The House With Laughing Windows
directed by Pupi Avati
starring Lino Capolicchio, Francesca Marciano
At long last Pupi Avati’s giallo masterwork, The House With Laughing Windows, has come home with a stunning 4K UHD release from Arrow Video. For ages it has been among the most wanted films for fans of Eurocult cinema, and the wait has certainly been worthwhile. The film looks as beautiful as one could hope, and the release is absolutely packed with banger supplemental material from some of the biggest and most respected names in genre criticism and scholarship.
In the early 1950s, Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) is commissioned to restore a fresco of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. The original artist, Legnani, and his two sisters still haunt the village with the rumors of their sadism and debauchery. Stefano starts to investigate the secrets of the painter, whose work he is restoring, but everyone who tries to help him winds up dead with just the cryptic clue that the answers are in the house with the laughing windows. When Stefano finally finds the house and the secrets that lie within, he unleashes far more evil than he could have possibly imagined, and, in true giallo hero fashion, he keeps digging long after he should have left well enough alone.
Although the film does not exist in the American stereotype of giallo films all being slick, urban-set thrillers filled with black-gloved killers, nude fashion models, and J&B whiskey, The House With Laughing Windows is very much a giallo and in many ways closer to the heart of the genre than the spate of films cashing in on the success of Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970). The Argento films and their clones are heavily over-represented in the U.S. market. Everything in the film, even small mundane scenes like Stefano’s ferry ride to the Valli di Comacchio, is designed to keep the audience off-kilter. There is pervasive weirdness to the village and its inhabitants that could very likely have inspired David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, as both properties share an unflinching normalcy to the bizarre place and characters contained within.
After years of grubby video transfers of dubious film prints, Arrow Video has unlocked The House With Laughing Windows in glorious 4K with a lush transfer that preserves a terrific amount of shadow detail, so you can really see what is going on in the dark recesses of the frame. The disc is packed with extras, as a rogues’ gallery of film critics and historians have been assembled for the disc. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas & Josh Nelson, plus Eugenio Ercolani & Troy Howarth provide commentaries, while Kat Ellinger, Chris Alexander, Matt Rogerson, Willow Maclay, Alexia Kannas, Anton Bitel, and Stefano Baschiera offer up video and written essays on the film. Arrow Video has absolutely rewarded the patience of fans with this release.
