MovieChat Forums > Una Magnum Special per Tony Saitta (1976) Discussion > what a waste . . .

what a waste . . .

posted 16 years ago by callumhouston-1
8 replies | jump to latest

. . . this movie irritated me not for what it was, but for what it could have been. what a waste: excellent cast (whitman, landau, saxon), excellent performances, excellent direction, excellent stunts and action. what irritated me was all that talent squandered in a movie that didn't know what it was. if done as a straight hard and violent dirty harry rip-off it would have been an underground classic. stuart whitman would have been perfect as a cop with a bad attitude out to slaughter the baddies. instead it's part stalker-slasher, part sherlock holmes mystery (lame), part action, part buddy cop play and all tongue in cheek. at times it felt like satire, like when whitman embarks on an awesome french connection-style car chase--one of the hottest car chases i've ever seen--just to ask a fleeing witness a couple of questions about a case he's working on. come on. it's directed like a joke. and what's more, the cool car in the chase (a hot black dodge charger or something) is being driven by the OTHER guy, not the star. this film could have made whitman a b-movie action star if they'd gone the dirt harry route. and then there's martin landau, a great american movie actor who doesn't disappoint here either, playing a doctor wrongly accused of poisoning his mistress, whitman's sister. major re-write needed. instead of as a hapless academic they should have made landau a heroin trafficer,a mob-lord, an untouchable crime boss whitman is determined to bring down even if he has to break every rule in the book, a la singleton's shaft . . .

my website: http://www.callumhouston.com/

[–] jeansebastienproulx 14 years ago

You really don't get it...
That's why it's so good, it doesn't have a specific direction, it's a mix of different genres, it doesn't really know where it's going, but it's going there fast!
Not a dull moment!

[–] Jones70 (6195) 2 years ago

I was going to say the same thing!

[–] buckaroobanzai50 14 years ago

"...like when whitman embarks on an awesome french connection-style car chase--one of the hottest car chases i've ever seen--just to ask a fleeing witness a couple of questions about a case he's working on. come on. it's directed like a joke. and what's more, the cool car in the chase (a hot black dodge charger or something) is being driven by the OTHER guy, not the star."

I love this movie, and in a way you are right. They should've left that great car chase to the end of the film, when he tracked down the killer. Instead, we see a toy helicopter crashing.

"...this film could have made whitman a b-movie action star if they'd gone the dirt harry route. and then there's martin landau, a great american movie actor who doesn't disappoint here either, playing a doctor wrongly accused of poisoning his mistress, whitman's sister. major re-write needed. instead of as a hapless academic they should have made landau a heroin trafficer,a mob-lord, an untouchable crime boss whitman is determined to bring down even if he has to break every rule in the book, a la singleton's shaft . . ."

Well, that kind of thing had been done to death by then. It would've been too cliched to have Whitman's boss say, "Okay, you've got 24 hours more to solve this case!" or words to that effect. I think the director tried to do something original - and in some ways he succeeded. You didn't know if the car chase guy was the killer or not. Why was he running away? The ending was a surprise to me when I saw the film in the early '80s. And it is genuinely quite scarey in some ways. You can see where American directors have been influenced by Italian giallos with a film like this.

BTW. Singleton's Shaft was complete *beep* compared to the original.

[–] garp-26 12 years ago

John Saxon was wasted (not in the alcoholic sense) that's for sure. He had very little to do and looked bored stiff through out the entire movie.

"What would Alain de Botton do? An evil Alain de Botton?"

[–] lathe-of-heaven 8 years ago

Yep, fully agree... 

Bloody ANYONE could have played that role. Absolutely a total waste of John Saxon. Despite the many cheeeeezy films he may be in, I honestly think this role is by far his most pointless...

I now have over 7000 films; many of them very rare and OOP. I LOVE to trade. PLEASE ASK! 

[–] jonbecker03 10 years ago

the key phrase is "all tongue in cheek." the film could have limited itself by going down one road and taking itself seriously. but alberto de martino decided to do something more sophisticated. he decided to film a tongue-in-cheek satire, a film with multiple layers that touches on various genres. the film did become a cult classic, but the members of its cult following aren't action fans per se but rather camp/psychotronic movie lovers. (the transvestite/curling-iron-up-the-rear scene not only goes beyond genre cliches, it goes beyond satire as well, into a land of sick surrealism.)
Jonathan Becker

[–] chas77 10 years ago

one of the hottest car chases i've ever seen--just to ask a fleeing witness a couple of questions about a case he's working on.

Totally agree. That scene really served no purpose other than to show what great stunt drivers they had. I wonder if the Italian director was confused by shooting an American-type of cop thriller in Canada. Whitman was great, Landau was ok but Saxon, like someone else wrote, looked like he was half asleep. I wonder if he was originally offered Whitman's role but didn't get it. Maybe he was pi$$ed off about that. Then again, I never thought he was that great an actor to begin with.

[–] Jones70 (6195) a year ago

No way we can always use more awesome movies like this!