7/10
Shaft in Africa
18 September 2017
Tom Garden is sunning it up in Spain when he receives word from America that his brother has been killed. Thinking that this might be some sort of revenge against himself as he was some sort of gangster, Tom heads off home with vengeance on his mind, as well as plenty of flashbacks to help the flight go in quicker!

Once in NYC, Tom gets his goon throttling gloves on and starts shaking down the local criminals to find out what the hell's going on, and comes up against the Mafia don who told him to get the hell out of America in the first place. He also hooks up with Erika Blanc, his ex-girlfriend who was subsequently his brother's girlfriend, who tries to help him get to the bottom of things. He also meets an old friend called Mortimer (played by Luciano Pigozzi) who is terrified of something, and with good reason, as some guy turns up and slashes him to death with a straight razor. But why would Mortimer write the letter G in his own blood before dying?

What starts off as a gritty crime film quickly turns into a Giallo, only we know who the killer is as he's right up there on the screen – what we don't know is why he's killing everyone. Then for some reason the action switches to Kenya, Africa, where safari in the seventies meant 'shooting everything with guns'. They love animals, that's why they like to kill them!

Luckily we can all breathe a sigh of relief as no one kills any animals in this one (always a risk of the job when watching Italian trash films), but that doesn't stop an elephant stomping the crap out of one of the characters! Most of the actual plot develops in Kenya too, from Tom's brother's old business partner and his past with Erika Blanc, and Tom's brother's old girlfriend turning up, then turning up again – only dead!

Although it's all a bit flat (at least in the recorded off of TV version I watched) there's enough madness going on to keep me happy – they even throw in a safari car chase at the end.
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