Synopsis
A young restorer is commissioned to save a fresco representing the suffering of St. Sebastiano, which was painted on the wall of a local church by a mysterious, long-dead artist.
The House of the Laughing Windows
1976 ‘La casa dalle finestre che ridono’ Directed by Pupi Avati
Cast
Lino Capolicchio Francesca Marciano Gianni Cavina Giulio Pizzirani Bob Tonelli Vanna Busoni Pietro Brambilla Ferdinando Orlandi Andrea Matteuzzi Ines Ciaschetti Pina Borione Flavia Giorgi Arrigo Lucchini Carla Astolfi Luciano Bianchi Tonino Corazzari Libero Grandi Cesare Bastelli Gina Bonacquisti Pietro Bona Giovanni Brusadori Paolo Gramignano Zora Kerova Eugene Walter
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Alternative Titles
Das Haus der lachenden Fenster, La maison aux fenêtres qui rient, Het Huis met de Lachende Vensters, The House with Laughing Windows, Contrato de Sangre
Genres
Themes
Horror, the undead and monster classics Intense violence and sexual transgression Thrillers and murder mysteries horror, creepy, eerie, blood or gothic scary, horror, creepy, supernatural or frighten horror, gory, scary, killing or gruesome cannibals, gory, gruesome, graphic or shock horror, creepy, frighten, eerie or chilling Show All…
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Opting for the rural backdrop rather than cosmopolitan, The House with Laughing Windows lives deliciously within confines of the folk horror milieu, lacking the well documented motifs so commonly attributed to the giallo in favor of menacingly unstoppable atmosfear.
Establishing an eeriness from the get go with a disturbing opening (among the genre’s best) before throwing us into the fray with morbid paintings, deranged townsfolk and the local diabolical underbelly, the sinister looking (laughing) windows, and a seething/unforgettable final twist of pure bedlam. A full fledged genre masterpiece with great performances and tight direction that shouldn’t be slept on—but in some weird way I think The House with Laughing Windows enjoys its often left alone place within the genre, it’s eye catching…
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What a return to my newfound favorite genre. The House of the Laughing Windows is my favorite kind of giallo: a slow-burn psychological mindcreeper set in an isolated village that is real but also the manifestation of your mind. The definiton of that kind of giallo? It hooks its talons into your forehead and rips and rips until your mind itself comes apart. Delectable.
The patiently dripping terror is palpable in how the film goes about its plot of mystery. All the killings happen off-screen, but the killer is as real and human as the inhabitants of the village. This giallo is no police procedural at all; there is no police, only the village-dwellers who are all potentially crazy…
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This is one seriously dark and disturbing movie and I love it. I actually think this was the very first dvd I rented from Netflix when I originally signed up back in 2006 before streaming was really a thing.
A guy comes to a small village to restore a macabre fresco and gets wrapped up in the secrets behind the painting. Right from the beginning, you know you’re in for a hella dark time with that creepy ass voice talking about pain and suffering and somesuch. I’ve never seen a dubbed version of this and I think that’s probably a good thing because that voice would never be properly recreated.
There’s some beautiful scenery, spooky old houses, strange townsfolk, and…
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A Quiet Place in the Country. Creepy slow burn isolated town atmos really elevate this to one of the genres best offerings... and it needs to be seen more because House of Laughing Windows is an insane slice of rural giallo horror. The incredible opening is perfectly balanced with an gobsmacker of an ending reveal that always catches me off guard... and sandwiches in between is everything I look for in a deliberately paced descent into madness. A personal favorite that needs the Arrow or Severin treatment.
Wickedly Essential.
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Damn from that morbid opening sequence I just knew I was in for a brooding nightmare of dread. The guy being tortured while an ultra bleak melody portrays a hypnotic trance of pure madness. House of Laughing Windows? More like Torture Chamber of Crying Guillotines!
Stefano is a young artist who has traveled to a quaint Italian village to restore a painting. A painting rumored to be that of a notorious local maniac! The "snuff painter" was known to paint his models while torturing them so he could capture every moment of pain and suffering. Whoa! As Stefano dives deeper into his restoration he is hurled into a frightening new reality built around a deadly mystery!
Watching this felt like…
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If you thought you had seen many films of the genre Giallo and know everything about them as I do, you may not yet have realized that there is this film that few talks about when talking about this famous subgenre born in Italy and may even evade it. Pupi Avati enters for the first time in lands which were already known by great names like Dario Argento or Mario Bava, both stepped with force making great stories that are so iconic in the cinema of terror.
The story is, in general terms, is typical of the model that Giallo follows. I know that it is nothing that Avati has innovated in his time, but, nevertheless, there is something in…
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"I think being a psycho is contagious," an old man tells Stefano, and he means it pretty literally — his secluded island town is notorious for housing a serial killer who may have "caught" a bad case of "being a psycho" in Brazil, from which he returned with a "beastly savage religion" and ended up killing a few people around town with the help of his two sisters — but taken more figuratively, it's an apt metaphor for social psychology. It's not just being a psycho that's contagious, it's also being traumatized, and one thing this little island is certainly not suffering from is a lack of shared historical trauma.
Psycho serial killer aside, this island…
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Pupi Avati's La casa dalle finestre che ridono delivers all the Giallo-slasher-psychological thrills and spills we're accustomed to from Italian narrative horror of the era with a well groomed cast ripe for the picking.
Young art restorer Stefano, played by the wonderfully beard-resplendent Lino Capolicchio is commissioned to bring a damaged fresco from an artist known as "The Painter of the Agony" back to its former glory. It's clear from the moment he arrives that some locals are none too keen on his presence though, and as the strange people witness strange behaviours it's clear that it's only a matter of time before something terrible will happen. Then the film squeezes. Slowing down and applying its special type of pressure.…
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There are two ways to succeed on this site (and I just mean accidentally, if you don't play the twitter game and don't play the just a bunch of dudes chilling and watching movies with maybe one chick who inexplicably likes this stuff game) like if you are a loner stupid enough to think they can still succeed, you can either really, really, love a movie, or really, really hate it. So, knowing these aren't for me, I'm setting myself up to write a lukewarm review, and people tend to feel lukewarm about those in return, I've noticed.
I've always reasoned that if I just knew WHY people found me repellent, I would be cool with it, really ever since…
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Pupi Avati's 1976 giallo is a refreshing spin, mainly because it's legitimately terrifying. While very much a slow burn and low on scenes of violence, there's an intensity to it that really lingered with me.
Opening with a hypnotic and deeply disturbing credit sequence, the overwhelmingly dark images and tone then proceeded to cast the entire film in a thick layer of dread.
The story itself concerns a man who is hired to restore a painting in a small town along the Northern coast of Italy. He arrives and things are not quite as they seem, there's a dark mystery involving the artist, a friend who possibly was murdered, and an overall feeling like our protagonist is slowly descending into… -
Maybe instantly my favorite giallo? Maybe I'm being hyperbolic. But this film definitely hit all the right notes for me that do not always get struck when I watch giallo.
This one is about a man named Stefano who is hired to restore a fresco in a church in a rural North Italian village. The fresco is a rather disturbing painting of St Sebastian (I'm afraid I would need an actual guide to recognize my Catholic saints, so I have no backstory reference which otherwise might be helpful to catch any deeper meaning). Stefano begins receiving mysterious phone calls warning him not to go forward with the restoration (yet another film I've seen lately where phone calls play a role…
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