Starring Marc Porel, Barbara Magnolfi, Anna Maria Rizzoli, Guido Leontini, Al Cliver (Pier Luigi Conti), George Hilton.
After spending 6 years in prison for armed robbery Pino Scalise (Marc Porel) finds work with his uncle and cousin, Teresa (Barbara Magnofli), in Milan. On his firsrt night there he bumps into an old friend Nosey who insists on treating Pino to a night in a high class brothel. After all that time inside Pino finds the offer hard to turn down and takes his mate up on the offer. A two hour session later Pino’s lying next to a pretty whore who’s had the workout of a lifetime “Hey! That hasn’t happened for a long time!†she gushes. Unfortunately, the next day his Uncle announces the arrival of his second daughter, Nadina (Anna Maria Rizzoli), who just happens to be the pretty whore from the previous night’s sex marathon (Oops!). Pino’s not happy abut his cousins line of work and after scoring a favour from his friend Nosey; he helps his friend beat up a few heavies one night in his bar, he asks for help to get Nadina off the game. Not an easy task, however, as Nadina is one of Don Chicco’s (Guido Leontini) girls and has been deliberately strung out on Heroin to keep her under his control. Naturally Chicco is reluctant to let one of his best girls go and so a deal is made… If Pino drives a getaway vehicle for a bank heist then Nadina can go free.
The job is carried out and Pino drives the getaway but Chicco goes back on the deal and forces Pino to keep on doing jobs for him by threatening to put the squeeze on Nadina if he’s non compliant. Things turn from bad to worse when his other cousin Teresa is kidnapped by Don Chicco’s right hand man Domino (Al Cliver featuring a tremendously slick, side parting hair do). With the double crossing, greasy crime lord now demanding that Pino deliver a van load of drugs, disguised as artificial flowers, he is once again reluctantly drawn into a life of crime. It’s up to him to try and save both his cousins while evading being caught by the ever more attentive police…
Blazing Flowers tries hard to be a film with a serious anti-drugs message and it has its heart in the right place. The opening titles, a montage of newspaper reports and scenes of crime photos depicting the results of the drugs trade and the gangster connections, being particularly effective. This is slightly let down however by the strange (naïve?) way the film depicts the drug underworld, an exotic dancer is shown shooting up a big fat syringe of drugs and then immediately sets off out to do her dance routine! And the amount of drugs hidden in each flower is ludicrous; a tiny packet the size of a cigarette filter is secreted in each flower. The man hours taken to hide any significant amount of drugs this way would be seriously prohibitive, any serious gangster would’ve have found a much easier and cost effective way to smuggle drugs than this, like hiding the drugs in the false bottom of a suitcase or having the drugs ferried around in Human 'Mules'... However! None of this really matters one bit as Blazing Flowers is essentially a good old slice of Italian crime cinema. It’s got pretty much all you need, fistfights, drugged up whores, greasy stereotypical gangsters, car chases, helicopter chases, classic lines of dialogue - “Filthy little buggering Skunk†- and shed loads of gorgeous Italian women!
Marc Porel plays it pretty well as the ex-con now trying to go straight and is joined on screen for the third time by his then wife Barbara Magnolfi (They previously starred in 'Difficile Morire' (1977) and 'La sorella di Ursula' (1978), The couple having married in the winter of 1977). Barbara looks fabulous, though a little unconvincing as a 16 year old! The amazingly wooden Al Cliver is hardly given a thing to do and just hangs around trying to look cool for most of the film, a hard feat with that haircut, but he’s entertaining none the less, as is the film. George Hilton musn’t go without a mention either, playing Commissario Morani, the policeman hot on the trail of Don Chicco. He's a cop on a mission to bring down the criminal underworld. Who just happens to have a high class hooker as a girlfriend!
Classy stuff indeed.
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Topic: Blazing Flowers / Milano... difendersi o morire (Gianni Martucci, 1978) (Read 10360 times)