Severin Films is no stranger to delivering the goods when it comes to quenching your eurosploitation thirst. And let me tell you that HOT DAWG does this one hit the spot! Severin has graced us with a hefty, sturdy box with a very nice design that is chock full of poliziotteschi goodness, all directed by Italian genre maestro Umberto Lenzi and starring loose cannon Tomas Milian. According to both Lenzi himself and Milian, they had a rather contentious relationship with one another, not unlike Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski (but without the insanity and guns), but also like Herzog and Kinski, it resulted in a very fruitful pairing for both of them, six films in total, five of which are collected in this very cool box set (the other film The Tough Ones having already been given a stellar blu-ray courtesy of Grindhouse Releasing). Let’s kick down the doors on this mother, and plunge right in!

Almost Human stars Tomas Milian as one of the nastiest bad guys to ever grace the silver screen, a crazed slimeball named Giulio who kidnaps the daughter of a rich businessman, intending to hold her for ransom and then kill her. Along the way, he pretty much murders the shit out of everyone he comes across in cruel and senseless ways. Hot on his trail is Henry Silva as Commissario Grandi, a badass cop who is willing to do whatever takes to stop Giulio before it’s too late for the young heiress.

Almost Human is easily one of my favorite Italian crime films, up there with some of Fernando di Leo’s cool pics. Umberto Lenzi is a director who has, like many other Italian filmmakers from the ’60s through ’80s, worn many hats, catering to the tastes of the time but with a daring, high wire energy that many of his contemporaries lacked. He is rightly well-regarded for directing some very good gialli like Spasmo and Paranoia and he is notorious for his ultra gory schlock horror flicks like Nightmare City and Cannibal Ferox. But for my money, Lenzi is at his best in the crime genre, and Almost Human showcases him at the height of his powers. The action scenes, and especially the car chases, are amazing, visceral, thrilling, intense. And really that applies to all these films. What sets this one apart is Milian’s performance as one of the meanest villains to ever show up in a crime film. His cruelty is relentless as he tortures and kills men, women and children alike with a kind of blasé lack of basic human empathy. It is a joy just to watch how far he’s willing to go. This is a stone-cold crime classic.

Barreling forward at a hell-stricken pace, next is Syndicate Sadists. Milian this time stars as the mysterious figure Rambo (yes, he was named after the character of John Rambo from David Morell’s original novel First Blood which Milian was reading on the plane on the way to the shoot) who rolls into town on his motorcycle, pitting two rival gangs against one another in order to wreak revenge on them for the death of his little brother.

While watching this, it struck me how similar in structure it is to Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (and not coincidentally of course, Kurosawa’s Yojimbo). The classic tale of a stranger rolling into town and manipulating rival bad guys to kill each other is a great premise, and Syndicate Sadists infuses the premise with some really great stunt work involving motorcycles that makes for another really good film.

The third explosive action flick is this box of awesome sauce is Free Hand for a Tough Cop. This time Milian is a low-life crook nicknamed “Garbage Can” whose ex-partner (a ruthless Henry Silva) has gone big time with a pitiless kidnapping of a sick girl. He is forced to team up with a cop (Claudio Cassinelli) to find the girl and get her life-saving medicine before she dies in the cruel hands of a fiend.

This one plays out like a mix of “buddy cop” picture before those hit it big in the ’80s and a “race against time”. Despite the serious premise of the imperiled kid, this one does have more humor injected into it than I would have expected. It’s also a little lighter on the action in general (but not totally devoid of it). Still, the rapid fire pacing of the script makes it very engaging nonetheless. And while it isn’t as action-packed as the previous two films, Lenzi still brings the noise with his patented gritty, kinetic action. Plus it was fun to see Milian and Silva basically switch roles from who they played in Almost Human.

The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist finds Milian as a recently escaped convict, nicknamed The Chinaman (yea… I dunno…), who upon getting out wants to get into business with New York mob boss Frank Di Maggio (played by the always reliable John Saxon). Meanwhile The Chinaman hires some goons to take down the cop that got him arrested in the first place, Inspector Tanzi (hardened badass Maurizio Merli playing the same role he did in The Tough Ones which I guess makes this a kinda/sorta sequel? Although this film doesn’t reference the events in The Tough Ones at all so it’s hard to say). Tanzi survives the attack and defies his department’s orders to take it easy, going rogue to get revenge.

After Almost Human, The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist is possibly one of Lenzi’s best poliziotteschi films. With Lenzi again taking a cue from another Leone western (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) both in title and in general theme of three men whose lives interweave culminated in a destined fate, it’s actually Michael Mann’s film Heat that it more resembles in general structure and tone with it’s parallel plot lines involving a hardened criminal planning a heist and the cop trying to track him down and stop him. In the extras included with the disc, Lenzi discusses that a primary reason he structured the film this way is so that Milian and Merli, who apparently hated each other, would not have to share hardly any scenes together, only coming together in a showdown at the end (and even then Merli and Milian were not actually on set together for that scene with Lenzi instead relying on editing tricks to make them appear to face off against one another). Regardless of why, the structure actually works well for the film, although the plotting does get a little needlessly convoluted in places. Regardless, the action is fast and furious and the pacing is very high-energy.

The final film in the set is Brothers Till We Die. The bonkers plot finds Milian having what looks to be a hell of a lot of fun playing brothers, one a deranged hunchback gangster (Il Gobbo) with a ridiculous wig, the other a layabout good-for-nothing loser (Manezza). After being betrayed by his gang after a robbery, Ill Gobbo plots revenge from the sewers, killing them off one by one with the help of his brother who is conflicted about getting involved.

This one is 100% the Milian show. According to Lenzi in the extras, Milian had a lot of influence over plot and dialogue decisions, pushing the film into more of a comedy direction than Lenzi really wanted which ultimately resulted in the dissolution of their partnership. Mentioning the comedy though, this one definitely has more of a wacky element to it than the other four films in the set by a significant margin. At times, the sheer ridiculousness of the premise works in its favor, but at times the comedy falls flat and hurts the film. As such, this may be the overall weakest film in the set. Still, like the other films, it has some great action and a very memorable performance from Milian.

On the technical side of things, all five films are presented with very nice, clean 2K transfers, all from the original negative. While there are occasional brief scenes where the grain is a little heavier than usual, I would expect that’s just a result of the source itself. Overall, these films look probably as good as they ever have. Incidentally, I actually have the previous Code Red blu-ray release of Almost Human and in a side-by-side comparison, Severin’s is definitely the clearer of the two. Although fans of the more classic grindhouse presentation may enjoy Code Red’s scan more. All five films feature both English and Italian mono audio tracks and are clear and crisp with little to no distortion in the sound. While on the subject of the audio, I just want to call out the absolutely fantastic scores on all of these films with Severin including MUCH appreciated soundtrack CDs for Syndicate Sadists and The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist (both with high-octane, fabulous scores by Franco Mizalizzi) as well as Almost Human featuring an incredible score by the always exceptional Ennio Morricone. Severin, I absolutely love that you include the CD soundtracks with these. Keep it up!

As usual with Severin, the extras are many and rich in this set. Across all five discs are scattered interviews with the surprisingly candid Lenzi, all of which are well worth listening to. Lenzi is a fount of useful anecdotes (some of which I’ve mentioned in the review above). Almost Human also has interviews with Milian, screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (who worked with Lenzi several times and who seems more interested in talking about his producer brother than the film in question) and Henry Silva as well as TWO audio commentaries, one with Gastaldi who really is full of information and one with film historians Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth which is probably the more engaging of the two commentaries although there is info repeated if you listen to the commentaries and watch all the interviews and other extras too. Syndicate Sadists includes, in addition to the Lenzi interview, interviews with actors Ida Galli and Alessandro Cocco as well as actor/stuntman Bruno di Luia. Di Luia’s interview is rather interesting since he spends some time talking about how his conservative political views had somewhat blacklisted him with a lot of directors but Lenzi didn’t care. Free Hand for a Tough Cop includes more Lenzi interviews as well as pieces on Corrado Solari, screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti, cinematographer Nino Celeste and producer Ugo Tucci. It also includes an extended scene of the big bank robbery of the film. Not necessary but a nice extra nonetheless. The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist also includes a healthy slab of interviews from the likes of screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti and John Saxon as well as multiple segments with Lenzi on different subjects. Brothers Till We Die has one of the most gushing interviews in the set with editor Eugenio Alabiso who speaks very highly of Lenzi. It also includes interviews with groovy composers Franco Micalizzi and Antonello Venditti. Basically if you come away from this set wishing it had MORE extras, then you, sir, either was not paying attention or are impossible to please.

Oh boy… How to even sum up the wonderful contents of this set succinctly? I truly believe this is one of the best sets Severin puts out (and that’s saying a LOT from the guys that have given me such great nuggets of joy as the legendary folk horror set and those excellent Christopher Lee sets among many others). How about I just go the lazy route and say that this set gets an A+++ WITH A BULLET!