The House with Laughing Windows (1976)

 Divisive Italian horror film seems to be a loved by some while others used the tired "overrated" tag. Just check the IMDb user comments and you'll see those who loved Pupi Avati's The House with Laughing Windows (1976), leaving glowing reviews have a lot of down votes, accompanied by those critical of the film rating it a ridiculous 1/10. The film I watched might not be my favorite of the Giallo genre -- I can't quite place this in that genre as it lacks certain elements I attach to the Giallo as a whole -- but I can recognize its strengths. Granted it is easy to yell at the screen, "Stefano, get the fuck out of that village, dude! Take Francesca and leave!" You see at the ending that staying in the quiet fishing village where there are vast open spaces, desolate concrete houses, valleys with only the wind as company, and a township more than willing to keep mum about a series of murders, including the "suicidal jump" of a friend of art restorer, Stefano's (Lino Capolicchio), a scientist who kicked an anxiety related illness but knew something about a painting needing "touchups" on the wall of a Catholic church, that remaining there and prolonging his stay was tragically the wrong decision. Stefano gets all caught up with what the painting represents and how it ties to the two diabolical sisters of a local artist who set himself on fire. This artist was consumed with death, seemingly only interested in painting subjects as they were dying, nicknamed a Painter of Agony. This artist's sisters were considered abusive, their history told to Stefano by a tormented local drunk named Coppola (Gianni Cavini). Stefano does restore the painting of Saint Sebastian and the hidden torturers were the artist's sisters. Stefano also is intrigued when he's taken by the church's priest's unstable assistant, Lidio (Pietro Brambilla), to a different place, kicked out of his hotel room after his friend's death. Lidio relocates him way off from the village to an isolated villa where only a [supposedly] paralyzed and dying [of a reputed venereal disease] woman lives. Also, Stefano meets a new teacher in the village, Francesca (Francesca Marciano), the two eventually falling in love.

Because Stefano's curiosity gets the better of him, he investigates the villa and finds a tape recorder/player, listening to the lunatic ravings of potentially the agony artist...but why would this device be at the villa? Could the artist and the occupant of the villa be related?

It would be easy to ask why Stefano can't take a hint and get the hell out of there when it seems the village is telling him to just go. Everything cries at Stefano to leave well enough alone and ditch the village for safer regions. To me, there is always this lingering unease about the village and community, including the priest or the kinder locals...I think throughout the entire film, director Avati never allows us to feel Stefano or Francesca, outsiders who have no ties to the community, are welcome or desired there. In fact, everything about this place feels off, as if there is this inherent evil never too far away. And close to Stefano and Francesca as the film concludes.

The ending is really a wallop. The skeletal corpse kept in a glass container of formaldehyde, multiple fresh victims, a mayor and township unwilling to help Stefano, suffering a serious knife wound that is bleeding out and will need medical attention or else, a location where the corpses of many were once buried by the titular house with windows of painted red lips, and the true identity of the church's priest. Lidio is never a trustworthy character, often questionably deviant and depraved, so the revelation of the priest will make sense, actually. Francesca's fate is all the more tragic because she really begs for Stefano to just leave and he fails to heed her pleas...and that decision costs both of them. And for Coppola's own airing of grievances to Stefano doesn't go well for him, either.

There's nothing that persuades me the arrival of the police will be enough to rescue Stefano from the evil that is in his midst. 

The location captivated me all the way through, and the barren, condemned house of the title, with the lips-painted windows off to itself is quite a compelling if dying piece of architecture -- I read it was demolished after filming -- with that damned voice on the audio device by the artist so eerie and effective. The painting on the church, too, is a triumph of unease and unsettling aesthetic.

The detractors who hate the film talk about how boring it is, how slow-moving and "nothing happening" of its pace, but to those of us who get wrapped up and involved in the ongoing story, I think the film has plenty of value. 4/5