Loaded Guns (1975)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

LOADED GUNS is doubtlessly the worst Fernando Di Leo film I've watched so far, and the reason for that is that the director is best known for making a series of gritty gangster and crime films in Italy in the 1970s and most of them are quite excellent. This film is a big departure, a dumb sex comedy featuring the one and only Ursula Andress who seemed to spend the whole of the 1970s stripping in one Italian film or another.This one plays a little like A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS but really there's not much plot at all. Andress plays an innocent stewardess who arrives in town and immediately gets involved with a couple of rival criminal gangs. A lot of the scenes are quite mean-spirited and involve Andress being beaten or abused by various low-rent hoodlums, but she does manage to hold her own throughout and even fight back a couple of times.The film's production values are quite strong with a lot of varied locations and action scenes so it's a pity the script is so silly. Some of the dumb comedy reminds one of the Hill/Spencer comic westerns. Andress is completely naked for a lot of the running time, particularly in a set-piece involving her taking a bath when she's interrupted by a sex-mad goon. You won't guess the denouement. She certainly looks good for her age, but is it enough to watch the film for? Not really. My favourite character is the larger-than-life crime boss played by the inimitable Woody Strode, who gets to take part in some zany fight scenes at the climax.

Fernando Di Leo's "Colpo in canna" ("Loaded Guns" in English) should be a typical mediocre 1970s action flick. But it has nude shots of Ursula Andress, so that makes it ultra-enjoyable. The woman best known for emerging from the ocean bikini-clad in the first James Bond movie plays a flight attendant caught up in battles between rival gangs in Naples. But the plot is pretty much irrelevant. It's pretty clear that the movie is all about showing off Ursula Andress's body. Yes, every man who's seen "Dr. No" has spent eternity wondering what she looked like under that bikini. She had some similar scenes in "The Loves and Times of Scaramouche", directed by Enzo Castellari*. But the scenes here are the real deal. "Loaded Guns" isn't that easy to find, so you'll have to find a local video/DVD store if you want to watch it. And you'll love it.*He also directed "The Inglorious Bastards", whose title of course inspired Quentin Tarantino's movie.

At his best, director Ferdinand DiLeo was on par with great Italian genre directors like Bava, Argento, Fulci, and Sergio Martino. But he was also kind of uneven, especially when he got too far from his comfort zone of violent crime thrillers. Fortunately, he isn't TOO far away here. This is kind of like a sex comedy/parody of a crime thriller. It has a typical strong DiLeo plot: a stewardess is offered $100 to deliver a letter and finds herself involved in a Neapolitan gang war between drug traffickers, and has to outwit both sides (and the police) "Yojimbo"/"Fisftul of Dollars" style. Naturally this isn't nearly as good as one of DiLeo's serious crime thrillers, but if you take it as an Italian sex comedy, it's a relative masterpiece. Italian comic Lino Banfi has a dual role as a police chief and a cabdriver, and even though I've seen more of his films than any non-drunken Italian peasant from the 1970's should, this and Sergio Martino's "Creampuffs" were the only two where I thought he was actually funny.I thought this was my first DiLeo comedy, but I found out from the accompanying documentary that a DiLeo film I saw earlier, "Mr. Scarface". was also supposed to be a comedy; it was so badly presented on public domain DVD I had no idea (I just thought it REALLY sucked). Nocturno really deserves kudos therefore because their presentation here really makes this movie (they have also released DiLeo's "La Seduzione" and Sergio Martino's similar comedy/crime thriller hybrid "Suspicious Death of a Minor"). Bond girl Ursula Andress made this film during her late 70's "Sensuous Nurse"/"Mountain of the Cannibal Gods" phase when she was regularly throwing all her clothes to the wind. One of the guys in the documentary complained that she was "over-the-hill". Well, maybe compared to her 20- year-old self in "Dr. No", but compared to 99.9 percent of twenty year olds and pretty much 100 percent of forty year olds, she stacks up pretty well. (She's a lot sexier than Jack Palance in "Mr. Scarface" at any rate). The supporting cast includes Marc Porel from "Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man", hulking African-American actor Woody Strode from DiLeo's "Manhunt", and, of course, Banfi. This is not Dileo's best movie by a long shot, but you could certainly do worse.

I wonder how, in all those biblical epics they made, they never got Ursula Andress to play the role of Eve. After all, she is the perfect female specimen, so what better choice is there for the first woman ever created? And can you believe that this incredible body and face belong to a (then) 39-year-old woman? And yes, she does get nude, frequently. There is a rather distasteful scene early on where she gets roughed up by some thugs, but don't worry, she takes charge later on and even kicks a little ass herself! The plot? Ah, who cares, it's just a senseless mess about rival crime organizations in Napoli. One strange thing is the tone: for the most part it's fairly serious, but when the fight scenes come they are shot in a slapstick style that reminded me of the Bud Spencer - Terence Hill comedies (with Woody Strode, of "Spartacus" fame, in the Bud role). There is also an overlong "comic" car chase with a clumsy Italian inspector. The problem is that these fights and chases are not the least bit funny. See this movie (if you can find it) only for Ursula...and frankly, she's reason enough to see it. (**)