The windows were probably laughing because what was going on inside was horrible..in a bad movie kinda way.
The House With Laughing Windows (1976)
Directed By: Pupi Avati (A Dinner for Them to Meet)
The Prologue
It pains me writing about The House With Laughing Windows, because honestly..the movie sucks. I’ve already had to talk about it on The Horrorphilia Podcast, and I wish I could just forget I ever watched it. And as soon as I get this review wrote up that is the very thing I plan to do. I mean I already dealt with the granny panties in this movie, so what more could one’s audience want?
So what rating do you give a movie that has maybe 10 good minutes in the whole thing? Well read on and see what I say about one of the most boring Giallo movies of all time!
The Movie
Stefano, a young restorer is commissioned to save a fresco representing the suffering of St. Sebastiano. The fresco painter was Legnani, and the fresco is his last work. Legnani apparently was mentally disturbed. He was used to paint people close to die or in agony. These facts together with the strange atmosphere that surround this village near Ferrara, in the north of Italy, contribute to put Stefano in a nightmare reality. Soon reality will change into horror.
And that part there was taken from IMDB, if it makes this sound good I am very sorry because that simply isn’t the case. The truth is, the most interesting thing about the movie is the well groomed nature of Stefano’s beard and the Granny Panties his woman sports when he and her proceed to have what might be the worst sex scene in Giallo history. Other than that what honestly do you get??
The films runs for an ungodly 110 minutes which feel like a life time as this thing slowly moves along with boring character conversation after boring character conversation. Each conversation doesn’t do much for the plot, and neither does the action (what little action their is) to move along the weird plot that this movie holds.
Also if you think of Giallos every so many minutes you get a brutal death to at least hold you over and in this mess you do not get that as I believe only two MAYBE three people even die in the whole thing and most are not on screen. Also if you are wondering, they don’t give you the hot naked women to hold you over either, some Giallo huh?
The ONLY and I mean only interesting this about the movie is the very last part of it. It’s weird and it’s made up of the stuff with the twist that will give you nightmares for all the wrong reasons but it’s just not really worth waiting through all you got to go through to get to the end. So if you must see it, do yourself a favor, just skip to the end!..You’ll thank me later.
The Conclusion
If you have never seen an Italian Giallo film before do not, I repeat, DO NOT start off with this movie. Matter of fact, skip it all together and don’t think twice about it. Don’t even check it out on IMDB because that rating is way WAY higher than it should be and I bet the people that caused that high rating must have been high at the time of doing it.
So just listen to me, and skip this crap.
The Rating (4/10)
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