Blazing Magnum
It is perhaps emblematic of the international cross-pollination which gave rise to director Alberto De Martino’s 1976 police thriller that it is known under so many titles, Una magnum special per Tony Saitta (A Magnum Special for Tony Saitta) in Italy, the evocative Strange Shadows in an Empty Room in North America and Blazing Magnum in the United Kingdom, referencing not only the original Italian title but also that the lead character was modelled on Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty” Harry Callahan whose second outing, Magnum Force, had been released in 1973.
Starring City Beneath the Sea’s Stuart Whitman as Tony Saitta, he rushes to Vancouver when his twenty-years-younger sister who speaks with a different accent Louise (Carole Laure) dies at a party at her exclusive university; suspicion initially falling on the married doctor with whom she was having an affair and blackmailing who attended her collapse, George Tracer (Space: 1999‘s Martin Landau), ongoing incidents indicate the answers are not so obvious.
Louise’s best friend, blind music teacher Julie Foster (The Initiation of Sarah’s Tisa Farrow), almost falling to her death after an item is stolen from their shared room, in what is apparently an unconnected incident the brother of Tracer’s close friend Margie Cohn (The Legend of Hell House’s Gayle Hunnicutt), a drag queen known as Jean Harlow, is murdered, sending Saitta on a mission to track down transvestites, while lurking in the background, silent other than the click of his calipers, is Terence (Wynonna Earp’s Jean Marchand).
Written by Vincenzo Mannino and Gianfranco Clerici and shot principally in the French-Canadian city of Montreal, Blazing Magnum could kindly be described as a hybrid, though at times the term mutation seems more applicable, the smooth jazz accompaniment to murders, identifying bodies in the morgue, fistfights and car chases seemingly designed to ease tension rather than raise it and the plot filled with narrative non-sequiturs and tenuously supported intuitive jumps which defy analysis.
Why does Saitta wait until moments after his sister’s funeral to request an autopsy when a day or even an hour before would have caused less disruption? Why when a healthy young woman died were toxicology tests not carried out routinely? Why is Saitta investigating a case in which he is personally involved, and why did he wait a week to question witnesses? Why does Saitta prefer to beat information out of suspects and random passers-by when identifying himself as a police officer asking questions might save time? When did it become police procedure to shoot a helicopter out of the sky in a heavily populated urban area?
Restored for StudioCanal as part of their Cult Classics range to present the bad fashions, haircuts and outlandish architecture of seventies Canada in their fullest glory and released simultaneously with De Martino’ L’Anticristo from 1974, the new edition of Blazing Magnum is supported by new interviews with De Martino and film historian Kim Newman, the original theatrical trailer, English and Italian audio options and, with the Blu-ray disc, four art cards.
Blazing Magnum is available on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download from StudioCanal now
