It’s clear that Claudio Santamaria is the undisputed masked hero of the silver screen. After They Call Me Jeeg(Lo ChiamavanoJeeg Robot), he turns into a peculiar superhero again: crippled, bald and battered.
Directed by Cosimo Gomez (winner of the Solinas Award in 2012 for the same script), Ugly Nasty People (Brutti e Cattivi) was presented in the Orizzonti section of the 74th Venice Film Festival and tells the story of Papero (Claudio Santamaria), a legless beggar and charismatic leader of a gang of freaks ready for the heist of the century.
Eccentric, politically incorrect and even a little bit trashy, Ugly Nasty Peopleis the Freaks of the new millennium, re-imagined as a dark comedy.
Among pulp and slapstick atmospheres, the bizarre noisy gang made up of the armless Ballerina (Sara Serraiocco), the Giorgio Armani Merda (Marco D’Amore, who plays Ciro “The Immortal” in Gomorrah) and the dwarf Plissé (Simoncino Martucci), master of safes and hopeless tombeur de femmes, amuses and satisfies even the most demanding viewer.
