The House with Laughing Windows

For most horror film fans, Mario Bava, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci are generally recognized as the reigning masters of that genre in Italy. But a new DVD release from Image Entertainment in their "Euroshock Collection" series - The House With Laughing Windows (1976) - proves that there are other lesser-known but equally gifted directors whose work in the realm of fantasy and the supernatural demands to be seen. Like Pupi Avati, for example. Unlike other Italian horror thrillers made during the mid-seventies, Avati's The House With Laughing Windows is more of a gothic mood piece than a gore-drenched giallo or flesh-munching zombie flick. In many ways, it anticipates the deeply disturbing tone of The Ring (2002) in the way that it avoids cheap scare tactics, going instead for the unseen horror that awaits just beyond the camera range. The storyline of The House With Laughing Windows (La casa dalle finestre che ridono) unfolds slowly in a pastoral setting. Stefano (Lino Capolicchio), a young art student, is summoned to a remote Italian village to restore a decaying fresco in the local church. Almost from the moment he arrives, strange things begin to happen. Anonymous phone calls warn him to say away, a local schoolteacher vanishes without a trace, a fellow colleague dies in a mysterious fall (or was he murdered?), and then there's the painting - a violent rendering of St. Sebastian's bleeding body, covered in knife wounds. Stefano's curiosity about the painter who created the fresco inspires him to conduct his own investigation into the matter. What he learns - that the artist was mad and worked with live models who were tortured and killed for his art - only leads to an even worse discovery. It's true that The House With Laughing Windows might prove too challenging for horror fans weaned on a steady diet of Freddy Krueger and Jason films. The protagonist is rather cerebral, not a man of action, and the narrative pace is leisurely, allowing the viewer time to absorb the slowly escalating madness that envelops Stefano. But stay with it and you will be rewarded with a most disturbing film experience. There is a particularly nasty gender twist at the climax and an open ending that could be interrupted as a triumph of evil over good or just the reverse. [SPOILER ALERT] According to an interview with the director Pupi Avati, conducted by Tim Lucas in Video Watchdog (No. 3, Jan/Feb 1991), the inspiration for The House With Laughing Windows "came to me from a story I was told as a child. During the Second World War, a bomb raid opened all the graves in the cemetery in my village and it was thus discovered that the parish priest, who had died a short while before, was actually a woman. That made a profound impression on me. This fact was the basis around which I constructed the script." The Image DVD of The House With Laughing Windows is presented in its 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio and in Italian with English subtitles. The extras include the theatrical trailer, a lobby card gallery and a short, original documentary on the film featuring interviews with the director and two cast members. It's easily one of the most stylish and intelligent entries in "The Euroshock Collection." For more information about The House With Laughing Windows, visit Image Entertainment. To order The House With Laughing Windows, go to TCM Shopping. by Jeff Stafford