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Movies like The Basilisks

Key Features:
Poverty, Small town life, Social commentary, Italian cinema, Existentialism, Boredom, Isolation, Neorealism
Tone:
serious, gritty, restrained
Target Audience:
Film enthusiasts, Socially conscious viewers, Arthouse cinema fans
Emotional Arc:
Apathy → Despair

The Basilisks

1963-09-02
The Basilisks Poster - Find Similar Movies

The uneventful lives of three young men who live in a small, poverty-stricken village in southern Italy.

Genres
Drama, Comedy
Cast
Stefano Satta Flores, Antonio Petruzzi, Rosanna Santoro, Sergio Ferranino, Luigi Barbieri, Flora Carabella, Mimma Quirico, Enzo Di Vecchia, Rosetta Palumbo, Manlio Blois
Crew
Lina Wertmüller, Lina Wertmüller, Lina Wertmüller
Rating
7.6(52 votes)
The BasilisksThe Basilisks
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I Vitelloni
7.6

Five young men dream of success as they drift lazily through life in a small Italian village. Fausto, the group's leader, is a womanizer; Riccardo craves fame; Alberto is a hopeless dreamer; Moraldo fantasizes about life in the city; and Leopoldo is an aspiring playwright. As Fausto chases a string of women, to the horror of his pregnant wife, the other four blunder their way from one uneventful experience to the next.



Ugly, Dirty and Bad

Giacinto lives with his wife, their ten children and various other family members in a shack on the hills of Rome. Some time ago he has lost his left eye while at work, and got a consistent sum of money from the insurance company, which he keeps hidden from the rest of the family. His whole life is now based on defending the money he sees as his own, while the rest of the family tries to kill him.



The Jokes
The Jokes(2004)
4.5

In many small episodes, various characters represent the typical vices and comedy of Italian society in early 2000.



Romantiche
6.1

A portrait of the flaws and peculiarities of four type of girls living in different districts of Rome.



Grande, grosso e... Verdone

A comic movie divided in three episodes.



Made in Italy
6.067

Riko is an honest and hardworking man who can count on a group of real friends and a loving wife. Things change after he loses his job and experiences a midlife crisis.



Dry
Dry(2022)
6.459

In Rome it hasn’t rained for three years and the lack of water is overturning rules and habits. Through the city dying of thirst and prohibitions moves a chorus of people, young and old, marginalised and successful, victims and profiteers. Their lives are linked in a single design, while each seeks his or her deliverance.



The New Comics
5.331

A few funny little novels about different aspects of life.



Amarcord
Amarcord(1973)
7.9

In an Italian seaside town, young Titta gets into trouble with his friends and watches various local eccentrics as they engage in often absurd behavior. Frequently clashing with his stern father and defended by his doting mother, Titta witnesses the actions of a wide range of characters, from his extended family to Fascist loyalists to sensual women, with certain moments shifting into fantastical scenarios.



Sud
Sud(1993)
6.8

During a hot Sunday afternoon in a small Southern Italian town, a school serving as a polling place is occupied by a group of three locals and an Eritrean immigrant, all unemployed, desperate and armed.



Intrepido: A Lonely Hero

A meek middle-aged man takes on every conceivable temporary job in order to feel useful and keep his dignity—until something shakes his inexhaustible optimism.



Hukkle
Hukkle(2002)
6.8

Using almost no dialogue, the film follows a number of residents (both human and animal) of a small rural community in Hungary – an old man with hiccups, a shepherdess and her sheep, an old woman who may or may not be up to no good, some folk-singers at a wedding, etc. While most of the film is a series of vignettes, there is a sinister and often barely perceptible subplot involving murder.



The Predators
6.7

This is the story of two completely opposite households: the Pavone are intellectual and bourgeois, the Vismara are proletarian and fascists. They are two tribes sharing the same jungle: Rome. A trivial accident brings these two poles together. The madness of a 25-year old youth will set them on a collision course, discovering the cards to reveal that everyone has a secret. People are never what they seem – but we are all predators in the end.



Katzelmacher
6.382

A group of young slackers spend most of their time hanging out in front of a Munich apartment building. When a Greek immigrant named Jorgos moves in, however, their aimless lives are shaken up. Soon, new tensions arise both within the group and with Jorgos.



Anplagghed al Cinema

A queue at the ATM machine, a displaced family after a seismic shock that has half-washed their home, a tour within an art gallery, moments of everyday life that become the cues for the emergence of comic, farce, paradoxical situations – trademarks of one of the most successful Italian comic groups.



The Witches
6

Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman's honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he's not as romantic as he used to be.



Bianco, rosso e Verdone

Three Italians travel to their hometown to vote for elections: Pasquale is a Southern immigrant living in Munich who's genuinely happy to come back to Italy, even if just for a few days, but the country he dreams of is far from reality; Furio travels to Rome with his family, but his niggling attitude threatens to push his wife Magda over the edge; young Mimmo is also going to Rome, but the trip is repeatedly interrupted by worries about his grandma's health.



Ammutta Muddica al Cinema

Film adaptation of the theatrical show Ammutta muddica performed by the trio composed of Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo. The protagonist of the various sketches is the common everyday life, full of bizarre characters and comic situations.



Amiche da morire
6.453

Gilda has long since moved to a small southern island and earns her living as a prostitute in a context suspended between retrograde traditions and modernity. During one summer, his destiny intersects with that of Olivia and Crocetta, two women from the area, the former a happy wife and the latter an ugly, unlucky wife. The three are forced by fortuitous circumstances to come together to save themselves but their behavior attracts the suspicions of Nino Malachia, a brusque police commissioner who is convinced that they are hiding something.



A Flat for Three
5.973

Ulisse, Fulvio and Domenico decide to rent an apartment together in order to live with their modest work. However the three encounter any difficulties that have forced them to always be one step away from starvation. Ulisse has to maintain his wife and daughter selling recordings of important foreign singers, Fulvio has the task of reviewing silly scandals of celebrities instead of writing articles for major artists, while Domenico must keep his wife and children going to make love with old single pensioners.



Whatsoeverly
6.1

Corrupt and sleazy entrepreneur Cetto La Qualunque comes back to Italy and "jumps into politics" lest his law-abiding opponent, Giovanni De Santis, is elected as mayor.



The New Monsters Today

Talks about the fears, vices and weaknesses that bedevil the contemporary Italian society. Highlights the degeneration that is plaguing certain quarters of the Italian society today.



Well-Off People
4.807

Umberto Maria Durloni is a successful lawyer and a socialite who likes parties and a lavish life. He's got it all, except any ethical qualms.Only a step away from the top, his perfect world crumbles, showing him the brutal do downside to his life.



Ears
Ears(2016)
7.1

A man wakes up one morning with an annoying ringing sound in his ears. A note on the fridge says: "Your friend Luigi has died. P.S. I took the car". The problem is that he does not even remember who this guy Luigi is. This is just the beginning of a tragicomic day during which he will be plunged into the folly of the world. One of those days that changes your life forever.



Bad Tales
Bad Tales(2020)
6.7

In a small suburb on the outskirts of Rome, the cheerful heat of summer camouflages a stifling atmosphere of alienation. From a distance, the families seem normal, but it’s an illusion: in the houses, courtyards and gardens, silence shrouds the subtle sadism of the fathers, the passivity of the mothers and the guilty indifference of adults. But it’s the desperation and repressed rage of the children that will explode and cut through this grotesque façade, with devastating consequences for the entire community.



Poverty and Nobility

Eugene, a young nobleman, asks two penniless idlers to impersonate his noble relatives to help him marry Gemma, the daughter of an enriched cook.



Fantozzi: White Collar Blues

A good-natured but unlucky Italian is constantly going on a difficult situations, but never lose his mood.



The Birds, the Bees and the Italians

An anthology film that presents three storylines, all set in the Italian town of Treviso. In the first story, a husband pretends to be impotent as a cover for having an affair. In the second, a bank clerk abandons his wife for his mistress, but the rest of the town's husbands become jealous and unite to conspire against them. In the third, men of the town all seduce a promiscuous teenager, but her father eventually reveals that she is underage, and they face prosecution for statutory rape.



The Tree of Wooden Clogs

On a northern Italian farm, Batistì and his wife decide to send their son Minec to school, sacrificing his help in the fields but hoping to break the cycle of poverty in the family. But when Minec’s shoe breaks while walking for miles, Batisti puts the family’s future at risk to replace the clog.



Be Sick… It's Free
7.051

Comedy about the flawed Italian healthcare system of the time and a doctor's expeirence with it.



Nati stanchi
6.839

Salvo and Valentino are two happy Sicilian friends, who do not want to work, because they know that if they find a permanent job, their girlfriends will ask them to marry them.



Happy as Lazzaro
7.4

Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.



Selfie
Selfie(2019)
7.183

Naples, Trajan's district. Initially it was intended for the inhabitants of the shantytowns on the seafront of Naples, who were homeless after the war. But it soon became a kind of ghetto. Alessandro and Pietro are two teenagers who film with an iPhone to tell their difficult neighborhood, their daily life, the friendship that binds them.



Hagazussa
Hagazussa(2018)
5.673

In the 15th century, a young goatherd living alone in a mountain hut feels a dark presence in the woods.



Savages
Savages(1995)
5.6

A group of Italian tourists on a Caribbean holiday finds itself stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash.



Il conte Max
7.1

Alberto, a newspaper man, tries a one-time shot of living the good life with the help of his penniless mentor.



Mediterraneo
7.624

Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the island seems abandoned and there isn't a single enemy in sight, so the soldiers begin to relax a little. Things change when their ship is hit and destroyed by the enemy, and the soldiers find themselves abandoned there.



Ro.Go.Pa.G.
7.2

Four short films by four different directors dealing with the principles of modern life.



Ovosodo
Ovosodo(1997)
7.2

From childhood to fatherhood, Piero learns things the hard way while growing up in a working-class neighborhood of Livorno.



Fantozzi in Heaven
5.8

One by one, with a sweet but inexorable rate, Ugo's colleagues, go to a better life. When Ugo is attending at one of the innumerable funerals, he and the priest remain involved in an accident. The doctor says that Ugo as only one week left to live



The Gold of Naples
7.323

A tribute to Naples, this film presents six episodes: a clown exploited by a gangster, a pizza seller losing her husband’s ring, a child's funeral, a gambler beaten by a kid, a prostitute's unusual wedding, and a "wisdom seller" offering advice.



Ciao, Professore!
7.2

A bureaucratic snafu sends Marco Tullio Sperelli, a portly, middle-aged northern Italian, to teach third grade in a poor town outside Naples



Si muore tutti democristiani

Enrico, Fabrizio and Stefano are three left-winged friends.



The Desert of the Tartars

Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is assigned to the old Bastiani border fortress where he expects an imminent attack by nomadic fearsome Tartars.



Kill, Baby... Kill!

A 20th century European village is haunted by the ghost of a murderous little girl.



Easy
Easy(2017)
6.8

A 40-year-old loser named Isidoro at the request of his brother drives from Italy to mountainous Carpathian village in Ukraine with a coffin of a diseased Ukrainian worker, who died at a construction site in Italy.



Il vegetale
5.707

Fabio struggles with a cumbersome father and a capricious and spoiled little sister who consider him a good for nothing, a “vegetable” in fact. The unfortunate recent graduate looks for a job reacts to the contempt of his family and demanding employers, when an unexpected event remixes roles…



The Rich, the Pauper and the Butler

A wealthy broker, his loyal butler, and a poor street seller all see their social positions change in a twist of fate.



Barren Lives
7.3

In vivid images, the documentary-like story of a drover and his family in the northern badlands of Brazil during the drought. A family in the search of new hope and destiny.



The Band of Honest Men

Italy, mid '60s. Three guys from a poor neighbourhood try to get rich by printing fake money using the fact that one of them works as a typographer. The story unravels around their embarrassed efforts to spend the money, their little family issues and ends with a surprise.



My Friends
8.1

Four inseparable friends try to face their midlife crisis with daytrips and pranks at the expense of their families and the people around them.



Buona giornata
4.949

A common day in the actual Italy, narrated by the different stories of seven different people, it's the starting point for an overview to the 21st century's italian society, among corrupt politicians, unfaithful husbands, hardcore soccer fans and dishonest businessmen.



Nineties
Nineties(1992)
5.5

Scandalously famous collections of short Italian comedies of the 90s! All that was "fun" in those years in Italy - all here! The sea of black humor on all issues - sex, politics, mafia, crime, TV...



Poor but Richer
5.681

The Tucci family discovers that they have not really lost all their money and, refusing to pay Italian taxes, decides to turn Torresecca into a tax haven, relying on a post-Italian unification bureaucratic oversight.



The Salt of Life

Gianni is sixty. He is retired but has not become lazy for all that. In fact he is a helpful fellow who gives a hand to all those who need one: shopping for his wife, walking the pretty neighbor's dog, and so on. Everybody likes Gianni, but is it for the right reasons? Doesn't his wife profit by the situation (she still works so it is only logical that Gianni do all the chores)? Isn't he subject to the excruciating whims of his rich mother?... Sure, everybody LIKES Gianni, but who LOVES him? Agreed, being kind to them, he is the ladies pet, but he does not attract them anymore. That is why, when his macho lawyer friend Alfonso blames him for not having young mistresses "like every other senior Italian male", Gianni, who is beginning to ask himself questions about what it is like to become old, starts chasing dames.



Kopps
Kopps(2003)
6.356

A small Swedish village, Högboträsk, is so peaceful that crime is nonexistent. The police spend their shifts drinking coffee, eating hot dogs and chasing down runaway cows. This is all well and good for the village's own police, but the police management board wants to discontinue the local police force for lack of crime.



The Comics
5.8

Two silent movie actors escape from their film. Forced to find a way to survive in the real world, they will only cause troubles to the people they will meet along the way.



Fun Is Beautiful
7.121

Three characters' misadventures in semi-deserted, summertime Rome: a dim-witted mama's boy falls for a tourist; a would-be womanizer struggles to find company for his sex tourism trip to Kraków; a hippie is drawn into his father's schemes to bring him back into polite society.



Totò, Peppino and... the Sweet Life

Antonio goes to Rome to represent his fellow peasants, to request a highway that will be built in their region. But the guy is mastered by 'la dolce vita' and wastes the money entrusted to him for his mission. When Peppino is sent to to find out what happened, he lets himself be trapped by the gentle grip of 'la dolce vita'



Kinetta
Kinetta(2005)
5

At a Greek hotel in the off-season, a chambermaid, a man obsessed with BMW cars, and a photo-store clerk attempt to film and photograph various badly re-enacted struggles between a man and a woman.



Gli onorevoli
6.82

Some political candidates are determined to win the electors' preference during an election campaign in Italy.



Albakiara
Albakiara(2008)
2.2

Promiscuous teenager Chiara gets herself and her equally debauched peers embroiled in a drug ring run by a dirty cop.



Film Socialisme
5.993

A symphony in three movements. Things such as a Mediterranean cruise, numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday... Our Europe. At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Our humanities. Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona.



The Hawks and the Sparrows

A man and his son take an allegorical stroll through life with a talking bird that spouts social and political philosophy.



Compagni di scuola
7.154

A group of former high school classmates meets for a reunion 15 years after graduation, only to discover that any innocence or friendship is long lost.



Frisky
Frisky(1954)
7.2

The relationships between a veteran marshal, his bride-to-be, a rookie and his fiancée are severely tested when the young carabiniere is temporarily sent to a distant town.



Wondrous Boccaccio
5.8

It's 1348. The plague has brutally hit Florence. A group of then young people, seven women and three men, rebel against the feeling of death that is about to swallow them. They flee the city and find refuge in an abandoned villa in the Tuscan hills. Here, between moral doubts and the tasks needed to survive, they kill time by telling each other stories until they will decide to return. The stories are varied - tragic, bizarre, funny or erotic - but common and central to all of them is the female presence.



Classe Z
Classe Z(2017)
5.555

First day of last year for the students of a high school science, but at school there is something new: some guys have been moved from their respective classes in a section created especially for them, the section H. Students of the H section are not were chosen at random, are in fact notoriously problematic elements, too exuberant and listless. Among them is Ricky who is awake and never misses a chance to make jokes irritating that it shares on its Youtube channel, Star whose only interest is its look and Viola intelligent but always at war with the world.



The Balconettes
6.6

As a heat wave brings a Marseille neighbourhood to the boil, three roommates gleefully meddle in the lives of their neighbours from their balcony. Until a late night drink turns into a bloody affair.



The Terrace
7.16

Eight Italian politicians from the communist party gather on a terrace in Rome for a get-together. They discuss about their past, present and future.



Boccaccio '70
6.869

An anthology of four comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy: frothy young love and office politics in the big city; milk advertisements that begin to haunt an aging prude; a trophy wife enduring her husband's very public affairs; a lucky ticket-holder at a small town fair.



Poor But Beautiful
6.7

Salvatore and Romolo are two young and poor young men that are neighbours and friends. They live with their parents in Piazza Navona, Rome. They are poor but handsome, and both fall in love with Giovanna.



To Be Twenty
5.843

Lia and Tina are two beautiful girls who meet and realize that they have a lot in common. They are both young, beautiful and pissed off, so they decide to hitchhike their way to Rome to find Nazariota's commune, a place to stay for free and have all the sex they want... or so they think. Things don't go as they have planned though, and soon they become involved in prostitution, the police and an aggressive gang.



An Almost Perfect Country

Pietramezzana, a remote village in the Lucan Dolomites, is likely to disappear. Its inhabitants, led by the volcanic Dominic do not give up and, believing that the opening of a factory may be the solution to all their troubles, they want to make sure that the project is successful ...



Tre di troppo
6.5

Suddenly and inexplicably Marco and Giulia wake up with three children aged 10, 9 and 6 who call them mum and dad. Getting rid of it and returning to the happy "previous" life will become their only goal.



Werckmeister Harmonies

A naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.



A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

An absurdist, surrealistic and shocking pitch-black comedy, which moves freely from nightmare to fantasy to hilariously deadpan humour as it muses on man’s perpetual inhumanity to man.



School of Thieves
5.7

Frenetic in its pacing and with miniscule character development, this trite slapstick farce stars three Italian comics - Paolo Villaggio, Lino Banfi, and Massimo Boldi as the idiot-nephews of a wealthy invalid (Enrico Maria Salerno). The uncle's plan is to teach the trio how to successfully steal for a living but the plan does not have a chance against their exaggerated ineptitude.



Pickpocket
7.22

A small town pickpocket whose friends have moved on to higher trades finds himself bitter and unable to adapt.



The Second Tragic Fantozzi

The frustrating adventures of a humble employee who all the time has to fullfill the wishes and desires of his bosses.



Goodnight, Ladies and Gentlemen

An episodic satire of the political and social status of Italy in the seventies, through the shows of one day of a television channel.



Toto, Peppino, and the Hussy

Antonio, Peppino and Lucia are three brothers who live in the country near Naples. Lucia's son, Gianni, goes to Naples to study medicine, but there he knows a ballet dancer. They fall in love and, when she goes to Milan, Gianni follows her. Informed of this and afraid that their nephew will stop studying, the three Caponi brothers leave for Milan to persuade Gianni to come back and continue studying and abandon the "Malafemmina" (bad girl).



The Little World of Don Camillo

In a village of the Po valley where the earth is hard and life miserly, the priest and the communist mayor are always fighting to be the head of the community. If in secret, they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it is dividing the country. And when the mayor wants his "People's House"; the priest wants his "Garden City" for the poor. Division exist between the richest and the poorest, the pious and the atheists and even between lovers. But if the people are hard as the country, they are good in the bottom of there heart.



Traffic Jam
6.8

A tremendous congestion hits the Rome highway ring. The biggest traffic jam ever seen lasts more than 36 hours. At the beginning the people blocked in their cars react normally. But as more time passes, the more we witness personal dramas, hysteric reactions and other grotesque situations. All the episodes are linked as if in a single plot. Cars and their hosts are a microcosm of stories part of a larger universe: the congestion.



That's Life
7.473

Con man Aldo breaks out of jail and seizes a car at gunpoint, taking its passengers—bumbling police officer Giacomo and nitpicking civilian Giovanni—hostages. An unlikely friendship blossoms.



Totò, Peppino e i fuorilegge

Antonio and Peppino live in a small town in central Italy: Peppino is the barber, Totò is maintained by the rich but avaricious wife Teresa.



SubUrbia
SubUrbia(1997)
6.2

A group of suburban teenagers try to support each other through the difficult task of becoming adults.



La Vie de Bohème
7.486

Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise.



Il Grido
Il Grido(1957)
7.45

A sugar-refinery worker flees his Northern Italy town after a woman refuses his marriage proposal.



Femmes Fatales
6.1

Two men, fortyish, worn out by their wives, abandon everything to go and live in the back of beyond. There they meet a truculent priest, a boozer, Émile who recalls them to life's simple pleasures. Calm is what they want. But soon their example inspires thousands of disorientated males...



The Teasers
4.814

Loredana is a schoolgirl who takes advantage of her fellow students and teachers by using her innocent schoolgirl beauty. After she loses her virginity to an older man she soon realizes there are more important things to life than teasing men.



Red Desert
7.343

In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.



Fantozzi Still Suffers

After a hard day at work and a condominium-board meeting, accountant Ugo Fantozzi goes on a trip with his family. Unfortunately, he will face a nasty surprise upon his return.



What?
What?(1972)
5.448

A young American woman traveling through Italy finds herself in a strange Mediterranean villa where nothing seems quite right.



Il ragazzo di campagna

A man is forced to completely change his habits when he decides to move from the country to the city.



Ugly Nasty People
5.8

A group of physically disabled lowlifes plots the the perfect heist, but things go south as each reveals an agenda of their own.



Serafino
Serafino(1968)
6

Serafino, a young and innocent shepherd, inherits a huge fortune. He immediately starts spending the entire sum on presents for his friends, causing the envy of his family.



Basic Sanitation, the Movie

When they discover their town lacks funding for a sewage system, but does have a federal grant to make a movie, a group of villagers decide to make a sci-fi joint about a monster who lives in the building site of a septic tank.



Satantango
8.1

Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias, a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.

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