Maurizio Merli

Maurizio Merli

Birth : 1940-02-08, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Death : 1989-03-10

History

Maurizio Merli (8 February 1940 in Rome – 10 March 1989) was an Italian film actor. Merli got his first lead role in 1974 in the film White Fang to the Rescue due to his resemblance to the highly popular cult actor Franco Nero, who played the lead role in the first two films. Merli later became one of the most prominent actors of the poliziotteschi genre by starring in almost a dozen films. He died in 1989 of myocardial infarction after a tennismatch. (source Wikipedia)

Profile

Maurizio Merli
Maurizio Merli
Maurizio Merli

Movies

The Man in the Movie Camera
Marcello is a professional film restorer and an avid cinephile. While working on some of the most popular titles of Italian cinema, he comes across a strange figure almost hidden among the extras - a man wearing a bowler hat and looking directly toward the camera, perhaps even at Marcello himself! He finds the same man in many other films from different movie ages. He grows obsessed with this figure, even if it seems Marcello is the only one who can see him.
Tango blu
Walter Mantegazza
Tango blu is a night club in Milan where various bizarre characters meet. Among them a womanizing photographer and a porter who works in a slaughterhouse.
Spy Connection
Peter Wayne
Musante plays a man blackmailed and forced to assassinate a highly guarded KGB official. Two British agents have kidnapped his daughter and want him to do what they tell him. Why him? He has the ability to see in darkness and is a sharpshooter. Will he get the job done, get his daughter back, and escape from the Russian and British agents that pursue him?
Priest of Love
Angelo Ravagli
Following the banning and burning of his novel, "The Rainbow," D.H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, move to the United States, and then to Mexico. When Lawrence contracts tuberculosis, they return to England for a short time, then to Italy, where Lawrence writes "Lady Chatterley's Lover."
Poliziotto, solitudine e rabbia
Nick Rossi
"Poliziotti solitudine e rabbia" or "Ein Mann namens Venedig" (A Man called Venice), as it was called in Germany, is an Italian-German crime drama co-production from 1979, filmed mainly in the snowy winter of bleak West-Berlin. Italian cop Nick, played by gangster movie veteran Maurizio Merli, goes to Berlin to find the head of an International European blackmailing gang who has murdered several people. He investigates undercover as a contract killer for the gangsters, but of course becomes immediately the target of his enemies and has to fight hard to save his life...
Vultures Over the City
Mark Spencieri
Merli, teamed with Mexican star Hugo Stiglitz as his photographer buddy, plays a journalist investigating the shady activities of the local Mafia. Eventually the shit hits the fan, and Merli is cornered and beaten for sticking his nose to close to the action. After his girlfriend is raped, Merli dishes out some vigilante justice and punches, shoots, and bitch slaps his way through the Mafia ranks.
Skin Deep
Sound Engineer
Juan Carlos Naya stars as teenaged Danny, whose summer vacation with three friends and some nudists from Norway turns into a real mess as sexual rivalries and jealousy escalate into Lilli Carati's attempted suicide.
Hunted City
Commissario Paolo Ferro
Commissario Paolo Ferro (Maurizio Merli) stars as a (typical) tough cop again. This time he returns to the city of Milan to go after a murder corporation. Acampora (Mario Merola) is believed to be the prime suspect although he later proves to be one of the mafia's targets. As if all that wasn't enough, Paolo has to face his own nephew who seems to be involved in all sorts of dirty business.
From Corleone to Brooklyn
Commissario Giorgio Berni
Maurizio Merli takes up a familiar role as Commissioner Berni; a cop who puts his life on the line to transport a witness from Corleone to New York City in order to testify against a mob boss on trial for murder. Along the way, Berni and his prisoner face a series of traps set up by the Mafia.
Convoy Busters
Commissario Olmi
In Rome, a vagrant finds the body of a teen girl, her throat professional slashed. Police inspector Olmi uses his brutal and violent methods to follow a trail that leads him toward high government officials. When his methods leave an innocent bystander dead, the corrupt officials have an excuse to get Olmi transferred to a coastal town where the pace is slow and he has time for a romantic dalliance. Soon, Olmi discovers that fishing isn't the only local occupation, and out comes his gun and his ruthless tactics of investigation.
Seagulls Fly Low
Albert Morgan
An ex-Vietnam vet is forced to become a hit-man and gets caught in the middle of a conspiracy.
Covert Action
John Florio
Janssen plays an ex-CIA agent who has become an author, writing both non-fiction exposes (Phillip Agee was in the news at this time) and fiction spy novels. The CIA is on his case, in the person of Arthur Kennedy, CIA chief in Athens, where Janssen is staying. Janssen is pursuing a case that interests him, while dodging the traps set for him by Kennedy and trying to help Maurizio Merli, a former colleague with personal problems.
Magnum Cop
Walter 'Wally' Spada
A low-rent private investigator and former cop is sent to Austria on a job, and while there sees a number of seemingly unrelated coincidences that lead him into a strange web of corruption and decadence.
The Iron Commissioner
Commissario Mauro Mariani
Pretty solid Merli/Massi collaboration. The plot is a simple one that centers on various kidnapping episodes. With each scenario, the stakes increase for Merli's character and he must race against the clock to resolve each standoff.
Kleinhoff Hotel
Boom Operator
Pascale, married to an architect, misses her flight to London and is forced to stay in Berlin, at the Kleinhoff Hotel where she stayed as a student. Karl, a would-be revolutionary lives in the adjoining room and Pascale spies him and his ex-girl-friend through a hole. Then she follows him to a questionable place where she is arrested by the police during a revolutionists raid. When she returns to the Kleinhoff Hotel, Pascale finds Karl crying, and enters his room to console him and they have a love affair.
Highway Racer
Marco Palma
Maurizio Merli stars as a hot-shot police driver who has more guts than brains, often landing him in hot water with his middle-aged mentor, who was once a legendary police interceptor responsible for numerous large scale arrests.
A Man Called Blade
Mannaja
Maurizio Merli stars as a hatchet-wielding bounty hunter with a dark past and an even more desperate future. But when he disrupts the balance of power in a corrupt mining town, he unleashes a firestorm of brutality, betrayal and cold-blooded murder. Now, one man stalks a savage land where justice walks a razor and no bullets slice deeper than vengeance. He is A MAN CALLED BLADE.
The Cynic, the Rat & the Fist
Leonardo Tanzi
Luigi "Chinaman" Maietto escapes from prison. As soon as he is free he assigns immediately two henchman to murder the inspector whose testimonial once led to his prison sentence. Inspector Tanzi is left for dead but survives. The local newspapers cover up for him and pretend the assassination had succeeded. When Tanzi gets better, his superior wants him to hide in Switzerland. But Tanzi defies him because he intends to make sure himself that Maietto is put back in prison. He goes for it.
A Special Cop in Action
Commissioner Betti
A school bus with young children being kidnapped. Commissario Betti will solve the case. High action is promised, including hostage, bank robberies, car chases, prison scenes and mafia bosses!
Rome, Armed to the Teeth
Commissioner Leonardo Tanzi
A tough, violent cop who doesn't mind bending the law goes after a machine-gun-carrying, hunchbacked psychotic killer.
Fear in the City
Murri
The film focuses on Murri; the token maverick cop. He is called in after a bunch of criminals pull off a successful prison break and spend the night picking off various informers and people they don't like. Murri investigates; hooking up with one of the criminal's nieces along the way. He uses his own methods; which mostly involve breaking all the rules, and thus comes under a lot of scrutiny from his superiors who don't take too kindly to the cop's way of working.
Violent Naples
Il commissario Betti
Inspector Betti (Maurizio Merli) is transferred to Naples and immediately after his arrival receives a warm welcome from The Commandante (Barry Sullivan), the city's crime lord. Betti then goes on a personal mission against corruption and organized crime, and tries to force the syndicate out of town with any means necessary.
Calling All Police Cars
Boom Operator
Story about a young girl, the daughter a prominent doctor. When the girl goes missing her father gets the police to jump into action because of his class status and wealth.
Violent City
Commissario Betti
A detective sick and tired of the rampant crime and violence in his city, and constantly at odds with his superiors, is finally kicked out of the department for a "questionable" shooting of a vicious criminal. However, he is soon approached by a representative for a group of citizens who themselves are fed up with what they see as criminals going unpunished, and they make him an offer he may very well not refuse.
Chains
Alfio Capuano
Catene is a 1974 Italian melodramatic film directed by Silvio Amadio. The film is the re-make of the 1949 top grossing film with the same title by Raffaello Matarazzo. It was a commercial failure, grossing about 60 million lire.
White Fang to the Rescue
Burt Halloway
Set at the end of the 19th century in Canada's gold rush Klondike area, wolf-dog White Fang teams up with a prospector when his master is killed. Together they try to avenge his death.
Le mille e una notte all'italiana
Two young friends - one poet, the other a sculptor - have fun conquering the wives of others.
Sexy Sinners
Cecco - friend of Rinaldo
During the early Italian Renaissance and the Black Death epidemic, a group of young men and women, seeking refuge in a secluded villa just outside the city of Florence, shares different stories of adultery and forbidden love.
Eros e Thanatos
Giornalista Barni
Franco Adami injures a condescending prostitute to photograph her, but escaped from guilt, causing her death by bleeding.
Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankamen
A masked superhero searches for a magical golden relic while trying to prevent the plundering of an Egyptian tomb.
Two R-R-Ringos from Texas
Nordista
A western comedy starring the Sicilian comedians Franco and Ciccio who produced dozens of such spoofs in the 1960s. This time, they quote mainly "The Good, the Bad And the Ugly". Ciccio is sergeant in the army and Franco volunteers to join (after too many drinks). Franco has a talking horse telling him where a treasure is buried. They have to get behind enemy lines in the civil war to get hold of it, though. (via IMDB- user unbroken metal)
The Leopard
(uncredited)
As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.