Perfect cast and a good story

Expected more

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Feeling a bit underwhelmed by Umberto Lenzi's 1966 confused part 1,I decided to enter my viewing of the second and final movie in the Komic- book Kriminal series with lower expectations for the Italian superhero's final caper.The plot:Spending time doing shady life insurance deals with his girlfriend by running an old peoples home for wealthy old woman,who all end up having heart attacks when a fully costumed Kriminal "visits" them at night.Kriminal gets a whiff that he and his girlfriend's latest victim may offer them something more than just life insurance,when he accidentally breaks a small blue Buddah statue and finds a roughly cut piece of paper inside it.Carefully reading everything written on the scrap of paper,Kriminal discovers that the paper is actually ¼ of a map which gives the location of a secret tomb filled with valuable paintings,stolen by a once master criminal,who secretly wrote the map as a puzzle shortly before his execution.Ignoring his girlfriends pleas that they should just "take the money and run",Kriminal sets off on an adventure to find the missing pieces of the map.View on the film:For the screenplay of the film,writer Eduardo Manzanos Brochero (who also wrote a number of Sergio Martino's most famous Gialli) goes for a fantastic "back to basics" approach by getting rid of Lenzi's jumbled up betrayals/back stabbings threads from the first movie,to instead deliver a down the line,thrilling Spy Adventure film.Along with having the terrific UK and Islamabad locations smoothly fitting into Kriminal's globe trotting adventure, Brochero also smartly includes some unexpectedly charming comedy moments, (such as Kriminal attempting to keep his cover by saying that he is a gynaecologist!) which along with helping to make you really warm to the characters,also allows Brochero to include a sharp,shocking Giallo/Noirish sting to the end of the film.Reprising their roles from part 1,Glenn Saxon gives a greatly improved,confident performance as the title character,with Saxon giving Kriminal the perfect mix of being adventurous, (such as going into a tomb for the accent treasure like art work) and also a little bit unintentionally (?) goofy, (such as having Kriminal trying to stay undercover by wearing one of the worlds worst fake moustache's.)Along with Saxon,the stunning Helga Line returns to play a much different role then she played in part 1,which along with allowing Line to wear a number of stylish outfits and display her amazing long legs,also allows Line's character to be seen as Kriminal's equal,as Kriminal finds himself to be a few steps behind in getting all the pieces of the map.Leaving Umberto Lenzi's Art Deco directing style behind,the under rated directing tag team duo of Fernando Cerchio and Nando Cicero instead direct part 2 with all guns blazing.Moving the plot along at a breathless pace, Cerchio and Cicero connect the separate sections of Kriminal's global chase by including a number of tremendously stylised frames from the original comic,which along with giving the film a real "adventure comic" feel,also allows the series to finish strongly displaying its original roots.

For the most part, this is an average sequel to an average movie: like its predecessor, it moves rather ploddingly and looks rather bland, despite fair production values. Glenn Saxson does seem more comfortable in the role of the casually amoral Kriminal this time around, and shows a little more personality. Helga Line also returns, but in a different role; and that role, as a duplicitous lady of mystery, is better than either of the two roles she had in the previous movie. Still, I might not even have been motivated enough to write this comment if it weren't for this film's last 5 minutes: first, a pretty good car chase, and then, a bold, unformulaic ending. Those were enough to raise my rating from ** to **1/2 out of 4.

Second and last entry in the “Kriminal” series – good-looking, light-weight Italian capers with an exotic touch originating from a comic strip. Whereas the first film concerned a string of diamond robberies (from what I’m able to recollect), this involves the search for a couple of missing paintings by world-renowned artists – the map of the location in question is hidden inside four identical statues of a Buddha. As in KRIMINAL (1966), the quest sends our anti-hero globe-trotting – London (his escape from an Istanbul prison, where his initial adventure had concluded, having occurred off-screen), Spain and, then, across the sea to the desert of Lebanon (the Goya and Rembrandt works are kept in an ancient tomb!).Having re-read my review of the original in preparation for this one, back then I had found Glenn Saxson “a wooden lead”; however, I think he has grown nicely into the part – ably demonstrating the character’s resourcefulness (fleecing insurance companies, nonchalantly disposing of his double-crossing female partner, posing as a messenger to present his arch-nemesis with a booby-trap wedding gift[!] and an erudite gentleman on the ship in order to frame a naïve fellow passenger for his crimes: in this respect, the script often utilizes the trademark skeletal costume to throw his pursuers’ scent off Kriminal’s trail…apart from the expected scaring of gullible victims), wit and magnetism. The wonderful theme from the original (by Raymond Full) is reprised here, which blends quite well with the new score from Manuel Parada; also returning from the first film are luscious “Euro-Cult” starlet Helga Line' (albeit in a different role – a femme fatale who’s a rival to the titular figure for the priceless paintings) and Andrea Bosic as the Scotland Yard officer still after Kriminal. Here, too, are the occasional delightful transitions to animation taken straight from the comics; I’ve never come across the latter – but I guess this goes to show how the live-action version was a faithful rendition of the original.While I don’t recall the first film enough to objectively judge how much of a lesser achievement the sequel actually is (I’m prepared to give the Umberto Lenzi film the benefit of the doubt, though I’m certain of its own rather middling qualities when stacked up against the definitive Pop Art-tinged Master Criminal film of the era – Mario Bava’s DANGER: DIABOLIK [1968]), it’s a superficial but effortlessly fun ride. If I had to put in one discernible criticism, I’d say that the desert climax is a bit long-drawn out…except that it leads directly to the surreal fade-out gag. By the way, at least one source mentions the uncredited contribution of director Nando Cicero in connection with the film; also my DivX copy froze a couple of times during playback on my compatible player but went by smoothly on my DVD-ROM. I think yet another DivX-to-DVD-R conversion is in order here...