sending his thumb through the post to show they mean business ("That's Chucky's thumb all right, I've seen it on him a million times"). The pair also make money by shooting porno films on a boat, a subplot that seems to be a sly reference to a certain Italian family's involvement in porno smash hit Deep Throat. To say that Vic n' Duke's exploits are action filled is putting it mildly, they go on to impale a gangster on a meat hook (which comes out of his eye!), crucify a black pimp on Easter Sunday, as well as numerous reprises of the 'Vic and Duke shoot everyone and their barber' opening. A particularly hilarious moment occurs when during a montage of people being gunned down we cut to someone minding their own business reading a newspaper (headline "13 LA Bookmakers and Procurers slain!") who is then also shot, presumably making it 14 LA Bookmakers and Procurers slain.To give a bit of background on Director/Lead man Mitchell, he had began his career as a singer, Americanizing his real name Dominic Miceli to Duke Mitchell, then teamed up with comedian Sammy Petrillo to form an act that was errr not dissimilar to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis'. The duo were immortalized on screen in the career end Lugosi vehicle "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla", though by the time he made Massacre Mafia Style, Mitchell looked less like Dean Martin and instead bears a curious resemblance to the notorious Porn/Broadway actor Zebedy Colt. Mitchell wasn't a bad actor actually, and equally shifty and violent on screen one of the films main strengths is his no nonsense persona. At one point threatening to not only strangle one character's entire family but everyone in the phonebook with the same name. Suffice to say, after seeing the film, you probably wouldn't want to spill Duke Mitchell's drink.Making up for its lack of professionalism (as well as a sneaky sense of family members/buddies being passed off as cast members), with admirable low budget energy. There are even moments that take Massacre Mafia Style from simply being a blood and guts B-Movie into something more personal. A far more complex character than the 'rise and fall' narrative suggests, Mitchell's Mimi ruthlessly murders his way to the top but seems haunted by disillusionment every step of the way. By the end the pride and respect for the old ways he was brought up to believe in have been eradicated by a sense that contemporary society is sufficiently depraved to render the Mafia antiquated. Especially powerful is Mimi's speech about his mother "What did we give her, We gave her violence. We gave her death. We gave her dishonor!" and the back story about his father's impoverished beginnings in America in which he even lends his own Miceli/Mitchell names to the character. A true labour of love, as they say. Mitchell also made a follow up called Gone with the Pope, which has never been released though a trailer for it has surfaced on the internet. Do try and watch it, given the premise (Duke kidnaps the Pope), a scene where Duke gets it on with massively obese woman, and THAT opening line of the trailer its looks as if may even outdo Massacre Mafia Style for outrageousness.

Duke Mitchell's THE EXECUTIONER looks like it was shot for fifty bucks over a long weekend. That said, it is still one of the very best American gangster films ever made. Alternately mean-spirited, tragic, poetic and downright hilarious, it pushes the envelope beyond the bounds of acceptability and offers no apologies. This is about as raw and honest as it gets, folks. An absolute must-see.