“You're just crazy! Crazy and cruel!” Italy in
the 1970s was a turbulent place and time, rocked by socio-political change and
rife with organised crime. Drug cartels, kidnapping schemes, and young gangs
left the police scrabbling to catch up and the public locking themselves away.
Reacting to this period of fear, the film makers of the era unleashed a series
of hard-as-nails crime pictures and hard-bitten 'poliziotteschi' films.
Menacing rogue cops modelled on Dirty Harry dominated, but sometimes the
violent criminals took centre stage. One example would be Umberto Lenzi's Almost Human (1974), but not to be outdone – even in the twilight of his
career – Mario Bava (best known for horror films like Black Sunday or
Kill Baby Kill) dived into the fray with Rabid Dogs. However,
it was sucked into a nightmarish legal limbo before the low budget production
had even finished. The film, which many feared to be lost forever, remained
unseen for more than twenty years before, at long last, it was pulled from the
ashes and given new life...
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