{"id":3595,"date":"2014-09-08T20:56:06","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T20:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3595"},"modified":"2015-07-27T12:37:28","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T12:37:28","slug":"i-ragazzi-della-roma-violenta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/i-ragazzi-della-roma-violenta\/","title":{"rendered":"I ragazzi della Roma violenta"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ragazza<\/a>
Ragazza di roma violenta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Director: Renato Savino
\nStory: Renato Savino
\nScreenplay: Renato Savino
\nCast: Gino Milli, Cristina Businari, Emilio Lo Curcio, Sarah Crespi, Marco Zuanelli, Paola Corazzi, Enrico Tricarico, Vittorio Sgorlon, Francesco Pau, Mario Cutini, Gino Barzacchi, Alicia Bruzzo, Stefania D’Addario, Renzo Rinaldi, Adolfo Schauer, Annunziata Gregori
\nPhotography: Aiace Parolin
\nMusic: Enrico Simonetti
\nEditing: Roberto Colangeli
\nProduction: G.N. Cinematografica
\nVisa number and date: 68155 del 25-03-1976<\/p>\n

I know that I\u2019ve said the phrase \u2018it\u2019s difficult to give a plot summary for this film because\u2026 there isn\u2019t one\u2019, or something of the like, many times before.\u00a0 I must now confess, it\u2019s not entirely true.\u00a0 On some occasions this is because there is simply so much plot, all of which is unrelated and knitted together in such a fashion that there seems to be nothing cohesive about it whatsoever.\u00a0 This would be true of most films by Demofilo Fidani, for instance.\u00a0 At other times, it could well be that the whole thing is so astoundingly boring that I simply can\u2019t be bothered to elaborate upon it \u2013 as with anything by Gianni Crea, Alfonso Brescia or Derek Jarman (sorry all Jarmanites out there).\u00a0 Well, with I ragazzi della Roma violenta<\/strong> I am glad to report that, in this case, there really is no plot.\u00a0 Nothing.\u00a0 Nada.\u00a0 Zilch.\u00a0 I\u2019ve wracked my brain and I simply can\u2019t come up with anything whatsoever.<\/p>\n

What there is are about 85 minutes of unhesitatingly sordid events running into one another, none of which have any consequence, repercussions or prelude.\u00a0 They all revolve around the activities of one Marco, an ugly geek who looks something like Leo Sayer crossed with a hobgoblin (Leo Satan, perhaps?).\u00a0 He heads up a gang of fuckwits who seem to believe that they are neo-nazis, although what they mostly do is cruise around raping women, beating up men and making pathetic attempts to carry out robberies (that inevitably fail because they\u2019re such a bunch of troglodytes).\u00a0 At one point it does look as though some kind of narrative is about to emerge \u2013 when a young girl commits suicide after becoming one of their victims \u2013 but this is promptly dropped in favour of allowing the degradation to carry on unhindered by such fripperies as character motivation.\u00a0 The whole thing ends in a suitably bathetic fashion when Marco drives off a cliff for no apparent reason.<\/p>\n

I guess that this ostensibly belongs to the same subgenre of crime films \u2013 spoilt youths in too-tight sweaters running wild – as Romolo Guerrieri\u2019s Liberi, armati, pericolosi<\/strong>\u00a0(76), Marino Girolami\u2019s Roma, l’altra faccia della violenza<\/strong>\u00a0(76, see review) and Sergio Grieco\u2019s Violence for Kicks<\/strong>\u00a0(77).\u00a0 However, where it differs is that whereas these are primarily concerned with the activities of the police in attempting to capture the hideous adolescents, I ragazza<\/strong> doesn\u2019t feature anything remotely resembling the law whatsoever.\u00a0 There is never any hint that anyone is even after the anarchistic protagonists, and if they are there\u2019s definitely no indication that they\u2019re ever going to capture them.\u00a0 The teenagers here are literally running wild, and what a sorry-complexioned and morally retarded bunch of reprobates they are.<\/p>\n

\"Ragazza<\/a>
Ragazza di roma violenta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It also has to be said that this is possibly the most extreme of its type that I have seen \u2013 and that\u2019s saying something in the macho world of the Italian crime film.\u00a0 It is, basically, a catalogue of brutality \u2013 especially against women \u2013 and it really does leave you feeling in desperate need of a shower.\u00a0 This is heightened by the fact that there is absolutely no-one on the side of \u2018good\u2019, however warped that righteousness might be.\u00a0 You\u2019re left just hoping for a Maurizio Merli to stand out of the shadows and blow the little buggers away.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m truly at a loss to work out what director Renato Savino was hoping to achieve with this.\u00a0 In some ways it could be argued that this is entirely honest in it\u2019s obsession with ugliness, both ethical and aesthetic \u2013 a Salo\u00a0<\/b><\/span>of the genre.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it\u2019s more likely that it was an attempt to push the sleaze values as far as they could possibly go \u2013 and he certainly succeeds in that.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it\u2019s just not very good.\u00a0 The porn film production values and complete absence of pacing leave you bored more than uneasy.\u00a0 The uniformly dismal cast doesn\u2019t help. Mario Cutini, who specialised in bottom of the drawer sleazefests such as Roberto Mauri\u2019s The Porno Killers<\/strong> (80), is probably the best known performer involved.\u00a0 Many will also remember chubby Marco Zuanelli as \u2018Wobbles\u2019 in Once Upon a Time in the West<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the best thing about I ragazza<\/strong> is that it\u2019s complete obscurity means that you\u2019ll probably never have to sit through it.\u00a0 Thanks god for small mercies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I ragazzi della Roma violenta is about 85 minutes of unhesitatingly sordid events running into one another, none of which have any consequence, repercussions or prelude. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1212,8],"tags":[1116,1115,817],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3595"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3595"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3871,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3595\/revisions\/3871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}