Ah, the Italian Giallo... My personal favorite horror subgenre in history, but simultaneously also a genre that was very typical for, and irreversibly linked to, the 1970s (and maybe the early-to-mid-80s). Although they tried, even the absolute greatest Italian horror directors somehow couldn't make great gialli anymore after the year 1990. There's a time and place for everything, I guess, and the time and place for gialli was in Italy during the seventies. Still, it's allowed to get nostalgic.
And I bet that's how Sergio Martino often feels himself as well; - nostalgic. After all, he was one of the principal contributors of the gialli-heydays, and made no less than five bona-fide classics in a period of barely two years: "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh", "The Case of the Scorpion's Tail", "All the Colors of the Dark", "Your Vice is a Locked Room and only I have the Key", and "Torso". For the remainder of the 70s, and throughout the 80s and 90s, Martino moved on to other genres with mixed success, but he always stayed most known and loved for his gialli.
Martino was probably very pleased with the assignment of directing the made-for-TV flick "Mozart is a Murderer", because nobody really expected a giallo-masterpiece after all these years. What he made, however, is a more than adequate and admirable thriller, and I'm fairly convinced all fans of 70s and 80s Italian horror will appreciate the effort. The plot, the character of the killer and the absurd twists during the third act are sheer homages to the vintage gialli of two-and-a-half decades before. The story takes place in and around a music conservatorium, where someone is killing off a group of students/friends after they gave a not-so-successful Mozart recital. The police commissioner is charge, Maccari, struggles with the case, because his own wife was murdered by a serial killer and his new girlfriend is a shrink treating one of the main suspects.
Maybe it's because my expectations were set low, but I really enjoyed "Mozart is a Murderer". Bear in mind this is a TV-movie, so do not hope for bloody and sadistic massacres or gratuitous nudity (even though those were regular giallo trademarks in the 70s and 80s). The final twists and the revelation of the killer are totally absurd, but hey, also that is part of the giallo culture.
