Review of: Fearless (1978 AKA Magnum Cop)

Known as Fearless Fuzz or Magnum Cop in the United States.

It is such a strange departure from watching American police films versus Italian. Americans will give you the whole premise and setup in the first 5 to 10 minutes whereas the Italians will give you a whole other story. You may get two or three other sub-stories before even getting to the main plot. Sometimes 30 minutes in. Such is the case with Magnum Cop.

Maurizio Merli stars as Wally Spada. A private investigator that hunts down missing persons. In the first 3 minutes, we are introduced to him taking pictures in a bush of underage school girls. Within seconds the girls are abducted and Wally bursts out of the bushes and blasts the two assailants. Pretty extreme intro for our character but Merli was used to playing in these kinds of nutso balls-to-the-wall Poliziotteschi. Merli starred in the excellent Violent Rome, Violent Naples, and The Tough Ones. All staples of the genre. Merli was discovered due to his likeness to Franco Nero. When they couldn’t get Nero they would cast Merli. To me, Merli looked closer to a blonde-haired Tom Selleck or old wrestling star Magnum TA.

After the opening credit scene, we think our story is going to take us down a path involving a runaway heiress, but that story gets wrapped up incredibly quickly as well and thus we finally get to our plot. Wally goes to visit with a police inspector friend of his and gets tied up in an abduction of a young girl. He searches for info and tries to talk to the young girl’s friends at the school. Her best friend reveals that all the girls at the school, who are between 14 and 16, prostitute themselves without their parents knowing. It’s a pretty uncomfortable plotline involving a bunch of insanely wealthy families and their rich spoiled daughters. Also a pretty common plot point in many Italian police films.

Somehow Wally finds clues that lead him to a strip club. I am not sure how they got Joan Collins to agree to this scene, but the next thing we know Joan is doing a burlesque dance. No worries, it does end with her topless. He circles back around to speak to her and he is ambushed by a bunch of henchmen goons. She sets him up, but after they beat him up, Brigitte ( Collins) becomes DTF pretty quickly. I mean why not? Then they go to dinner where she complains ” I don’t feel well. I think we made love too much today.” and she escapes out the back of the restaurant.

Wally goes on the hunt only to find a trail of dead henchmen and someone following him. After two cars play chicken with Spada in the middle he makes a run for it. Luckily Spada lands on the hood and the cars crash into each other. Spada slowly starts to put clues together that Brigette might be in charge of an underage prostitution ring. She lures young girls to her home with promises of riches and then sells them to wealthy businessmen. When their usefulness is up…… they end up dead. This process is shown in one of the best mannequin hit-by-a-car scenes I have ever seen. It’s pretty convincing and then the cut to the young girl on the ground covered in blood was pretty impactful.

Spada finally gets to the men behind the operation. When he finds the young girl he has been searching for all the film she is dead. Brigette shows up and shoots the man who abducted the young girl. Her name is Annalise by the way, but we never see her until the very end. Wally stops Brigette and makes a strange accusation that she wouldn’t treat young girls that way if she knew what it was like to be raped. Things start to get weird and then someone in a mask shows up and knocks Wally out and shoots Brigette. A henchman shows up to stop an implied rape by our hero and then shoots our lead villain. Yeah, that’s a lot to unwrap there.

The plot is all over the place and the transitions from scene to scene sometimes aren’t there. A scene ends and BAM, right on to the next part of the plot with zero filler or lead-up. Strangely, enough it’s not really disjointed either. There is a weird sense of humor in spots that come out of nowhere as well. In one scene in particular Wally is in a car chase when he decides just to drive down the hill. In the process, he takes out a bush that has a guy taking crap in.

I am a big fan of Polizioteschi films as they are usually full of just the most absolutely bonkers action and practical effect violence. Fearless or Magnum Cop was recently put out on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. The print looks solid enough and is pretty clear. Still, some fuzz on it that actually keeps the low-budget style intact. Some films don’t need to be crystal clear.

Advertisement