↑"The word "basilisco," derived from Greek, means little king, but it also refers to a genus of reptiles in tropical America. In the Middle Ages, the name basilisco was given to an imaginary creature, with a snake-like body and a head adorned with three small pointed protrusions. According to the beliefs of the time, the basilisk could cause death with its gaze and would die upon seeing itself in a mirror: this seems to be the zoological version of the mythological story of Narcissus. I believe that in the title of the film, a certain ambiguity or, if preferred, ambivalence persists. However, since the director was inspired by Federico Fellini's I vitelloni, a film from 1953, it could be inferred that "I basilischi," rather than evoking Byzantine reality and royalty, just like Fellini's masterpiece, alludes to and refers to a kind of ideal-typical - absit iniuria verbis - zoo-anthropological scenario, which Fellini first and Wertmüller later enjoy ridiculing. The geographical, economic, and social contexts are different, but the protagonists, mutatis mutandis, seem to be the same: the basilischi are indeed the local "vitelloni," from Basilicata." - Viscardi Giuseppe Maria, in his work titled La Basilicata tra il Cristo di Levi e il familismo amorale di Banfield, Ricerche di storia sociale e religiosa: 80, 2, 2011, p. 300 (Rome: Storia e letteratura, 2011).