Mala, amore e morte (1975)

Italy was known for cranking out brutally bleak and violent cop thrillers in the 1970s, and at first blush Tiziano Longo’s Mala, amore e morte (1975) seems to belong to that tradition. With its noir-ish title and cast of Italian B-movie veterans, you might think that Longo’s film is a shoot-‘em-up sex-‘em-up. Instead, Longo keeps the sex and ditches the bullets for a slapstick farce about a trio of bumbling cops. These policemen would make Larry, Curly, and Moe look like a trio of Dirty Harrys, but they also manage to bag their fair share of Italo-babes. Take Femi Benussi--the cinema icon gets quickly undressed at the first rattle of her cop lover’s cuffs.