'Almost Human' (1974) – Umberto Lenzi.

Umberto Lenzi's nihilistic Poliziotteschi masterpiece has lost little of its bracingly bullet-shredded bellicosity! The film's continued relevance due in no small part to multi-faceted Thespian, Tomas Milian's remarkably vivid, deliciously pyrotechnical performance as the morbidly fascinating psychopath Giulio Sacchi, a doomed social outcast with debilitating delusions of grandeur. Following a bungled bank heist, the megalomaniacal sadist Sacchi 'masterminds' the ill-fated kidnapping of wealthy, upwardly nubile, delectably dishy debutante, Marilù Porrino (Laura Belli). His guileless comrades, thuggish, Vittorio (Gino Santercole), and angsty pretty boy, Carmine(Ray Lovelock) become weary of Sacci's predilection for arbitrary carnage. His reckless sadism provides a gruesome trail of corpses that leads granite-faced, no quarter given Commisario Grandi (Henry Silva)to a tense showdown.

Lenzi's infamously cruel, witheringly immoral, deliriously drug-fuelled poliziotteschi is a genre-defining, diabolically death-dealing Grindhouse classic, and a starkly intimate view of a depraved sociopathic killer. Tomas Milian's incandescently insane performance is a magnetic manifestation of unrestrained feral beauty, both mesmerically mad, and disturbingly erotic! Forcefully driven by maestro Ennio Morricone's electrifyingly enigmatic score, Lenzi's spectacularly sanguineous, sledgehammer mise-en-scene still strikes a shockingly resonant chord to this very day. 'Almost Human' climaxes brutally with one of the most righteously deserved exterminations in the poliziottesco's exhilaratingly brief, yet excitingly blood-soaked history! I'll leave the last word to, Sacci himself: 'I'm gonna wash my hot dog in champagne every day!' Right on!!! We ALL gotta have a dream, Giulio Sacchi!