Smiling Henry Silva and frowning Woody Strode are set up to comprise the Murtaugh and Riggs of Fernando Di Leo’s The Italian Connection, two American hit men dispatched from New York to Milan to ice a pimp named Luca Canali (Mario Adorf, The Tin Drum) for having $6 million worth of heroin stolen from the mob. But these Yanks are hardly in the picture.
The true focus is Luca, whose hobbies appear to be cheating on his wife, greasing his hair and head-butting both people and inanimate objects — he’s not choosy. Although guilty of many things, he’s actually innocent of the crime for which Team Silva/Strode has been summoned, but hey, it allows Strode to push over an automobile like he’s the Incredible Hulk.
Violent, exciting and flush with oversized lapels, The Italian Connection has just about everything you could want from a Eurocrime effort: a swanky instrumental theme, topless go-go dancing, full-frontal whores, lots of face-slapping and cheek-pinching, a limping auto repairman, a junkyard explosion, one gratuitous blue Afro wig and one dead kitty cat. (As gruesome as that sounds, it proves Di Leo does not pussyfoot around.
He proves himself aptly hard-boiled with a sawmill scuffle, then outdoes himself later in the film’s high point: an absolutely dynamic car chase sequence that vies for the all-time best. So high are its stakes that it briefly becomes a foot chase before getting back to wheels, but only with one car. That’s because the pursuer is hanging on to the driver’s-side door. This flick plays for keeps, and keep it, you’ll want to. —Rod Lott
The intestinal problems start in New York City, when a ghost ship from the tropics wanders into port without a crew — alive, anyway. The conditions the investigating authorities find the seamen in will put you off deli meats for the day. And in boxes bearing a coffee company’s logo are slimy, green eggs that pulsate. Posits one investigator, “It could be somethin’ like a giant squash or an avocado or some kind of mango!” 
The rest of the flick’s a mixed bag. Patrick Lussier’s direction is competent (I’d expect nothing more or less from the maker of 
Soooo much pussy is present in René Cardona Jr.’s 
Anyhow, Hugo’s date is going along swimmingly, until a cat interrupts the meal. At that point, our angered, bearded douche hurls the helpless animal over a ridiculously tall chain-link fence, on the other side of which stand hundreds — or perhaps 1,000, hmmm? — of felines, meowing their precious widdle paws off. So Hugo grinds his girl up and feeds fistfuls of the ground round to the kitties. (Oh, but not the head! That goes in his basement collection.)