THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS (1976) - Arrow Video

The House with Laughing Windows
Arrow Video 

Original Release Date August 20th, 1976 (Italy)
Written by Pupi Avati, Antonio Avati, Gianni Cavina, Maurizio Costanzo
Directed by Pupi Avati
Starring Lino Capolicchio, Francesca Marciano, Gianni Cavina,
Language Italian (English subtitles available)

Purchase your copy from MVD HERE

by "Doc" Hunter Bush,
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast 

The Movie: Good

The House with Laughing Windows doesn't have the grandest legacy, by which I mean it isn't a title that gets tossed around a lot in casual horror conversations, even when discussing the Giallo sub genre, but it certainly could be. Beyond just being very well made, the more unique aspects of The House with Laughing Windows tick many of the typical Giallo film boxes and predate twists in some very popular, more mainstream horror titles. And to be clear: I can't even discuss all of them here because that would rob you of experiencing their revelations yourself.

Art restorer Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) comes to a small Italian village to restore a recently unearthed fresco in the village church. Coincidentally, he will be staying at a house that the artist, Legnani, who is long dead, had once shared with his two sisters. As the restoration goes on, Stefano begins a romance with demure school teacher Francesca (Francesca Marciano) and simultaneously becomes more aware of the local legends and superstitions surrounding Legnani.

There is a sinister feeling that permeates The House with Laughing Windows that few films can maintain for a full run time. As the restoration of the fresco, which depicts the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, continues, the feeling that you shouldn't see what's really under there grows in synch with a series of unsettling events happening around Stefano. You're given ample time to wonder if the rumors the villagers repeat are true, and perhaps how far they're willing to go to keep this history buried.

The Audio + Video: Good

This movie looks fantastic while still preserving what I feel is a key component of The House with Laughing Windows: there is a certain faded quality to it. Much like the fresco that sets the whole ball rolling, that patina of mild decay seems to fall over the entire film. The house that Stefano stays in is filled with once beautiful paintings and murals that have all degenerated since the halcyon days of their prime. The film's restoration reflects that: the colors are deep here and there, when it's appropriate. A yellow glass bottle, vibrant green trees on the edge of the property, etc. but there is an overcast, washed out, dull cast to most of the film. Those occasional moments of bright color only call this into greater contrast, drawing your attention to the casual shabbiness of the town which adds to the film's overall feeling of unease.

The sound mix in Giallo films always feels heightened to me: everything is just a little too sharp, too harsh. Whether its footsteps in a mostly empty house, the wind through the vegetation, or a scream, I find that Giallo films routinely sound like they're just tipping into the red. The overall effect is to further keep you tense and on edge.

The score on the other hand, is handled very well, with a perfect mix that doesn't ever overwhelm or compete with any of the important dialogue. I have a three-channel soundbar and my biggest sticking point with a film's mix is whether I have to ride the volume button the whole time. The House with Laughing Windows avoids this expertly. While certain sound effects were loud enough to demand attention, I could always hear everyone clearly (obviously, the English subtitles help with my clarity, but still) and the score would come and go, building to its various emotional crescendos.

One piece of Amedeo Tommasi's score, Tema D'amore No. 2 (Love Theme 2) is actually really beautiful and haunting, with sustained piano chords under a delicate melody filled with longing. While all the compositions in the film work, this one is my favorite. It's a true "they understood the assignment" moment.

Special Features: Excellent

When it comes to special features, what I'm always looking for is a greater understanding of the context in which the film was made. I'm happy to say that this Arrow release really delivers in that regard. The included, feature-length (!) documentary about the making of the film, Painted Screams (2025), is a treasure trove! With interviews ranging from stars Lino Capolicchio and Francesca Marciano, to director Pupi Avati, the doc gives insight into not just the making of the film, but into where the ideas came from, to recollections from life on-set, like going to the local pharmacy forgetting you're covered in fake blood!

Beyond that, the two video essays La Casa e Sola and The Art of Suffering, both of which were produced for this release, give really elucidating insight into aspects of the film I wasn't consciously thinking of. In La Casa e Sola (The House Stands Alone), critic Chris Alexander draws particular attention to The House with Laughing Windows' somewhat grisly opening credits and contrasts them with the subtle implication of violence in the credits to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), which were designed by the amazing Saul Bass (that's neither here not there, I just love the guy). In The Art of Suffering, critic Kat Ellinger focuses on the push-pull of themes in the film between, as she says "Apollonian Rationality and Pagan Chaos", as well as drawing comparisons with Clive Barker's Hellbound Heart and the writings of M.R. James.

Since I had seen this picture before, I watched all of the bonus content before diving back in for a rewatch, and I was not disappointed. Armed with numerous new facets to pay special attention to, I really enjoyed my second visit to The House with Laughing Windows.

• Commentary by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson
• Commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth
• Painted Screams (1:34:31)
• La Casa e Sola (19:13)
• The Art of Suffering (14:59)
• Theatrical Trailer (3:40)

In Summary: Must Own

The thing about horror as a genre is that, even though it at times has been seen as lesser-than by mainstream studios, audiences and critics, it's always been relatively easy to make. Not everything, mind you, but it's never been prohibitively expensive to gather some teens / twenty-somethings and put someone in a spooky mask, holding a kitchen knife. This means that, even before its most recent reappraisal and popularity boom, horror has been a crowded field and it's all too easy for films of even high quality to slip by without much notice,

To that end, I recommend anyone with any love for horror, but ESPECIALLY if you're into Giallo, should pick up Arrow's release. Even for a student of the game, there are moves in this film that really left me pleasantly surprised. Plus, I'm a sucker for the folk horror sub genre, which this most definitely flirts with (multiple people in the bonus features make comparisons to The Wicker Man (1973) and with good reason) and films built around pieces of ancient art with a terrible secret. The House with Laughing Windows is all these things, while also splashing around in the tawdry sexual shocks of Giallo, and delivering a constant simmering tension that's just unbeatable.

BODY PUZZLE (1992) - Kino Lorber

Body Puzzle
Kino Lorber / Kino Raro

Original Release Date: March 20th, 1992 (Italy)
Written by Lamberto Bava, Teodoro Corrà, Bruce Martin, Domenico Paolella
Directed by Lamberto Bava
Starring Joanna Pacula, Tomas Arana, François Montagut
Language English (English and Italian subtitles available)

Get your copy HERE from Kino Lorber, or HERE from Diabolik

by "Doc" Hunter Bush,
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast

The Movie: Average

I enjoy the Giallo genre quite a bit. I'm no expert, just a fan, but the emphasis on style always appealed to me. The clothes, the kills, the locations, the direction, and the motivations were all usually equally unique and stylish; at least in the best examples. But Giallo peaked around the late '60s / early '70s and though there are viable examples across the 1980s, perhaps by 1992, it would be unfair to look at Body Puzzle through that lens. But it feels right, so I'm gonna.

Body Puzzle is, super appropriately, a puzzle of a film. It begins with a scene of a man (François Montagut) playing the piano before flashing back to a motorcycle accident. Through the language of film, we believe we are being told who this person is and why they do what they do: murders. But are we? As the film rolls on and we see the man committing numerous murders, taking grisly trophies with which to taunt a beautiful young woman (Joanna Pacula), we believe we understand why. Even if we don't have all the details, we seem to understand the shape of events. The film is then playing catch-up to what we have seen, as Det. Mike (Tomas Arana) comes to Tracy Grant (Pacula)'s aid and begins trying to put together the pieces of this particular puzzle.

As a film, Body Puzzle feels caught between two genres. It loses many of the Giallo trademarks I listed above, but doesn't replace them with anything. The only truly interesting location is Tracy's apartment which has huge blue glass pyramids on the walls composed of smaller, triangular panels, and a swimming pool flanked by black and white pinstriped pillars. The one moment that feels like the kind of cheap, nasty thrills you'd expect from a Giallo film is one kill in a public bathroom stall where the camera is briefly looking up, out of the toilet as the killer descends upon his victim. For a film where a guy is going around collecting disparate body parts, there's hardly even much blood.

I didn't have a bad time with Body Puzzle necessarily, in fact the ending pretty much saves the whole experience with just how bonkers it is, but the journey to get there is at times tedious. It also has a lot of fun small moments like a mortician (Sebastiano Lo Monaco) eating sliced apples immediately after performing an autopsy, a w-i-l-d scene in a classroom for blind children, and the revelation that the killer has been eating an un-sliced personal pizza from the edges inward, the way a rat would. Whether these sound like enough to tip this into Must Watch territory is entirely up to you.

The Packaging: Average

This is a pretty barebones release, all things considered. You've got your standard Blu-ray case, nothing wrong with that, and a pretty cool cover featuring Joanna Pacula's face divided into several slices in the process of being either disassembled or reassembled, depending on your point of view (maybe it's a glass half full or glass empty thing?) So, overall, nothing fancy, but still a handsome addition to your collection that would look very nice lined up with some of Kino Lorber's other Raro releases.

The Audio + Video: Good

I'm not in love with the look of Body Puzzle as a whole, which surprised me since cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller has lensed films like Lucio Fulci's A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971), Paul Morrisey's Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974), and Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975); all films with much stronger imagery. Overall, a lot of the film is a little desaturated and washed out. BUT, from a technical standpoint, the transfer is very clear and when things do occasionally pick up visually, they look very nice. There's a little light haloing in exterior shots, and a little extra visual noise in the darker interiors, but nothing unusual. 

What I did really enjoy was the sound in Body Puzzle. Composer Carlo Maria Cordio plays with a lot of tinkly synths and deep drum sounds that all slowly build at just the right moments. There's also repeated use of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, which you may know from the scariest part of Disney's Fantasia (1940), which essentially functions as the killer's psych-up music and is actually a pretty fun bit. An interesting fact I learned from the commentary track is that director Lamberto Bava initially used Carl Orff's O Fortuna, which you may know from such films as John Boorman's Excalibur (1981), Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994), or Steve Carr's Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009). Unfortunately, he wasn't able to actually use it for these sequences and chose the Mussorgsky piece as a fall-back.

Special Features: Average

There's not a lot of meat on the bone here, if I'm being honest. Aside from the commentary track (the release's saving grace for me), the only special features are trailers for The .44 Specialist (1976), and Body Puzzle itself. The commentary track, from film historians and hosts of Wild, Wild Podcast Adrian Smith and Rod Barnett, is very informative and the two have a fun, easygoing rapport that makes it actively fun to listen to.

• Commentary track from Adrian Smith and Rod Barnett
• Trailers
• Body Puzzle (1992) (1:12)
• The .44 Specialist (1976) (3:22)

In Summary: Borrow from the library

Obviously, if you're deep in the paint for Giallo films and looking to snatch up the last few stragglers to cap off your collection, absolutely scoop this one at your earliest convenience. But for the general public (like me) who are just interested in a fun trip to Giallo country, this doesn't fully satisfy. Without the expected stylish, memorable visuals, all you are left holding on to is a plot that's designed to make you believe you're well ahead of what's going on.

You aren't. Or at least not as much as you think you are, which is ultimately really pretty fun and crazy when all's said and done, but it's not a great time all the way through. So maybe check this one out first and decide if it's worth the space on your shelf.