Also known as The Sick Killers and S.S. Sezione Sequestri (which is the title used on the tape source this DVD was mastered from), 1973's Ransom Baby (known in its native Greece as Oi Apanthropoi) was directed by Pavlos Filippou, a prolific director with a long list of credits to his name.

Obviously inspired by the Italian crime films being churned out around this time by the likes of Umberto Lenzi and Fernando Di Leo, Filippou's film follows a beautiful woman named Christine (Sassa Kastoura) who is the leader of a criminal gang made up of a tough guy named Kurt (Andreas Barkoulis) and an older man named Heine (Zoras Tsapelis) who once had ties to the Nazi party. These three decide to rob a casino located on Mount Parnes by disguising themselves as IBM repairmen. They figure that the payday from this heist will be big enough that, if they can pull it off at least, they'll walk away from it filthy rich. They set their well planned scheme into motion and make it out with the loot before anyone notices. Once they get back to their hideout, they carefully conceal the bills inside cigarettes, figuring no one will ever look inside and find it.

Things take a strange turn when a cop named Miskas (Lakis Komninos) busts Heine on his way to the airport to leave the country. Kurt isn't happy about this and decides that he'll kidnap Miskas' young son and hold him hostage for the ransom loot. Additionally, he's going to use his captive as a bargaining chip to secure himself an uninterrupted exit from Greece so that he can hide out somewhere outside of the country and live the good life. The kidnapping plot goes south very quickly though, and Miskas' wife (Nelly Gini) is killed in the process. Now fueled by revenge, Miskas takes it upon himself to bring the gangsters in his way and if he has to break the law to do it, so be it.

Not quite as action intensive or gritty as the films made by the aforementioned Italian directors, Ransom Baby is still worth a look for fans of seventies European crime films. It takes a bit of time for the action to get moving and the first half of the movie plays out more like a typical heist movie than a cops and robbers picture, but some welcome nudity courtesy of the stunning beautiful and wonderfully shapely Ms. Kastoura helps to spice things up. Once the revenge angle is worked into the plot things do pick up considerably and we get a few solid shoot outs in some interesting locations and a couple of good chase scenes as well. Lakis Komninos makes for a pretty good antihero lead here and we see him suffer enough that we definitely understand his quest for revenge and want him to succeed. The bad guys are bad, they did him wrong, and we can see why he'd want to set it right. The rest of the cast are fine, if unremarkable, each one looking sufficiently skuzzy and world weary, the exception being the glamorous Kastoura.

As far as the storyline goes, this film isn't trying to break any new ground. The plot is fairly predictable and what you'll see done here you've seen done before, and often times with better results. The locations help notch this one up a bit though, and some skillful editing in the more action intensive scenes is also a plus. This isn't up there on par with the best of what the genre has to offer but if you've got an interest in 70s European cop/crime films you could certainly do a lot worse than you'd do with Ransom Baby.

Video:

The 1.33.1 fullframe doesn't really look cropped but is definitely tape sourced (the packaging states that the movie 'comes back to life culled together from the very last surviving original elements') as indicated by a few tape rolls here and there and some tracking lines present on the bottom of the picture from start to finish. The first few minutes look the worst, things clean up a bit from there but obviously the transfer can't really look any better than its tape source will allow and man oh man do those dark scenes look murky, messy and just plain bad. It would have been nice to see this given a proper re-mastered release as it's quite well shot at times, but that didn't happen. This is just barely watchable, really, and overall this generally looks like the worn out tape it was obviously sourced from.