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4 gangsters hold up a money courier & relieve him of his money, but
things get messy & they have to shoot their way out, & one of them
is even killed ... the other 3 though take Maria (Lea Lander) , a woman
just passing by, their hostage & soon force their way into Riccardo's
(Riccardo Cucciolla) car, who begs them to let him go as he has to take
his little son, who's under heavy sedation, to the hospital ... not that
the gangsters could care any less. Soon though tensions arise, not only
between the gangsters & their hostages but also between the 3 robbers
themselves, since one - the Doctor (Maurice Poli) - is their
intellectual mastermind, one - 32 (George Eastman) - is a retarded rapist
& one - Pisturi (Aldo Caponi) - is a psychopathic killer who doesn't
mind to knife someone down every now & again. Eventually, during a
pee-break, Maria tries to make an escape through a cornfield to a
farmhouse, only to find it abandoned, & to be recaptured by 32 &
Pisturi, who, to humiliate her, then force her to pee standing up in front
of them. Of course all of this doesn't make the situation necessarily
better, & eventually, 32 is so geared up & fed up, that he rapes
Maria in the car, in front of the others, when stuck in a traffic jam (not
that any of the other drivers on the road would care much). Only when they
drive through a tunnle does the Doctor shoot 32, to calm the situation
(which is a rather awkward interpretation of calming the situation), &
to obscure the fact that they are riding with a dead body, he simply puts a
blanket over his body. Soon enough a jabbering hitchhiker forces her way
into their car, & she doesn't realize that anything is wrong with the
people in the car ... until 32's blanket does come off. She is shocked to
see the dead man, but not for long, as Pisturi soon plunges his knife into
her. Soon the Doctor decides to dump the 2 dead bodies, but that really
gets to Pistoni, as 32 isn't quite dead yet, & Pistoni himself has to
shoot him just to make sure ... Finally the gangsters reach their
destination & prepare to shoot their hostages ... when all of a sudden
the all too calm Riccardo pulls a gun from underneath his son's blanket
& shoots the Doctor & Pistoni, & Maria accidently catches a
bullet when Pistoni wants to shoot back ... Then Riccardo takes his son,
the gangsters' money, & the car the gangsters have had waitning for
them to make good their own escape ... & he drives to the next public
phone, & calls who turns out to be the real father of his son,
trying to extort quite a sum of money out of him for the boy's release ... Not
quite the masterpiece everyone has made this film to be simply based on
the fact that it was thought lost for decades, Cani Arrabbiati is
still a tense thriller about five people in a stress situation confined
(by necessity) to a very small space. It's not the visual feast director
Bava has usually made his horror films to be - which is just as well, as
it wouldn't have worked for this kind of film anyways -, Bava has employed
here a more down-to-earth directorial style ... which at times seems quite
a bit impersonal, even boring though.
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