Review for Wake up and Kill (Svegliati e uccidi)

Arrow continue their relentless release schedule unabated, serving up a perfectly judged, eclectic mix of cult horror, noir classics, spaghetti westerns, Japanese Yakuza movies and Italian Giallos. Wake Up and Kill (AKA Svegliati e uccidi AKA Wake Up and Die) actually doesn’t quite fit any of these genres, yet successfully straddles several.

It’s actually a kind of crime biopic, very Italian and very sixties with a cool Ennio Morricone soundtrack adding to its appeal.


Based on a true story and made within a year or so of his final arrest, it traces the tale of Luciano Lutring (played by Robert Hoffman) who was the son of a small-time grocer who became a pretty thief. When he falls in love with a Yvonne (Lisa Gastoni ), a night-club singer who prefers the stage name, Candida, he decides he needs more cash to help her properly fulfil her ambition. Soon he is stealing cars, smashing jewellers’ windows and staying in hotels that are way out of his league.

Having got away with one smash and grab, where he used an axe stolen from a workman’s van, this soon becomes his trademark and it’s not long until the police are on his trail.

Yvonne marries Lutring when he promises to go straight but he insists on just one more job. As it’s a slow-news day, the newspapers decide to make a focus of the latest robbery, relating it to others and creating a kind of Robin-Hood folk hero out of him. As a result, his picture appears everywhere in his home town and in Milan and he makes his escape to Paris.


Before long his reputation has become international and, marginalised, he finds he must now pay over the odds for hide-outs which in turn requires more robberies to fund. He finds himself in a vicious circle although, miraculously, he continually manages to evade the increasingly frustrated international police forces.

Needing to score big, he approaches a large Milan based gang with a plan. They believe it could work but decide to do it themselves but set him up for the fall. Then things go from bad to worse.

Inspector Moroni (Gian Maria Volonte) is now hot on his tail and recognising a weakness in Yvonne, he persuades her to effectively ‘shop’ him. She would rather her husband gave himself up and serve a jail sentence than be shot by over-zealous police.


By now Lutring has taken to carrying a machine gun in a violin case (I know…) which gives the press a chance to dub him ‘the machine gun soloist’ given his propensity to work alone.

He heads to Paris and hooks up with a small town gang who are headed for a crime-spree in the wealthy Cote d’Azur. A bungled heist results in one of the men shooting a police officer dead, raising the stakes condiderably for the by now, desperate Lutring.

The whole film moves along apace but there is very little light and shade – it’s pretty much a one note piece. As a result, despite its gritty cinematography and editing, the great location footage and the incredible score, it starts to feel over-long. We seem to see the same conceit again and again. Whilst historically accurate, it doesn’t necessarily make for a great narrative.



Of course, native Italians may feel differently. After all, Lutring was a kind of folk-hero after all and to be fair, I’d watch this over the British movie ‘Buster’ any day of the week.

The Blu-ray disc contains two versions of the film; the original domestic Italian language version lasting just north of two hours, which I watched first in full, and then a substantially shorter English version which ironically may be the better of the two given its less repetitive brevity. Of course you have to endure a non-lip-synched dub on that but it’s not too badly done.

It looks in pretty good shape in both versions – a nice, high definition transfer with plenty of detail and very little wear and tear.

For an Arrow release, it’s extraordinarily light on extra features. In fact I had to press a few buttons to believe it. Just a trailer and nothing more. Still, you do get two versions of the film on one disc so I shouldn’t complain.

The disc includes reversible sleeve artwork and a booklet which contains new writing about the film by Roberto Curti, though I didn’t get sight of that. (My fault – the link sent to a lo-res PDF had expired).

‘Wake Up and Kill’ isn’t the greatest release of the year, but it’s pretty decent. If you like Italian Polizio movies then it may be for you.