“L’ospedale del delitto came about because Ponti had an unused permit to shoot in the criminal asylum in Aversa. He had a crew available and suggested shooting a documentary in a week. I requested direct sound, not used in Italy at the time (or even now), but which is ultimately essential for a documentary. At the time, magnetic sound systems did not exist. It was much more complicated: you needed to record sound on celluloid, etc. All the audio on my film was authentic, in keeping with what English documentary filmmakers were doing at the time, and this gave it great energy and power. The result was slightly odd: it was a penal, rather than civil, institution and the men all appeared to be faking it while the women seemed genuinely crazy. The institute’s elderly founder, who is now dead, was called Saporito, and he delivered a vaguely scientific introduction, but the reality depicted contradicted his claims. It was still a ‘lunatic asylum’ in the tragic sense of the term.”
(Luigi Comencini, in Lorenzo Codelli, Entretien avec Luigi Comencini, “Positif ”; no. 156, February 1974).

The photography by Mario Bava brings an almost gothic atmosphere to the proceedings. Amongst those interviewed is the striking appearance of Leonarda Cianciulli, the “soap-maker of Correggio”, the serial killer who later inspired Mauro Bolognini’s film Gran bollito.