La Proprieta Non E Piu Un Furto (aka Property Is No Longer A Theft) (1973)

After a young bank clerk (Flavio Bucci) is denied a bank loan by his employer, he decides to exact his revenge on the bank's best customer, a rich property owner and butcher (Ugo Tognazzi). Directed by Elio Petri (INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION), this movie is a socialist anti-capitalist black comedy. Nothing wrong with that but even if you're in sympathy with the director's political ideals, the film is as didactic as one of those socially conscious Stanley Kramer films where we're lectured to as if we're backward children unable to grasp the simplest idea without it being hammered into us. It doesn't help that Bucci's bizarre performance (he seems to be playing a vampire in a horror movie) robs his character of any empathy. Indeed, all it ends up doing is making his victim, who is a capitalist pig, sympathetic in comparison. Petri's brutalization of the film's female characters (including Daria Nicolodi, DEEP RED) gives off an unpleasant misogynistic vibe. I get what Petri is trying to do but he's sabotaged his own movie. The score is by Ennio Morricone. With Mario Scaccia and Orazio Orlando.