Ugly, Dirty and Bad (Italian: Brutti, sporchi e cattivi; alternate English title is Down and Dirty) is a 1976 Italian film directed by Ettore Scola.
The Mazzatellas are a large, dirt-poor, highly dysfunctional family living in a crowded, derelict house in a shantytown in Rome's periphery. The head of the family is the self-centered Giacinto, who was paid a large sum of money as compensation after losing an eye during work. He jealously keeps the money away from the rest of his family and is paranoid that they want to steal it from him, but for the most part everybody just minds their own business and keeps on living in degradation, making a living by taking advantage of grandma's pension fund and engaging in other disreputable activities. Then Giacinto brings home a prostitute to live with the family on a whim, causing the rest of the family to start plotting to get rid of their patriarch.
Here's a fun fact: the crossdressing prostitute Fernando is played by Franco Merli, one of the victims in Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (he's the one who gets his tongue cut).
Not to be confused with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Tropes:
- Black Comedy: The family's dismal conditions and horrible treatment of one another are played up as grotesquely comical.
- Horrible Housing: The Mazzatella home is a crappy, filthy shack in a shantytown. The family is so numerous that they are wanting for space and there are mattresses in seemingly every corner of the house.
- Lower-Class Lout: The Mazzatellas live in abject poverty and are almost all thoroughly unpleasant, hateful people with very low morals. They are as "ugly, dirty and bad" as the title claims.
- The Mistress: Iside, the obese prostitute that Giacinto takes a liking to and brings into the family home to live with them. Giacinto doesn't bother to ask the family's opinion on the matter and his wife is not happy with the arrangement, to say the least.
- Multigenerational Household: There are four generations of the Mazzatellas living together. Giacinto and his wife of thirty years are one generation, Giacinto's mother represents the older one, then there are Giacinto's children which number a dozen or so (according to his claims), and then his children's children.
- Murder in the Family: Giacinto flaunts his affair with a prostitute, leading his bitter family, led by his wife, to plot to kill him with rat poison. He manages to survive, though.
- Sexual Extortion: Giacinto sees Fernando having sex with another family member who might be either his sister or sister-in-law (it's hard to tell). Since she is married, Giacinto threatens to tell on her to her husband if she doesn't "service" him.
- Status Quo Is God: By the time the film ends, the family has attempted to murder Giacinto, Giacinto has returned the favor by setting the house on fire, and they've lost their home because of their antics and had to move to an even more cramped one. The entire family still sticks together anyway, even though they've learned exactly nothing, they remain as abusive to one another as ever, and their conditions haven't improved. The final shot is one of the younger members of the family going to fetch water while sporting a prominent pregnant belly, as if to say this state of things will continue for at least another generation.
