Blood Money: Four Classic Westerns, Vol. 2 (Find A Place To Die (1968)/Matalo! (1970 aka Kill Him)/$10,000 Blood Money (1967)/Vengeance Is Mine (1967)/Arrow Set**)/Cosa Nostra: Franco Nero In Three Mafia Tales By Damiano Damiani (Day Of The Owl (1968)/Case Is Closed: Forget It (1971)/How To Kill A Judge (1975*/**)/The Damned Don't Cry (1950/Warner Archive Blu-ray)/The Iron Prefect (1977/*both Radiance/**all MVD Blu-ray)

Picture: B/B B- B/B/B- Sound: C+/B-/B-/C+ Extras: B/B/B-/C+ Films: C+/C+/B-/C+

PLEASE NOTE: The Damned Don't Cry Blu-ray is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.

Up next are either Italian Films, Gangster Crime films, or both...

Blood Money: Four Classic Westerns, Volume 2 (with Find A Place To Die (1968)/Matalo (1970)/$10,000 Blood Money (1967)/Vengeance Is Mine (1967) is a solid set of spaghetti westerns that were seen often during their heyday, if not as much in recent years, though these titles will be very familiar to serious fans and even non-fans have likely heard of some of them before.

Arrow has the films presented in a non-chronological order (see below in the extras) but I will discuss them as follows...

Giuliano Carnimeo's Find A Place To Die (1968) is one of the more well-known films here with Jeffrey Hunter in a Professional Western leading a team trying to help a woman whose husband is trapped in a gold mine, but they was to save as much of the gold for themselves instead of even him, but not all will go as planned. Hunter shows his star power here as a 'disgraced soldier' (most everyone has a dark past in these films) and it is one fo the more well-known films in the genre.

Cesare Canevari's Matalo! (1970 aka Kill Him) has a group of criminals out to terrorize a couple who has more than a few surprises for them in one of the more surreal entries in the genre and cycle. Certainly a product of its time, cheers for it trying to do something different with the material and situation while it could. Lou Castel and Ana Maria Mendoza plat the couple. Definite viewing for all genre fans.

Romolo Guerrieri's $10,000 Blood Money (1967) is likely the least-known film here with is an alternate Django film (to the point it is one of two films called Django The Bastard, you can find the other one reviewed elsewhere on this site) hunting down a deadly thief/bandit (Claudio Camaso, who drives him pretty nuts) in a battle that turns into a very personal vendetta. It has its moments and is worth a look.

And Giovanni Fago's Vengeance Is Mine (1967) is the more famous brings those actors together again in different roles, but still going after each other. One is a Confederated soldier and this film might have a slightly better flow to it. Maybe make them a double feature?

Extras (per the press release) include brand new introductions to each film by journalist and critic Fabio Melelli

• Galleries for all four films

• Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing by author and critic Howard Hughes

• Fold-out double-sided poster featuring newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx

• Limited edition packaging with reversible sleeves featuring original artwork and a slipcover featuring newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx

DISC 1: $10,000 BLOOD MONEY

• Brand new audio commentary by author and film historian Lee Broughton

• Tears of Django - newly edited featurette with archival interviews with director Romolo Guerrieri and actor Gianni Garko

• The Producer Who Didn't Like Western Movies - brand new interview with producer Mino Loy

• How the West Was Won - brand new interview with screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi

• Original Theatrical Trailer

DISC 2: VENGEANCE IS MINE

• Brand new audio commentary by critics Adrian J. Smith and David Flint

• Cain and Abel - newly edited featurette with archival interviews with actor Gianni Garko and screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi

• In Conversation with Nora Orlandi - newly edited archival interview with the film's iconic composer

• Movie After Movie - brand new interview with producer Mino Loy

• Original Theatrical trailer

DISC 3: FIND A PLACE TO DIE

• Brand new audio commentary by author and critic Howard Hughes

• Sons of Leone - newly edited archival interview with director Giuliano Carnimeo

• Traditional Figure - brand new, in-depth appreciation of the soundtrack and its composer, Gianni Ferrio, by musician and disc collector Lovely Jon

DISC 4: MATALO! (KILL HIM)

• Brand new audio commentary by critics Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson

• A Milanese Story - brand new, in-depth interview with filmmaker Davide Pulici, discussing the career of Matalo! director Cesare Canevari

• Untold Icon - brand new, in-depth appreciation of the soundtrack and its composer, Mario Migliardi, by musician and disc collector Lovely Jon

• and an Original Theatrical Trailer

Cosa Nostra: Franco Nero In Three Mafia Tales By Damiano Damiani is a new trilogy set dealing with three of the director's political films with the same lead. The results are mixed but not bad, with all parties giving their best efforts. I just do not think they are always as effective as expected or intended.

Day Of The Owl (1968) was based on the first book to openly deal with Italian Mafia criminals, but as much as I like Lee J. Cobb as an actor and he has done some great work, it was always a stretch to me that he would be the head of the infamous organization or that he was from Sicily! This is the kind of strange issues and worse that killed the gangster film from Italy to Hollywood until Coppola did his Godfather films. Cobb does go for it all out here to his credit and Claudia Cardinale (her Once Upon A Time In The West was made around the same time) is a plus here heading the supporting cast. Its worth a look.

Case Is Closed: Forget It (1971) is a prison drama with Nero as an innocent who lands up in prison and it turns out to be worse than he ever imagined. Not bad for its time and also making the statement about how bad such places can be, the reality has become more known since and such fiction more graphic, but graphic does not always mean better. Again, not bad, but it is only so good.

And How To Kill A Judge (1975) has Nero as a filmmaker that is hired to make a work about a Mafia-corrupted judge, who is killed, then another judge is killed and he is in the middle. Why is he there, how is he being used and what will happen next? The answer was not as clever as I had hoped, but yet again, solid if not shocking work that is at least about something. It's as good as any of the three and also worth a look, but it is the most unusual film here.

Extras (per the press release) include Original Theatrical Trailers for all three films

• Reversible sleeves for all three films featuring designs based on original posters

• Optional English subtitles for Italian audio and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for English audio for all three films

• DAY OF THE OWL: New interview with star Franco Nero

• DAY OF THE OWL: Archival interview with Claudia Cardinale

• DAY OF THE OWL: Identity Crime-Sis: filmmaker and Italian crime cinema expert Mike Malloy discusses The Day of the Owl in the context of the formation of the Italian crime film genre

• DAY OF THE OWL: Filmmaker Howard Berger looks at the late Italian career of actor Lee J. Cobb

• DAY OF THE OWL: Archival interview with Franco Nero, writer Ugo Pirro and production manager Lucio Trentini

• THE CASE IS CLOSED, FORGET IT: New interview with star Franco Nero

• THE CASE IS CLOSED, FORGET IT: Archival documentary on the making of the film featuring actor Corrado Solari, assistant director Enrique Bergier and editor Antonio Siciliano

• THE CASE IS CLOSED, FORGET IT: Video essay on the career of Damiani Damiani by critic Rachael Nisbet

• HOW TO KILL A JUDGE: New interview with star Franco Nero

• HOW TO KILL A JUDGE: New interview with Alberto Pezzotta, author of Regia Damiano Damiani

• HOW TO KILL A JUDGE: New video essay on the film by filmmaker David Cairns

• and a Limited edition 80-page book featuring new writing on the film by experts on the genre including Andrew Nette, Paul A. J. Lewis, Nathaniel Thompson, so serious fans will want to pick this one up ASAP.

Vincent Sherman's The Damned Don't Cry (1950) is a darker, more brutal telling of the infamous love affair between Nick Prenta (Steve Cochran as a Bugsy Siegel variant) and Ethel Whitehead (Joan Crawford as a Virginia Hill variant) that is a somewhat loose adaption (the Barry Levinson Bugsy was maybe too glamorous for its own good) how she goes from struggling and a dead end to the fast and deadly lifestyle his criminal ways allow.

Everyone is in top form here and Crawford is all-in in one of her best films since she left MGM to go to Warner and Sherman (The Adventures Of Don Juan, Nora Prentiss, All Through The Night, Mr. Skeffington) shows what a good journeyman director he was. Considering all the crime and gangster films made since and how more graphic such films have been able to be with the freedom in filmmaking today, it more than holds its own and is able to be more honest than most such films since. No, some parts have not aged as well as expected, but it is as strong a film as any here and is a must-see for fans of this kind of storytelling.

David Brian, Richard Egan and Kent Smith lead the strong supporting cast.

Extras include the hour-long Screen Director's Playhouse radio drama version with Crawford as broadcast 4/5/51 (in lossless DTS-MA 2.0 Mono,) Original Theatrical Trailer and feature-length audio commentary track by Sherman.

Pasqule Squitieri's The Iron Prefect (1977) is the oddest film here, a movie that asks if an organized Mafia or Mussolini's fascists are more evil. Of course, you might as well compare them to German Nazis and let's see who is worse then. To try to make some kind of split between the two, the screenplay has to do some revisionist history watering down some of the roles the historic figures here actually played in the course of things in the 1930s, et al. Giuliano Gemma plays Cesare Mori, sent by Mussolini to 'clean up' the mafia to 'clean up crime' in Sicily.

The film would like to make it simple (the press release even suggests The Untouchables, feature film and both TV shows) but it is not that way at all and the truth the film tries to avoid and its script cannot resolve is that both were still there when the film was released, two wrongs never make a right but build a Right politically and that both really come and go in cycles.

The film at least is convincingly period and the actors are good here, but the film (despite its awards and respect) is full of it and I did not buy it, even early on when it starts to get sloppy. Now you can judge for yourself, down to the wacky vocal theme song. Ennio Morricone created all the music.

Extras (per the press release) include an archival interview with director Pasquale Squitieri and star Giuliano Gemma (2009)

• New interview with Squitieri biographer Domenico Monetti (2023)

• New appreciation of Giuliano Gemma and the film by filmmaker Alex Cox (2023)

• Original trailer

• New and improved English subtitles for Italian audio and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for English audio

• Reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters

• Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Italian cinema expert Guido Bonsaver and an original article on the real-life Cesare Mori and his Mafia raid as depicted within the film

• and Limited edition of 2000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of text and markings, so ans will want to grab this one while the initial supplies last.

Now for playback performance. Save the Warner film, all the films here are Italian films made from 1967 to 1977 with labwork mostly form labs there (like Telestampa or even Telecolor) and all shot on Eastman Kodak color 35mm negative, so they tend to have consistently good color and be a shade darker because Italian labs produced slightly darker prints than, say, a Hollywood one. The result is that all of them, from new 2K scans, are looking as good as I have ever seen any of them over the years, though I admit that some of them I had previously only seen in fragments or forgot how much of them I had seen.

All are presented in 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition framing, save $10,000 Blood Money and Vengeance Is Mine, which are here in 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition presentations, shot in the same widescreen format, but under different names. The former is in Techniscope and produced in Technicolor, so it has the best color presentation of the eight Italian releases here. The latter is credited as Chromoscope, which is just Techniscope produced without the benefit of Technicolor's three-strip dye-transfer process. Technostampa did the prints in this case, with the result being this looks a little slightly faded throughout. Otherwise, I like the look of the former and compositions of the latter, one of the better-remembered spaghetti westerns not helmed by Sergio Leone.

As for sound, the Arrow set sadly only uses Italian PCM 1.0 Mono sound which they might find sufficient due to how old the original optical monophonic releases sound quality has aged, but I preferred the Italian PCM 2.0 Mono on the Radiance releases because it allows the better aspects of the soundmasters to come through. Any English dubs are lesser and to be ignored.

The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image transfer on Damned can show the age of the materials used, but this is far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film with solid gray scale, nice detail, depth and more great restoration work like the kind Warner Archive keeps delivering month after month. It also shows you why Crawford is STILL one of the biggest icons in cinema history because she had it and she knew it!

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix on Damned is the oldest soundtrack here, yet it sounds as good as any of them because Warner recorded this on more professional equipment, had more money and of course, invented sound on film, so no surprise there. Glad it held up as well as it did.

To order The Damned Don't Cry Blu-ray, go to this link for it and other website exclusive releases at:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/ED270804-095F-449B-9B69-6CEE46A0B2BF?ingress=0&visitId=6171710b-08c8-4829-803d-d8b922581c55&tag=blurayforum-20

- Nicholas Sheffo