Savage Three [Fango bollente] (1975) Review

Released as part of a brilliant box set Savage Three makes up one of the five films on Arrow’s Years of Lead collection which contains five classic Italian crime thrillers made between 1973 and 1977.

Taken from the height of the poliziotteschi genre these menacing movies combine extreme violence, moral ambiguity, political intrigue and social comment weaving together in thrilling criminal capers that sum up the intense uncertainty and instability in Italy during the 1970’s.

The tumultuous period saw the populace filled with cynicism, paranoia and anger at the corruption and uncertainty that raged all around them. With widespread acts of left and right-wing terrorism people started to distrust the government and police who were constantly involved in scandals and controversies and seen as incompetent.

All of these real life issues and sentiments found form artistically in the savage cinema that took Italy by storm. Although looked down upon by the critics of the period many of the movies were hugely successful with audiences who finally felt like they saw their day to day concerns played out on screen.

Savage Three is an interesting example of the poliziotteschi cycle which feels surprisingly pertinent. Similar in its themes to 1976’s Like Rabid Dogs directed by Mario Imperoli which also appears on the box set, Savage Three sees seemingly normal people committing extreme acts of violence and barbarism for no apparent reason other than they are bored and frustrated with their everyday lives.

Focusing primarily on Ovidio Mainardi (Joe Dallesandro who went on to star in Miami Vice and The Limey) we follow the young clerk as he aimlessly floats through his days working at a computer company. Finding little pleasure or interest in his role save sadistically prompting some lab mice to viciously attack each other Ovidio decides that him and his two best friends Giacomo (Gianfranco De Grassi) and Pepe (Guido De Carli) should make their own entertainment.

Heading to a football match they feed off the aggression already present in the crowd and amplify it by causing a large riot to break out between the fans. Leaving laughing at their anarchic achievement they take things one step further and steal a sports car then a motor bike, all of which instils a sense of power and purpose in the lacklustre men who up until this point have been drowning in monotony.

Hooked on the illicit excitement and new found feeling of freedom the savage three continue their crime spree first by murdering a truck driver in a road rage attack and then by raping and slaughtering a prostitute and her pimp whose bodies they display in a town square for all to see.

These terrible acts finally catch the attention of the police who see them as singular unrelated events of anti-social barbarity and are clueless to catch the perverse perpetrators. Commissario Santagà (Enrico Maria Salerno) however has a different theory and starts to connect the blood drenched dots revealing to the other officers the disturbing concept that the cruel crimes being committed are random and motiveless, a thought too alarming for the rest of the force to accept.

With the immoral trio seeking more inhuman and appalling thrills and feeling like they are untouchable it is left to Santagà alone to try and stop the young men whose lust for violence and chaos has overtaken them.

Although filled with gratuities acts of physical and sexual violence and a focus on some extremely unlikable characters, the fact that toxic masculinity, institutional sexism, rampant abuses of power and redefined gender roles are all currently huge topics of discussion makes Savage Three feels shockingly relevant still.

Savage Three troublingly makes us witness the fragility of society and how simple it is to cause chaos and get away with it. Although the story offers some vague explanations to why the men commit these crimes including Ovidio’s emasculation at the hands of his career focused wife, it is more about how quickly any one of us could drop their mask of civility to indulge their depraved desires.

Directed by Vittorio Salerno another of his films, 1973’s No, the Case is Happily Resolved is included on the box set along with Massimo Dallamano’s Colt 38 Special Squad from 1976 and Stelvio Massi’s Highway Racer made in 1977. The films all balance action and entertainment with social comment and explore a variety of topics from class dynamics to political corruption with a range of rouge cops, shady officials and psychotic sociopaths featuring thought.

Although the poliziotteschi may have fallen out of fashion films like Savage Three and the other movies included on the Years of Lead set prove that these films still have as much to say to their audience today as they did way back when they were made.

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