- Two attendants in a public toilet in New York save the life of the Mafia boss Attanasia. Attanasia turns one of them into a successful boxer by setting up his matches and makes the other into his right hand. When a gang war starts the two are accused of the murders and are sentenced to death. When the execution day comes they refuse to leave their cell, even when they are proved innocent.—Salvatore Santangelo <pappagone2@libero.it>
- Franco and Ciccio are two Sicilian cousins who are imprisoned in New York state's notorious Sing Sing prison and are due to be executed in the gas chamber. Avoiding execution by tampering with the gas supply (and almost succeeding in gassing their gaolers) the two Italian buffoons are returned to their cell where Franco undertakes time to write his prison memoir....
In a series of flashbacks, Franco was working with Ciccio as attendants at a Turkish bath-house in New York City. One day, Franco accidentally saves the life of Alfred Attanasia, a local mafia boss who is taking a sauna, who came under attack by Lemmy Tristano, a bitter rival. In gratitude, Attansia fixes the two cousins up with girlfriends, named Molly and Ruth, and launches Franco's career as a boxer (with Ciccio as his trainer). Thanks to constant match-fixings, Franco wins fight after fight. However, when it's time for the so-called 'Franco the Beast' to take a fall for once, he manages to win the fight by accident... which is a disaster for both Attanasia and Tristano, who are now reconciled, whom have placed large bets in Franco's opponent. The other mafia bosses blame each other for cheating and they kill one another in a shoot-out on the scenery-strewn back lot of a TV studio owned by Attanasia. Franco and Ciccio are blamed for the murders when they happen on the scene and they are both find themselves on Death Row at Sing Sing. However, they manage to get caught up in an escape plan hatch by another prisoner, named Joachin Enriquez, one of Tristano's heavies.
Emerging as the only successful escapees from Sing Sing, in a welter of confusion, Franco and Ciccio hook up once again with Molly and Ruth, only to find themselves tricked into a cellar-bound rendezvous with Agnello and Pastrano, two henchman of the late Attanasia who are now running his criminal operation. Once again, the two dim-witted Franco and Ciccio survive the shoot-out, while Agnello and Pastrano shoot each other by accident. Just as Franco and Ciccio pick up the dead villains guns, they are caught "red handed" by the police and returned to Sing Sing to await execution.
In the present day, the prison and courts, having examined the Bacalones' case and furthermore having grown utterly sick of the duo, decide to offer them their freedom. Now barricaded in their cell, with the iron door wired to the mains, Franco and Ciccio refuse to come out to "walk the mile" to their execution, suspecting a trap. Even a phone call from the U.S. attorney generation at the Pentagon office fails to dislodge them. Franco then responds to the U.S. President's offer to clemency with a colossal raspberry.
In the final scene, in a flash-forward to the year 1990, the two Italian idiots, Franco and Ciccio, now doddering old men, are still barricaded in their cell....
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content