A concert performance given by five students from a prestigious music academy ends on a wrong note, which inextricably leads to a series of psychopathic murders personalised with a distinctive cross being cut into the stomachs of the victims.
Mozart is a Murderer is most interesting as a latter day giallo from one of the undisputed masters of the sub-genre, Sergio Martino. This was a man responsible for five bona fide classics of the genre between 1971-73. It wouldn't be unfair to say that this movie pales noticeably in comparison to those. But in all honesty, I did not expect anything else, as most post-80's giallo entries I have seen have tended to be quite bland. This one suffers from this a bit with a definite lack of style and an almost made-for-TV movie feel about it, with a lack of much in the way of blood or eroticism. However, I have to also say that it holds its own when compared to other equivalent gialli from its era and is certainly better than some others I could mention. It benefits from taking the effort to have an actual mystery narrative to keep the story interesting and it resolves this mystery with an explanation which was gloriously nuts in true giallo tradition! It is a film which could have benefited from a little more salacious content and a bit more style but it is essentially a product of its time and the lower budgets Italian genre cinema was working under and when you take this into account it is not too bad of an effort at all. There is a glaring plot development (contrivance) that did give the game away to me who the killer was half-way through but, well, I guess that's really my fault for watching too many of these types of flicks. On the whole, this one made for an enjoyable watch; giallo enthusiasts should certainly give it a whirl I reckon.
