Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

Loaded Guns Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov January 31, 2024

Fernando Di Leo's "Loaded Guns" (1975) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Raro Video. The supplemental features on the release include exclusive new audio commentary by critic Rachel Nisbet and archival documentary. In English or Italian, with optional English and English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.

The foreign girl

Even if you are not a seasoned film collector who owns hundreds of different European genre films, you most likely own a few spaghetti westerns, like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, and A Fistful of Dynamite. These are not just very big spaghetti westerns, they are very big classic films that anyone interested in classic cinema would have seen and most likely acquired. You probably own a few poliziotteschi, too. Poli… what? Poliziotteschi describes the other big Italian genre films that competed with the spaghetti westerns during the 1970s and early 1980s. These films are essentially urban spaghetti westerns with similarly exotic characters and even more over-the-top action. Many of them were conceived to be even bigger political messengers than the spaghetti westerns as well. What are some of these poliziotteschi films that you may have seen and acquired? Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is arguably the biggest, most political, and most critically acclaimed one. For a while, Highway Racer was the boldest one. And Street Law remains the most relevant among them.

If you have seen and own a few poliziotteschi films, it is practically guaranteed that you have heard of Fernando Di Leo. You may have discovered Di Leo while browsing through the many films the great Ennio Morricone scored, too. While they did not collaborate on a lot of films, Di Leo and Morricone had a very good relationship, and the latter created a few outstanding soundtracks for films that the former either scripted or directed. In fact, some of the films Di Leo scripted happen to be very famous spaghetti westerns, so his name is not attached exclusively to the poliziotteschi. However, together with a couple of other directors Di Leo is responsible for creating the classic poliziotteschi blueprint, so if you begin exploring these films and notice that a lot of them are like the ones he directed, it is not coincidental. Di Leo’s poliziotteschi covered a lot of ground, thematically and stylistically, and did so with great authority, which is why other directors constantly mimicked them.

Di Leo directed Loaded Guns, which intentionally breaks the classic poliziotteschi blueprint, after some of his most successful films, like Caliber 9, The Boss, and Shoot First, Die Later. Its main protagonist is a very sexy airplane stewardess with a foreign passport (Ursula Andress) who lands in Naples and over the course of several days becomes a key player in an intense war between the two largest crime groups in the area, one of which is run by a black American unable to speak Italian (Woody Strode). As the stewardess realizes that her feminine curves and intellect can quite easily transform rough gangsters into silly puppies, Loaded Guns then switches into overdrive mode and becomes a conventional parody.

The obvious question is, why would Di Leo shoot a film like Loaded Guns?

In the 1970s, the poliziotteschi became very popular in Italy -- as well as in several other big European markets, most notably France and Germany -- and made plenty of good business for their producers and the theater owners that screened them. However, the more their popularity grew, the more violent and outrageous they became because it was how the public wanted them. As a result, some of the most popular voices in the Italian press, as well as various politicians from the left side of the political spectrum, began targeting them. Umberto Lenzi, who made some of the most over-the-top poliziotteschi, suffered the most after he was publicly accused of promoting fascism with them. Loaded Guns emerged at the beginning of the campaign against the poliziotteschi and intentionally satirized what made them targets. That is why it does not work particularly well as a crime comedy, or a proper crime film, which is what some non-Italian viewers have wanted it to be over the years. It is very much a product of its time, with a very particular Italian relevance.

Di Leo’s director of photography was Roberto Gerardi, whose credits include such grand classics of Italian cinema as The Great War and Marriage Italian Style, as well as genre favorites like The Warm Life, The Dolls, and The Slave. Gerardi also lensed the other most unusual film in Di Leo’s body of work, To Be Twenty.

Loaded Guns Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Loaded Guns arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Raro Video.

It is very easy to tell that Loaded Guns has been fully restored. Sadly, the new makeover is a mixed bag. Indeed, while from start to finish the film looks very healthy and stable, it is completely regraded. For example, it trades proper primary blue for several variations of brown and teal, so the summer footage from Naples now routinely looks like autumn footage from Frankfurt. The other major alteration affects primary red, which is now shifted toward brown. The gamma settings are off as well, which is not surprising because when the native color scheme of a film is destabilized, gamma anomalies are almost always present. As a result, in many darker areas the visuals begin to look soft and flat, as if they have been filtered, which they are not. The good news is that despite the brown(ish) tint in some areas where blues and reds are absent the color balance is somewhat decent. Unfortunately, the overall color temperature of the visuals is not. Image stability is excellent. (Note: This is a Region-Free Blu-ray release. Therefore, you will be able to play it on your player regardless of your geographical location).

Loaded Guns Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are two standard audio tracks on this Blu-ray release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the English track. Optional English subtitles are provided for the Italian track.

In the past, I have always viewed Loaded Guns with the English track, which features plenty of overdubbing despite the fact that many actors utter their lines in English. It is a bit uneven, but this is how the overdubbing was done. Also, its dynamic intensity is unimpressive, but this is an inherited limitation as well. If you choose to view the film with the Italian track, you should expect a very similar overall quality.

Loaded Guns Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Fernando Di Leo: Parody of a Genre - in this archival program, producer Armando Novelli, assistant director Luca Damiano, editor Amedeo Giomini, and journalist Davide Pulici discuss the conception and style of Loaded Guns. Also included are clips from an archival interview with Fernando Di Leo. In Italian, with English subtitles. (20 min).

• Commentary - this exclusive new audio commentary was recorded by critic Rachel Nisbet.

Loaded Guns Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Loaded Guns may seem like a very odd film in Fernando Di Leo's body of work only if one fails to grasp the significance of the satire that flourishes in it, which is a reaction to a major development that affected the production and distribution of the famous poliziotteschi in Italy during the 1970s. On the other hand, for obvious reasons, the satire has always been meaningless to fans of Ursula Andress, one of the sexiest actresses from the 1970s. Unfortunately, Raro Video's Blu-ray release of Loaded Guns introduces a new restoration of the film that should have been far more convincing. If you want to have it on your collection, pick it up when it is on sale.