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.