Kier-La Jannise's A Violent Professional The Films Of Luciano Rossi Book Review

When I first picked up this book from FAB Press I was not too sure I knew who Luciano Rossi was however as I read on I realised that not only had I seen Rossi before but I had seen a fair bit of him, after all, the guy is in rather a lot of films although it is often a case of blink and you will miss him. Luciano Rossi is, after all, a bit part man of Italian exploitation and genre cinema. While Rossi is credited with in almost seventy films there may be many others where he was not credited at all.

A Violent Professional is not so much the story of the films of Luciano Rossi as the title suggests but is actually far more focused in that it concentrates on Luciano's role in these films, no matter how brief the appearance from Uno Sceriffo Tutto D'oro in 1966 which is Rossi's first known credit right up to Lung Vita Alla Signora in the late 1980s.

With such a narrow forcus this book could have been really dull and dry but it wasn't. Instead it was stuffed full of facinating anecdotes and factlets about pretty much every known film appearance by Rossi. Kier-La is clearly a fan and this comes across clearly in the writing in which the author does not even make a pretence of objectivity, she is a Rossi fan and doesn't she let us know. Don't however let that put you off though, the enthusiasm is infectious and at the end of the book you will find yourself as facinated by this guy as Kier-La is to the point that you may start Luciano Rossi spotting in future.

Here are a few of Rossi moments you may or may not already knew about. Rossi was a drugs expert in Fulci's Contraband and involved in the famous blowtorch scene, he is a gynaecologist in Salon Kitty, though Kier-La tells us he really should have starred in this one and he is the first actor to appear in White Fang To The Rescue.

This book is a delightful read and since organised chronologically it is one of those books, just like the Psychotronic Video Guide, that you can simply flop open and start reading a random page. It is full colour with every page illustrated with graphics, movie stills and poster art and while it weighs in at a modest 128 pages it deals with its subject more than adequately. Excellent stuff.