Toto diabolique

Toto plays five siblings, each nutty as a fruitcake. This isn't a farce or a parody, it's a very unfunny burlesque, with no characterization and an almost non existent plot. Typical is a long scene where he plays a surgeon who can't find the patient's head, cuts the patient open and then tells him to find another surgeon to finish the job, etc. Humor literally on the level of stage burlesque. Toto merely has to mug shamelessly and deliver the nonsense dialogue as fast as possible. Most scenes are very long takes, shot head-on in mid- to long-shot. With a small cast (and only two shots with more than one Toto character on screen at the same time), this must have cost nothing to make. And it's worth about as much.

Like the great English comedian, Toto used playing many roles in the same film. Here he plays 6 different roles. The best, actually very best compared to the others, are the fascist general and the surgeon. Otherwise, the film is a forced comic, very boring and predictable. Raimondo Vianello, as in all the movies I've seen him, is a monument of boredom and ridicule.

Just for Toto's fans.

I watched this movie with my husband (he is Mexican, I am Italian) and we literally could not resist to laughter, maybe because we could get the jokes in Italian, which we understand perfectly. Of course, this is not one of those artistic movies leaving you uplifted, but it is entertaining. Moreover, I see it as a satire: my favorite characters are the General, the personified satire of fascism, and the horrible looking countess obsessed with youth and beauty. The ending is surprising as in mistery movie and funny at the same time.

Can murder be funny? Even mass murder as some might call what is going on here? Well that will be up to you to decide. This does not make a mystery of one thing: how silly it is - which can be seen as funny or annoying of course depending on the person who watches.

I dig it, I have watched numerous movies that have the same feeling and vibe to them. Mostly German ones I have to admit under the Edgar Wallace banner. Good stuff there and at least as good or maybe even better than this one. Still this is more than a decent and good effort, if you let it work on you.

As I read in the previous comment this movie is just an "unfunny burlesque". Even we cannot say this is the best film of Totò it belongs to the category of movies of Totò, where he is in any case a perfect sample or better the last sample of "comici dell'Arte". Maybe this cannot be understood out of Italy, but the enormous skills of this Artist are all there. For instance his characterization of the fascist "gerarca" and the Lady Laudomia, and the so matching neapolitan nobleman, or the sketch of the surgery (incomparable!)coming directly from "Teatro di Rivista" (the Italian Tivoli Burlesque). An unforgettable critic of Italian characters! Sure we can find similar commercial movies in American and other countries cinematographies, maybe not always performed by Artists of the same caliber in improvisation of this , we can say , Italian Mask. Let's just take one of Totò's inventions inside this movies "Io lo mando a Ponza a Ponzare!" (I'm sending him "fungooing" )