27 February 2010

Street Law


Italy - 1974
Director - Enzo Castellari
VidAmerica, 1984, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 17 minutes

This is a very cheap and heavily edited version of the Italian Death Wish knockoff. It runs a good 28 minutes shorter than the theatrical version. Blue Underground released a full length version of it back in '06 which I'm sure is quite nice. I saw Bill Lustig, the honcho of Blue Underground years ago at a screening and he told an amusing tale. He worked in some capacity on the set of Death Wish, which of course spawned a whole cottage industry of vigilante films including Lustig's own Vigilante. At some point thereafter, Street Law was re-released in the US under the title Vigilante II, so the whole thing kinda came full circle.
Check out the trailer at Cult Trailers.

United States - 1995
Director - Damian Lee
Triboro Entertainment Group, 1995, VHS
Run Time -1 hour, 38 minutes

This is some sort of "martial arts" petty gang violence thing with a badly Photoshopped cover featuring a ponytailed goon. But I get it, they're pointing their guns at each other and that's prophetic right? I don't really remember what happens so I'll probably have to watch it again soon.

2 comments:

Nigel M said...

re top cover:
havent seen that one-its a bit of a strange choice of image too- its one of the robbers (maybe romano puppo?) but that was a small scene at the beginning- so its an odd choice when you got franco nero in your film- youd think they would push that angle a bit more.

Its the blue underground one that I own btw,

The Goodkind said...

I suspect that it's because in 1984 few people in the US would have recognized Nero outright when renting in a video store. Very few people owned VCRs yet, and very few of them were grindhouse/exploitation fans.It's also possible that the box designer just didn't know what they had in their hands.