"The House With Laughing Windows" (1976) is an unusual kind of giallo thriller that may very well suit the bill of discriminating horror fans looking for something different. Despite a truly unsettling and gruesome title sequence, depicting the explicit stabbing of a manacled victim, whilst a seemingly deranged psycho intones some sick-sounding gibberish offscreen, the picture soon after settles down, and remains relatively violence-free...that is, up until its unforgettable final 20 minutes or so. The film tells the story of Stefano, who's come to a small Italian village in a very crumbling and desolate-looking part of the country, in the 1950s, to renovate the final church fresco of an artist named Legnani, who was obsessed, 20 years earlier, with painting models who were in the process of dying. The film is very languidly paced, but nevertheless conveys an increasingly palpable sense of dread. This mounting sense of unease is engendered not only by that disturbing title sequence, but also by some first-rate direction by Pupi Avati and some truly eerie organ music by Amadeo Tommasi. Tommasi's love theme in the picture is very sweet, but his horror theme will surely make your spine tingle. The film culminates with some sick, sick stuff right out of the looney bins, certainly repaying the viewer's required patience with the picture's deliberate pace. And oh...I know it's very un-PC to make fun of other people's names, not to mention immature, and I'm not certain if the director's name is pronounced Poopy or Puppy (the former, I believe), but either way, deep inside me, there's a 4th grader who's feeling pretty giggly right now...
Review of The House with Laughing Windows
