Verdict
Summary
A goofy star vehicle for the stunning looking Andress, who has quite a few full frontal nude scenes and sex scenes, Loaded Guns from director Fernando Di Leo makes a grave mistake by using a score that clearly indicates that this is a spoofy comedy rather than a straight ahead crime thriller.
Plot:
A sexy and savvy stewardess single-handedly takes down several crime syndicates in Naples.
Review:
Nora (Ursula Andress) is a sexy stewardess whose plane touches down in Naples, where she immediately goes to an address to deliver an envelope after being given $100 to hand-deliver it. She has no idea where the day is taking her, but she ends up in a bad neighborhood and walks into a very dangerous situation when she hands the envelope to a tough crime lord (played by Woody Strode) who takes the envelope, reads its contents and then orders his men to smack Nora around until she’s unconscious. Apparently, the envelope had a message that declared he would be killed soon by another crime lord, and he thinks maybe Nora knows more than she says. When she comes to, she’s able to stagger out, and she ends up at a handsome young stud’s apartment – a crash pad for swingers – and because her clothes are all torn up, he supplies her with a dress and tries to make sense of her predicament. She’s now involved in a plot involving two rival crime syndicates, and she begins to attract all sorts of lowlifes, thugs, couriers, drug dealers, smut peddlers, and creeps with rape on their mind when they get a good look at how beautiful Nora is. Shockingly, Nora is able to handle herself pretty well in bad situations: She might look like a hooker, but she can smash balls, crack skulls, and use her sexy charms to dupe even the most unsuspecting villain into submission. By the time Nora is done, Naples will have cleaner streets, and she’ll be richer to boot!
A goofy star vehicle for the stunning looking Andress, who has quite a few full frontal nude scenes and sex scenes, Loaded Guns from director Fernando Di Leo makes a grave mistake by using a score that clearly indicates that this is a spoofy comedy rather than a straight ahead crime thriller. With a few little tweaks, the film could’ve easily been a pretty satisfying crime drama with a strong female lead and a lot of sexiness to spice it up, but instead the film takes too may little turns into bad comedy scenes where everyone is missing their punches and horny guys are taking their pants off and slobbering like imbeciles in front of Andress, who is never shy about her nude scenes. The only thing missing is a moment where some idiot slips on a banana peel. However, the movie is worth checking out just for the sake of getting a good eyeful of Andress’s assets (wow!), and seeing Strode as a bad guy. The film just needs a totally different score and some mild tweaking to make it something along the lines of Yojimbo / A Fistful of Dollars, but as it stands it’s a lopsided misfire.
Raro Video will be releasing Loaded Guns on Blu-ray on January 30th, and the film looks good in a warm high definition transfer. There’re two audio options: English or Italian, and there’s an audio commentary by a film historian, plus a feature on the parody aspect, as delivered by director De Leo.
