Underplayed Gems

Massacre Mafia Style (1974)

Massacre Mafia Style poster
Directed by
Duke Mitchell
Genre
drama film, crime film
Country
United States
Runtime
1h 22m
Rating
5.8 of 10 from 33 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
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How it feels

A man decides to take revenge against the mob for his father's murder. He builds his own crew to rise up in the criminal underworld.

grungygrittyrevenge-drivendarkly humorousrawlow-budgetunpolishedviolent

What happens

Massacre Mafia Style (also known as The Executioner or Like Father, Like Son) is a 1974 independent film written, directed, produced by, and starring Italian-American crooner-actor Duke Mitchell. The tagline for the film was "You’re IN, or you’re IN THE WAY." Massacre Mafia Style was written, produced, self-financed and directed by Duke Mitchell, and was accumulated from all of his real-life run-ins with similar characters and mob stories. Duke Mitchell was an actor and singer (providing the singing voice of Fred Flintstone in The Flintstones cartoons) and was once part of a comedy duo with partner Sammy Petrillo who together starred in the 1952 cult film Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla with Bela Lugosi of Dracula fame. The pair whose act, Mitchell & Petrillo, was imitative of Martin & Lewis (Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis), was sued by Lewis after the Lugosi film was released. Mitchell went on to become a well-known crooner and nightclub act in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and as such, was known as the “King” of Palm Springs and ran in some of the same circles as pal Frank Sinatra. His nightclub act revolved around his Sinatra-like crooning and rockabilly Italian-American songs. With such behind-the-scenes access, Mitchell often used several of the nightclubs that he sang in as locations for his films; such places as The Buggy Whip in Los Angeles. Mitchell would use the money he made singing to fund his independent films. Several of Mitchell's projects never saw the light of day, including his next film Gone with the Pope which only existed as a work print when it was found in a garage by Grindhouse Releasing’s Bob Murawski and Sage Stallone. It was carefully restored and released theatrically in 2011 by Grindhouse Releasing, which has also restored and released Mitchell's Massacre Mafia Style on Blu-ray in 2015. While not prosecuted for obscenity, the film was seized and confiscated in the UK under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the video nasty panic. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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