حمل الرعب الايطالي La casa dalle finestre che ridono 1976

In the past few years, fans of Italian horror films have received a
bonanza of delights as a torrent of excellent DVD releases has poured
into American video stores. Along with works by the usual suspects like
Dario Argento, Mario Bava, and Lucio Fulci, have come films by
important but lesser-known directors. Over the course of a still-active
35-year career, Pupi Avati has directed over 30 films. His most recent
film, IL CUORE ALTROVE (2003), is in competition at the 2003 Cannes
Film Festival. Thanks to the vagaries of American film distribution, he
is best known here for gentle comedies like THE STORY OF BOYS AND GIRLS
(1989) and THE BEST MAN (1998). However, some of his finest works have
come in the horror genre.
Avati’s 1976 THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS (LA CASA DALLE FINESTRE
CHE RIDONO) is a slow-moving but atmospheric tale of terror. Eschewing
the shock tactics favored by many of his contemporaries, Avati
carefully builds a mood of menace and ever-tightening doom before
hitting viewers with a truly unsettling finale.
Stefano (THE GARDEN OF FINZI CONTINIS’ Lino Capolicchio) is a young
art restorer who travels to a tiny, remote, Italian village to restore
a fresco of St. Sebastian in the local church. The Mayor hopes that
restoring the picture will help promote tourism. As he uncovers the
painting, and digs deeper into the story of its tortured creator,
Stefano discovers that this picturesque village harbors painful and
dangerous secrets. The artist, Legnani, was known locally as “The
Painter of Agony,” with strong hints that he liked to work directly
from real life subjects. Despite the warnings of local schoolteacher
turned girlfriend Francesca (and some mysterious phone calls in which
he is literally told to “Go away!), Stefano refuses to turn away from
the slowly enveloping mystery until escape may be impossible.
The film is unusual for the period in finding the locus of horror
not in urban decadence but rather in the fears of a small village, and
a repressive Catholic Church with a distinctly sado-masochistic nature
as embodied in the erotic imagery of St. Sebastian. Avati perfectly
captures the outwardly pretty, inwardly rotten character of this nasty
inbred place.
With its questioning of the symbiotic relationship between violence
and artistic creation, Avati’s film could be seen as a subtle critique
of the far-more violent works that dominated Italian horror movies at
that time. Certainly, an easy parallel can be drawn between the figure
of Legnani and a director like Dario Argento whose popularity was
peaking at the time of THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS’ production.
Like Legnani, Argento rarely missed an opportunity to draw connections
between his own personal demons and those of the psychotic killers that
famously populate his classic movies. Although Avati may or may not
have been thinking of Argento, his film explicitly criticizes artists
who dance on the borderline of violent fantasy and artistic violence.
This criticism is clear in both his portrayal of Legnani, and in the
restrained nature of his own film that couldn’t be more different from
the sensual savagery of Argento and the other popular Italian directors
of horror and Giallo films in the Seventies.
While 27 years have passed since it was made, this DVD release
arrives at a time when the film feels surprisingly current. Avati’s
low-key approach has distinct similarities to the recent wave of
Japanese “J-Horror” films like RING, PULSE, and UZUMAKI, as well as
Hong Kong imitations like THE EYE.
Image’s new DVD, released as part of their “EuroShock Collection,”
offers an excellent opportunity to rediscover this neglected gem. The
new 16:9 enhanced transfer, which nicely captures Pasquale Rachini’s
imaginative cinematography, is marred only by slight color fading that
is especially noticeable in the constantly purplish blacks.
Unsurprisingly for a film that has never before been released in
America, there is no dubbed track. The film is presented in Italian
with English subtitles. A very adequate 18 chapter stops have been
provided on the disc. The highlight of the extras is a fine
retrospective documentary that features new interviews with director
Pupi Avati, writer Antonio Avati, star Lino Capolicchio, and others.
This documentary (which should be watched after the feature as it
effectively gives away the film’s ending) captures the camaraderie and
commitment of everyone involved in the production, and explains how
such a visually sophisticated film could be produced on a shoestring
budget. The other extras are an original theatrical trailer, a lobby
card gallery, and filmographies.
Whether you are a devotee of Italian horror, or just someone who
enjoys a good, eerie story, THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS will
provide a pleasantly unsettling evening.