What Ever Happened to Baby Toto?

1964 Italian film

1964 (1964)

Running time

101 minCountryItalyLanguageItalian

What Ever Happened to Baby Toto? (Italian: Che fine ha fatto Totò Baby?) is a 1964 Italian black comedy film written and directed by Ottavio Alessi, starring Totò. It is a parody of Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Plot

A pair of step brothers, Totò Baby and Pietro, make a living stealing suitcases at the Termini Station in Rome. They discover within a stolen piece of luggage a corpse. Trying to get rid of the incriminating evidence, they mistakenly swap the suitcase with a German hitchhiker.

Forced to retrieve the "corpus delicti" they are discovered by Mischa, a Count who is hosting the beautiful foreign tourists. He decides to blackmail the step brothers, asking for their assassination of his rich wife, in exchange for his silence with the police.

After the death of the woman (who loses her life as a result of a fright), Totò Baby becomes a sadistic serial killer as he loses all inhibition after starting to eat by mistake marijuana as if it were lettuce.

He kills the Count and more people, including a young postman which is then walled up inside Misha's villa. He then escapes and forces his brother to follow him. He drags him to the beach and seems about to leave him buried alive in the sand with broken legs, but gets recognized and arrested by chance by the police. He ends up committed in an institute for the criminally insane, where he spends his time typing his autobiography on an imaginary typewriter.

Cast

Totò as Baby Toto / Baby Toto's father
Pietro De Vico as Pietro
Mischa Auer as Mischa (The Count)
Alvaro Alvisi as Police Commissioner
Ivy Holzer as Inga
Alicia Brandet as Helga
Gina Mascetti as Mischa's wife
Mario Castellani as The director of the orphanage
Olimpia Cavalli as Baby Toto's stepmother
Peppino De Martino as The Maresciallo
Franco Ressel as The American Official
Giuseppe Tosi as tall man
Renato Montalbano as The young postman

References

^ Alberto Anile (1998). I film di Totò (1946-1967): la maschera tradita. Le mani, 1998. ISBN 8880120808.
^ Roberto Chiti; Roberto Poppi; Enrico Lancia; Mario Pecorari (1991). Dizionario del cinema italiano. I film. Gremese Editore, 1992. ISBN 8876055932.
^ Paolo Mereghetti (2010). Il Mereghetti - Dizionario dei film. B.C. Dalai Editore, 2010. ISBN 978-8860736260.