Released in Italy as Fango Bollente (Boiling Mud),Savage Three is a brutal example of the Italian crime and murder genre known as poliziotteschi. It stars Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro as Ovidio Mainardi, a man who pushes buttons all day in a factory and endures a marriage that finds his wife (Martine Brochard) giving her body to her boss to get ahead. There's a scene early on where someone in his office explains why they keep the rats in a lab divided, as otherwise they will always attack one another. And there's always one rat that starts biting the others.

He and his co-workers Giacomo (Gianfranco De Grassi) and Peppi (Guido Di Carli) go from starting riots at soccer matches to stealing cars to acts of outright insanity, including one scene where a nude Dallesandro chases a woman while driving a forklift, impaling her against a wall. Before long, the three of them are doing pretty much anything they want, as the police think the killings are politically motivated or the acts of southern Italians, exposing the racism within the country at the time.

The film tries to explain that blame away. Much like Ovidio and his marriage, Giacomo is overwhelmed by his crumbling home and abrasive neighbors, while Peppi is trapped in a home with generations of relatives living on top of each other. The film doesn't make them seem innocent. But it does show how the modern world has dehumanized them and force them to explode into violence in a world that simply does not care.

Inspector Santagà (Enrico Maria Salerno, Inspector Morosini in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and the Italian voice of Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's films) is a cop who has been demoted for his violent way of dealing with crime and is also a man on his way toward retirement. Only he's able to see exactly who the killers are, which is a surprise to him, as he knows Ovidio from computer lessons he's been taking to try to remain relevant as the world passes him by.

Vittorio Salerno only directed three other movies (No, the Case Is Happily Resolved; Libido and Notturno con Grida),but I really enjoyed this and can't wait to track down the rest of his films. This was written by Salerno with Ernesto Gastaldi (The Whip and the Body, The Sweet Body of Deborah and more than one hundred more movies).

Savage Three is a powerful and brutal film. It's like a fantasy-free A Clockwork Orange that could happen at any time, even today.

Ovidio (Joe Dallesandro) and his 2 friends work together at a computer company. Gradually they start going insane because of the routine everyday life within a rotten society and the effect of computers. Their frustrations and oppression they have gone though make them start killing random people, including a prostitute and her pimp, a taxi driver and eventually Ovidio's own wife. This is a really demented film but incredibly well-made and original. The social commentary really works in this film. The three young men seem to be killing random people for no reason although they certainly have a motive. SAVAGE THREE describes a situation that rarely happens in real life but anything is possible right? There is plenty of violence and gore here but there seems to be a good excuse for all this mayhem to take place so in my opinion it is fully justified. The upbeat, progressive hard rock score by Franco Campanino (THE CLIMBER) is a winner. I'm not sure as if SAVAGE THREE can be categorized as a standard Italian crime film as it avoids the expected bank robberies and car-chases, but it will definitely appeal to fans of the genre, specially to the ones with a taste for sleaze. A really special obscurity that deserves wider recognition.

No mobsters here. No bank robberies either. Just three working Joes, working day in, day out. Joe works in a science lab, staring at rats and working on computers. His wife is a career woman who's always at work (and not averse to forwarding her career by giving her boss a chewy!). His mate lives with several billion family members who won't shut up. The third guy can't get a minute's peace due to his house falling to bits and his neighbours arguing. It's enough to drive them all mad.

Which it does! These three, led by Joe, start acting out against society in every way possible. They start off by starting a football riot where dozens are injured and one person dies. The case is given to perpetually tired looking cop Enrico Salerno, who initially encouters, but does not suspect, Joe while attending computer lessons at the lab Joe works at (the computer-based dialogue here is hilarious by the way). Enrico is down on his luck as he was demoted after ramming some bad guy in his car, so he's playing things a bit softly this time round...at least at first.

I've said it before - Joe Dallesandro can't really emote, but he's good as an angry psychopath. His trio become the scourge of society as the add murder to their list of crimes, at first stabbing a truck driver during a road rage incident, then killing a pimp and a hooker. They also kill a member of high society by impaling her on the fork of a fork lift truck, using an effect so good I can't figure how they did it.

This film plays out like some kind of Italian Clockwork Orange with kind of similar themes. If I was a man who thought about stuff I'd say that this whole film is a commentary on man's inability to successfully channel his aggression in everyday mundane tasks and even the acceptable societal outlets for such feelings (football being the glaring example here). It evokes the 'violent male ape' hypothesis that violence is inherent in humans and that these violent tendencies are as natural as love, affection and hunger.

I'm not a thinking man however so I'll just say that Sal Borghese looked real goofy when we first see him.