52 Pick-Up # 36 – The House With Laughing Windows (1976)

Ah, 70s giallo and small town horror. Two great tastes that taste great together!

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up. It is now September in my year long journey to go through 52 first time watch movies and writing responses for them to keep consistent, and over half a year later, I'm back to the wonderful world of giallo after saying I needed to make more stops here following The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.

This time, I got a film that may not have the colorful flare of a Dario Argento, but it makes up for it with an engaging, grimy, mean spirited little mystery that keeps engaging both with the trail of breadcrumbs left as clues and the bodies it leaves in its wake.

The House with Laughing Windows focuses on Stefano (Lino Cappolicchio), a man hired to a remote village in Italy to restore a fresco within the local church painted by a local artist. As he slowly works at the painting, revealed to be a rather striking vision of a martyred saint, Stefano starts to learn more from the locals about the town as well as the reputation of the artist, Legnani. What he starts to piece together presents a disturbing legacy of cruelty and murder that even extends to the piece he has been tasked with restoring.

I know the last time I wrote about giallo, I talked about the way the mysteries are set up and paid off, particularly being impressed with the fact BwtCP presented itself in a way where there was sufficient mystery, but also everything was paid off in a satisfying manner. I don't know if I can say HwLW pulls it off quite as smoothly, but I will say the final reveal, while a bit startling in execution, still sticks the landing for having all the pieces there before hand. It reaches, but never exceeds itself, so the ending still works with enough of a “oh crap” feeling rather than “wait WHAT?”

I don't want to say too much for the ending, as it is worth the journey. Plus, as a mystery movie, it feels like it'd be a spectacularly poor move to give away where it is all going. About the most I will say is, I was pleasantly surprised with the nature of the payoff. It isn't completely bleak, but there is a dark enough note that even if things are brought to light, there is still a chance this won't be a happy ending for our hero. It's darkly ambiguous in a way I respect as not the kind of note a lot of filmmakers would want to end on, with many giving in to the impulse to provide that closure.

There is one other thing I do want to shout out in this movie alongside its story, weird as this might sound. The village this all takes place in is a big part of what stuck out for me in this movie. Like I was saying above, so much of this movie is built around the idea of this remote village harboring a dark past that an outsider is now in danger of digging up. In a country like Italy, in the 1970s, this is already a pretty potent idea as it is. Then you take the particular location they filmed everything and it adds that much more to the look and feel of this remote village where all the bodies, figurative and literal, are buried. In its own way, the village is as much as character in this sinister cover up as the villagers who dwell within it are.

Once again, this has confirmed for me that I really need to look for more giallo going forward. I know this and BwtCP are considered on the higher end, so quality may vary from here, but hey, if anything, that has me more excited to see some of the other strange directions this could go down.

But, that's for another time. Maybe sooner, maybe later. We shall see.

Until then, September rolls on, and the October pre-gaming of horror continues next time. In this case, taking care of a loose end from a director I'm much more versed in at this time with Osgood Perkins's I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House.

Till then.

52 Pick-Up #3 – The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970)

Hello all, and welcome back for the third draw in this experiment in first time watches and cinematic shuffling known as 52 Pick Up.

I know I joked about it last week, and I'm surprised it took me as long as it did to realize – but the January tour of Europe continues this week. Once again, we're going back to Italy, though this time the movie itself will be staying in country as opposed to an Italian director telling us a story in Germany.

So, without overplaying this bit any further, let's get into The Bird With the Crystal Plumage.

It occurred to me while watching this – for as many corners as I have gone down with Italian cinema, giallo has been a pretty big blind spot. I was running the numbers going off of what are considered the traditional rules of the genre, and prior to this, I think I've only seen two others – Phenomena and Deep Red. Both of which, like this movie, were also directed by one of the acclaimed names in the genre, Dario Argento.

Like giallo itself, Argento is a director I have a not insignificant number of potential firsts on the list for (besides the above titles, the only others can currently count as watched are Suspiria and Inferno.) So I was pretty happy to see this title get drawn, as it's held in high regard for both the genre and the director.

In keeping with the now informal format for these write-ups, I suppose this is where I give the quick pitch for anyone not familiar with the movie. Fitting with the above jokes about a European tour, this introduces our hero, Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) as an American abroad in a losing battle with writer's block. Frustrated and ready to pack it in, Sam's plans for a trip back to the states are derailed when he walks by a museum and finds himself witness to a mysterious person in black attacking a woman. After having his plan to leave the country derailed by police questioning, he soon finds himself caught up in the mystery, as it becomes clear this attack may be part of a larger pattern of murder.

"Hmmm...nope. Still not inspired yet."

One thing I appreciated about this movie from the jump – Argento does a great job at grabbing the audience's attention and holding it. Right from Sam's first fateful encounter with the murderer, there are things that seem amiss. Rather than feeling like obvious giveaways, they serve to bait the hook for both protagonist and viewer. The pieces don't add up for Sam, and so, despite his initial reservations, his curiosity draws him into the search. As he goes from reluctantly pressed into the case to an active investigator, the movie draws the viewer with him, piecing together details of his own findings in a way that expands without giving the game away too soon. Further, the tension mounts as it becomes clear the killer knows Sam is on their trail, and they are determined to keep him off of it.

Is the final payoff worth it? Personally, I'd say it is.

Once the details are laid out and the reveal is made, the nature of the mystery could be seen as straightforward. That said, for foregoing the wilder twists and turns of other mystery stories, it carries itself from being well made all around with its internal logic holding up well. This last turn was a pleasant surprise, as there is often an element credited to giallo in which the main reveal is some outlandish turn of the plot to wrong-foot the audience that often leaves them wondering how it even works with the internal consistency of the movie. I went into this expecting a strange swerve of this type, even as I started seeing the clues pointing to the identity of the killer (which, to my pleasant surprise, I mostly caught – missed the significance of two pieces, but had the right person.)

The visit to this man might be the strangest part of this movie,
and that still makes sense in the larger context.

There's something endearing about this movie in its traditional execution. Taken as a mystery, it's not an elaborate head-trip designed to leave you utterly bowled over as one comes to expect in some modern mysteries, and that's honestly fine. Taken in hindsight, particularly seeing the movies that become overshadowed just by the audacity (or absurdity) of their twist endings, there's something refreshing about how grounded this movie is in the nature of its reveal. Like I said above, the movie seems draw its viewer in like Sam with the fact the pieces are all there for you to notice along with him. Looking back, it never feels like Argento is keeping that one critical clue deliberately out of sight where our hero would see it but the audience won't so he can pull the rug out. 

I'm not sure I can say this is the best movie I have seen of this run (for as rough a watch as it is, The Damned is still holding the edge for quality) but I do feel like right now is the most satisfying watch I've had. To the point where I actually feel bad it's taken me this long to also give a shout-out to the fact this movie's score is by the legendary Ennio Morricone, a reveal that also surprised me as someone used to some of Argento's later synth and prog-rock inspired scores. Learning he would go on to work with Argento again has me looking forward to keeping an eye out for the other times they crossed paths after this.

Honestly? It feels fitting to get a movie like this in January, given it now feels like this has perked my interest in a number of directions to populate the future draws.

Of course, that is for later. For now, we're about wrapping up here but there's still one week left of January. For the final week of the month, or impromptu European tour continues as once again we slingshot back over to Britain, this time by way of a visually striking little place called Pepperland.

That's right – I'm taking care of another long time cinematic blind spot next week with the Beatles' animated classic Yellow Submarine. I'm going into this with minimal advance knowledge or expectations, so this should be fun.

Hopefully will see you all then.