Picture it: Sicily, 1925. The tough and incorruptible prefect, Cesare Mori (Giuliano Gemma), has had it with the ding dang mafia. The first thing he sees when he rolls up in Sicily is that the people at the bottom are starving because the gangsters at the top are taking their fill and leaving very little for anyone else. Those who stands up for themselves against the mafia are swiftly and brutally taken care of. To make matters worse, the corruption is so high up that the perpetrators of these injustices never suffer any consequences.

Mori’s reputation as a hardass might have made him someone to fear back in Rome, but in Sicily he’s up against an army of very bad dudes dug into the old village of Gangi. Things get complicated when it’s discovered that there is a system of tunnels beneath Gangi that the gangsters have been using for years to hole up and hide their fugitive members. Worse still, the people of Gangi are so beaten and broken down after years of abuse and intimidation, that they are unwilling to help Mori and his men. Mori decides to treat this situation like a war and goes into Gangi like an invading force. Hilarity ensues.

The Iron Prefect (1977) is an intense film and even though it doesn’t have the exploitative elements that made the poliziotteschi released around the same time so memorable, it has its fair share of brutality and action. Everything I’ve read about Italy in the 1970s makes it sound like hell on Earth due to rampant crime and a very chaotic political situation. So, it is only fitting that a film like this would have a hero willing to risk everything to stand up to the mob. Granted, the real Cesare Mori was way more of a fascist than this fictionalized version, but it makes for a more comfortable viewing experience seeing Giuliani Gemma bristling when dealing with the black-shirted jerks rather than doing high-fives and secret Mussolini handshakes with them or whatever.  

Gemma of Tenebre (1982) is pitch perfect in his role as a man possessed by the need to see the villains destroying his beloved country behind bars. Even though the situation is way more complicated than his binary good vs. evil thinking can allow, he just folds his arms and says his famous catchphrase: “I won’t take any Mori of this crap!” Okay, he never actually says that in the movie, but I wish he had. The always talented and beautiful, Claudia Cardinale of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), plays Anna, a tough Sicilian woman caught up in the war between Mori and the mafia.

This is only the second film from director Pasquale Squitieri that I’ve seen, the first being The Climber (1975), but this one is a doozy. The stakes are very high and nothing is cut and dry, even when considering how much the historical record was tweaked to make this an entertaining watch. Ennio Morricone does his thang and provides The Iron Prefect with an excellent music score and cinematographer Silvano Ippoliti makes the 1920s setting look both gritty and beautiful. All in all, I recommend this film to fans of Italian genre cinema who want to dip their toes outside of the usual cops and crooks thrillers.

Wow! Radiance Films brings The Iron Prefect to Blu-ray with an exceptional transfer. The picture looks incredible, and the Italian audio track is clear and robust. The English track has a little bit of background hiss to it but is quite serviceable. As far as extras go, there is an archival documentary about the film featuring interviews with both its director and its leading man.

There’s also a new documentary with Squitieri biographer Domenico Monetti about the film. Last but not least, director Alex Cox shows up to talk about the film as well. It’s so good to hear from him and I wish he was on every release of an Italian film. There is also a booklet with an article about the real-life Caesare Mori as well as an essay by Italian film expert Guido Bonsaver.