Bizarre mixture of genres

The Suspicious Death of a Minor (AKA Too Young to Die)

Director Sergio Martino is probably best known these days for his gialli - and this is marketed as such, but it's actually more of a 'police procedural'. An undercover 'loose cannon' cop investigating organised crime in Milan is contacted by an underage prostitute who wishes to pass on information. They meet, but she quickly becomes aware she has been followed and flees to her boarding house. However, the mysterious figure she had been fleeing from tracks her to the boarding house and murders her. The undercover cop makes it his personal crusade to go after the people who were pimping her out, in the hopes of closing down their operation and finding the killer. This leads him to a network of underage prostitution, and before long he's up against prominent bankers and businessmen, and connections with kidnapping and drug dealing, whilst more prostitutes are being killed.

It's a strange film. The subject matter is gritty, and killings by razor and knife are graphically shown. Yet at other times it goes full slapstick, including one of the most bizarre car chases I've ever seen, where the occupants of a Citroen 2CV being chased end up actually pulling the doors off their own car and throwing them at the pursuing vehicle(!), and (in the course of a ridiculous amount of collateral damage) a bicycle gets hit, resulting in the cyclist riding just the rear wheel like a unicycle, whilst a pedestrian gets knocked over twice, spinning on his head like a breakdancer as he hits the ground each time! That said, it's a good story, and the performances (especially those of Claudio Cassinelli as the cop, Lia Tanzi as one of the prostitutes, the always reliable Mel Ferrer as a Police Superintendent, and Roberto Posse as the killer) are excellent. There's also some impressive stunt work, as well as a pretty good Goblin-like score (by Luciano Michelini). 7.5/10