I have to admit that when Lawrence said he was sending me a movie titled Massacre in Rome I was expecting a nice infusion of Giallo goodness but I got something much more unexpected.

I'd never heard of this movie, despite the fact that it has a pretty prestigious pedigree. The film's producer, Carlo Ponti, produced a number of classic Italian productions in collaboration with directors like Federico Fellini (La Strada), Michelangelo Anotonioni (Blow Up, Zabriskie Point) and Jean Luc Godard (Contempt, Les Carbiniers). It features Richard Burton, Marcello Mastroiani (the star of 8 1/2), and recognizable character actors like Leo McKern. The film's cinematographer, Marcello Gatti, filmed The Battle of Algiers and the film's director is veteran genre journeyman George P. Cosmatsos, who has made some decent films (Of Unknown Origin, Tombstone) and some not so decent ones (Cobra, Leviathan).

I wondered why I'd never heard of it before, considering all the talent associated with it, and then I thought -- uh, oh -- this is going to suck ...

But not only does this movie not suck, it's actually pretty damn good. Based on a true wartime atrocity commited by German and Italian officers during World War II, the film left me feeling genuinely horrified at the worst abilities of the genus homo sapiens. In 1943, a group of partisans -- Italian citizens who were outraged at the direction Mussolini was taking their country -- set off a bomb on a street in Rome where a squad of Nazi soldiers are marching, which ends up killing 33 soldiers. The Nazi brass demands that in retribution, ten Italians must die for every German killed, so they set about coming up with 330 Italians to execute. They start with Jews and people already up on Death Row, then add to the list anyone accused but not yet convicted of a capital crime, and before long they're just grabbing people at random out of the prisons, which housed dissenters along with criminals.

Richard Burton plays Kappler, the german officer put in charge of the executions -- finding a site, training the men, and joining them in the mass killing. Mastroianni plays a composite character, a Catholic priest named Antonelli who tries bringing the case up to Pope Pius XI in an effort to stop it.

The film is slow in places but the action is well done when it does happen. But the film's slow nature gives you time to consider the atrocity at the center of its plot, By making those seeking revenge Nazis, the ridiculous and futile nature of revenge is highlighted in a compelling way.

The extras on the disc include a brief interview with the late George Pan Cosmatos (conducted on the set of one of his not-good movies, Leviathan), a new interview with cinematographer Marcello Gatti, who is lively and full of stories, including what he himself did during World War II to stand up to Mussolini, a television interview Marcello Mastroianni conducted at a lavish hotel, and interviews with real life Partisans, who share some really insightful memories of Italy as it was at the time of this movie.

This is something definitely worth picking up. No Shame films should be proud of creating a great dvd for an unheralded movie.