Giallo Napoletano

• 1978

• Watchlist

Crime specialist Sergio Corbucci directed this madcap comic mystery that is just waiting to be discovered by cult audiences. It stars Marcello Mastroianni as a café mandolin player who performs on a streetcorner to help pay for his father's gambling debts. After a murder and a suicide occur, the innocent Mastroianni becomes the prime suspect, and he undertakes his own investigation to clear his name. In the process, he is force-fed cocaine in a disco, hung from the side of a high-rise, almost killed in a car accident, and trapped in a sinking boat. As if that wasn't enough, there's also a frozen midget and a New Year's Eve party in an insane asylum. Ornella Muti, Capucine, and Michel Piccoli co-star, and as silly as it is, the film manages to maintain a giallo look thanks to rich photography by Luigi Kuveiller (the man responsible for the lush earthtones in Profondo Rosso) and a brisk score by Riz Ortolani.