Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Film Three: Caliber 9 (At least in the English title) (1972). It's been some time since I watched a stylish and beautifully-filmed Italian Poliziotteschi. Fernando Di Leo's movie continually builds tension even with expected reveals. The fun Innocenti Mini Scene, and the rivalry between the hard-as-nails Ugo Piazza (Gastone Moschin) and loose cannon Rocco (Mario Adorf) make this one worth it if you like 1970s crime thrillers. 

The 70's were an exciting time for superhero comic books. Marvel Comics had revitalized the form in the 60's when Stan Lee and others, including Jack "King" Kirby and Steve Ditko, had created a new breed of heroes dealing with more down-to-earth situations than what was occurring in DC books. These characters tended towards the neurotic and self-doubting, but, more importantly, their lives were set in a world that seemed much closer to the real one. Hell, they had problems and weren't just super powered ciphers. Now some of the art seems archaic and the dialogue is dated and clunky, but at the time superheroes were being redefined for a generation that was mostly consuming horror and romance comics. After Frederic Wertham's S eduction of the Innocen t was released in 1954, most comic publishers had accepted a self-regulated comics code that limited horror, sex, and death, among other things, in comics. EC comics got around the code by publishing magazines,...