Franco Nero look-alike actor Maurizio Merli stars as an agile private eye in "Emergency Squad" director Stelvio Massi's "Magnum Cop" with Joan Collins. Although Merli did his share of Italian 'Polizi' films as a "Dirty Harry" style inspector, he plays an ordinary gumshoe, Walter 'Wally' Spada, in this yarn about betrayal and blackmail. Somebody is running a blackmail and prostitution ring and Joan Collins has a hand in it. She shows up 41 minutes into the action when our hero heads off to Vienna to do his sleuthing. Collins works in a night club as a stripper and she bares all. She is shown nude in the final quarter-hour. Nothing memorable but nimble enough to be distracting. There is nothing really cool here. You could go your entire life without watching this atmospheric thriller and not feel like you have missed anything. Merli is his usual charismatic self. Spaghetti western villain Franco Ressel plays a mustached coroner in Vienna who is in league with Collins. Predictably, complications ensue, one involving a wealthy businessman whose daughter has been kidnapped and held for $ 5-million ransom.
