**SPOILERS** With the terrible news of his father Mafia Don Poleiro Regalbuto sudden death young Frankie, Robert Foster, feels that the weight of the world was put on his shoulders and doesn't know if he could handle it. At a big Mafia conference in Las Vages the three mob families decide that all of the late Don Poleiro's operations should be put in the hands of his friend and fellow Mafia Kingpin Don Angelo Dimorra, Anthony Quinn, with Frankie being thought the ropes by him until he can do the job as a Mafia Don himself.

There's foul play and treachery afoot with the greedy and back-stabbing mob Cosiglieri, Luigi Orlando, Charles Cioff, planing to use his recruited out-of-state hit men to start a bloody mob war between the three Vages Mafia families. Then, after the dust settles,Luigi plans to take over the entire Mafia operations in the city that's worth well over a billion dollars.

Luigi get's his chance to get the war between the Mafia families started when he manipulated young Frankie into a feud with his new adopted father Don Angelo. Lugie starts a rumor that the fatherly Don was having an affair with Frankies girlfriend nightclub singer Ruby Dunne, Anglel Tompkins, this results in Ruby getting almost beaten to death by an outraged Frankie. Lugie's trickery also leads to Don Angelo sending out a hit team to knock off the love-crazed and unstable hood. The Don's brother and family Consiglieri Mitch, Louis Zorich, tries to talk his hot-headed brother out of it but not after the hit men gunned down Frankie's dad, the late Don Poleiro,Consigieri Vito Netherbourne, George Skaff.

With a full-scale mob war now about to explode Frankie get's help from the Fargo brothers hit men for hire Tony & Vince, Frederic Forrest & Al Letteri. This causes so much damage to Don Angelo's mob empire, including the murder of his brother Mitch, that it lands him in a wheel chair after suffering a heart-attack and near-fatal stroke.

The mob war really escalates when Don Angelo's boys trick Frankie and Vince into going to a meeting of the minds in a downtown Vages diner this results in a violent gun battle with Vince being gunned down. Tony then pulls out all stops and sends his men, the former Don Poleiro mob, out for blood that results in dozens of Don Angelo's men getting shot knifed slashed and, together with Don Angelo's legitimate business establishment, blown up.

Frankie escaping to Italy is later set up in a trap where he's blown away but his fellow mobsters for his insane actions. This resulted in almost the entire mobs lucrative operations in Las Vages being blown to hell. It's not until Don Bernardo, John Duke Russo, is prematurely released from prison that the truth about Liugi's perfidy came to light from non-other then his abused wife, and Bernardo's secret lover, Marie, Jo Anne Meredith. Luigi now exposed by both Tony Fargo and Don Bernardo as the rat-fink that he is finally, together with Marie, get's everything that coming to him. Tony Fargo who at first wanted out of the world of crime ends up together with Don Bernardo as the top two Mafia hoods who have complete control of the city of Las Vages with it's billions in it's annual take of legitimate gambling dollars.

Not that bad of a "Godfather" clone that was unfairly put down for trying to imitate "The Godfather" but is a pretty good film all by itself. Where some thirty years later it's almost forgotten and unknown to the movie-going public.

There had been films about the mafia long before "The Godfather" came along, both good and bad, and with the many rip offs of that 1972 Oscar Winning Best Picture, some which were bound to be decent, others rotten. This one's basically decent with a lot of great elements, a few unoriginal but nothing that I could call hideous to where it would not be worth watching. What is worth watching about it is the presence of Anthony Quinn, not quite saying sayonara to Marlon Brando, his co-star from that 1957 classic, but he basically takes on a similar role closer to what the youmger Al Pacino would do in the 1974 "Godfather" film sequel where they deal with issues in Las Vegas. So in that sense, this has some originality which would later be utilized in the Academy Award winning 1974 sequel.

As one of the heads of several families doing my business in Las Vegas, Quinn finds himself involved in mob war that is manipulated by others outside his own family. This leads to violence when a young singer whom Quinn helps seduces him, and word gets back to her jealous boyfriend. She's badly beaten and left recovering in the hospital, and violence between the family erupts because of this and other factors. Like "The Godfather", when hits happen, they are sudden and without warning, and quite brutal. People surviving an explosion in a building are brutally gunned down, throats cut, and others beaten to get into before they are assassinated.

I couldn't help but chuckle when Abe Vigoda showed up as one of the right hand menn on Quinn's team, not only because it was basically the same part but because of how he would spook this character years later on late night TV. Young Frederic Forrest has a major part, and is quite good, pretty much the adoptive heir to Quinn's legacy as he had no children. Unlike "The Godfather", this is not epic in scope and so it does not run for an extreme length. A good suppirting cast is made up of mostly obscure featured players so it's certainly not considered all-star, and aside of a few people like Vigota and Vic Tayback, which the viewer will not be distracted by that factor. I wouldn't rank this as a classic, but Quinn is obviously great enough to wear knockoffs of Don Corleone's shoes, and commands a satisfying walk back into familiar territory.

Charles Cioffi, the consigliere of a jailed Mafia chieftain decides to get a war started among the three Las Vegas crime families. Knowing that Angel Tompkins, singer girlfriend of the son of a recently deceased Mafia Don, is looking for a break, he arranges a meeting with Anthony Quinn, Godfather of the third Mafia family where nature takes its course.

When former boyfriend Robert Forster returns to America and finds out it ain't long before the bullets start flying. When the film is over there are only a couple left standing and if you want to know who does pick up all the marbles than watch the film.

Of course this film came out to take advantage of the enormous publicity reaped by The Godfather in the previous year. It's an average sort of gangster flick, it could have been done at Warner Brothers during the Thirties with their stable of gangster players.

Al Lettieri and Abe Vigoda were both in The Godfather and their presence sort of lends an aura authenticity to the film. Lettieri was just coming into his own as a great portrayer of villains and assorted gangland types. His early death was a real loss to film.

Anthony Quinn of course is always good and fans of his which are legion will want to catch The Don is Dead.