All Rise...

Appellate Judge Patrick Bromley sleeps with the fishes.

The Charge

You're in, or you're in the way!

The Case

Duke Mitchell's Massacre Mafia Style (aka Like Father, Like Son) is what The Room would be if it were actually good.

That doesn't mean Massacre Mafia Style is one of these "so bad it's good" movies or that it shares Tommy Wiseau's ineptitude for filmmaking; what it means is that it is as personal a film and as much an extension of who Duke Mitchell is as a person as The Room is for its writer/director/star. It feels like the work of someone who was not a born filmmaker who teaches himself how to direct because he has a burning story to tell and the passion to scrape it together. The difference here is that Duke Mitchell has made a good movie.

A born entertainer and longtime popular nightclub singer, Mitchell eventually teamed with comedian Sammy Petrillo to form an act so similar to Martin and Lewis that Jerry Lewis pursued legal action. They even made a movie together in 1952—the ill-conceived (and titled) Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla which, as an inspired gesture, has been included in its entirely on the Blu-ray. Mitchell had dreams of making more personal, more "important" art, inspiring his later career as writer/director/producer/star of his own feature films. Massacre Mafia Style is the first of two films he made—a deeply personal and semi-autobiographical gangster drama that might lack in technical polish but makes up for it in specificity of voice.

Mitchell (who also wrote and directed and financed) stars as Mimi Miceli, son of a notorious gangster exiled to Sicily. Mimi Jr. wants to move the family business from the streets of New York to Hollywood and realize his dreams of getting into the entertainment business. For a while, things go great; Mimi Jr. finds success as a criminal in Los Angeles and builds himself a new network. Before long, though, his violent ways catch up with him. They always do.

Loaded with graphic violence and nudity, scored with wall-to-wall Italian standards and clocking in at a tight 80 minutes, Massacre Mafia Style is the back alley equivalent of The Godfather. That's not meant as a put-down. While Coppola's mob epic clearly serves as inspiration for Mitchell, his film plays more like the street-level version—it's nastier and tougher, lacking the stately elegance of The Godfather but not its passion or sense of Italian pride. There are so many things that Mitchell wants to say about himself, his past, his dreams, his heritage and, in some monologues, the entirety of the Italian American experience, but his screenplay finds a way to work all of that personal stuff into a crime movie that still delivers the goods. It's crudely made, sure, but no less effective.

A longtime cult movie that was "rediscovered" by Grindhouse Releasing about five years ago, Massacre Mafia Style is making its Blu-ray debut thanks to the same company (besides, the "real" rediscovered Duke Mitchell movie is his follow up, Gone With the Pope, which was lost for years before Grindhouse edited the footage together; it will be released on Blu-ray this same month). Despite being a low-budget exploitation movie, Massacre Mafia Style looks fantastic in high def; the 1.85:1 framed 1080p transfer shows few signs of age besides some washed-out color and is free of scratches, dirt or debris. Grindhouse should be commended for the work they've done restoring this one. Two audio options are available: a lossless mono track and a Dolby stereo track. Either is fine, though I prefer the DTS HD mono track because it's faithful to the original source.

It's in the bonus materials the Blu-ray really shines, as Grindhouse Releasing has packed the disc with extra content that both contextualizes Mitchell's real-life career and increases one's appreciation of Massacre Mafia Style. In addition the aforementioned inclusion of the entire Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla feature, Grindhouse has also included a 40-minute TV special called An Impressionistic Tribute to Jimmy Durante, in which Mitchell plays the famous entertainer and celebrates his life and music. It's another clear passion project and provides a deeper look into Duke Mitchell's psychology. There's a ton of archival material featuring Mitchell, from lost audio recordings to 16mm home movies to still galleries, as well as a great collection of interviews with Mitchell's son Jeffrey and several of his friends, all of whom tell great stories and provide a portrait of who he was. Original radio spots and the trailer for Massacre Mafia Style are included, as is a collection of bonus trailers for every other Grindhouse title (including The Swimmer, Lucio Fulci's A Cat in the Brain and the upcoming release of The Beyond). A standard definition DVD copy of the film and most of the extras is packaged with the set.

Massacre Mafia Style is sure to be among 2015's best Blu-ray releases in the "cult movie" category thanks to Grindhouse Releasing's fantastic 1080p restoration and amazing collection of supplemental material. The movie's a gem, too, and though Duke Mitchell made only two feature films (he technically never even finished the second), his voice is so distinct and his approach to genre filmmaking so personal that it's too bad he didn't get to make more. At the same time, it just makes a movie like this more special.

The Verdict

Loved it. Bring on Gone With the Pope

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