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 It's all in Italian which kind of looks like French or Spanish except most of
the words end with the letter "o". I think that even those of us only fluent
in American (and what else do you really need?) could see that they were
bragging things up with this final comment: "[u]na splendida, spaventosa storia
gotica per un piccolo-grande capolavoro dell'horror italiano." 1976, 110 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
I'm always looking for something new and exciting to watch so when I found out
that some 25 year-old Italian horror movie was coming out that I never heard
of, I figured that I should hijack this bandwagon and get on board. Besides, I
wasted all this money on the Malata N-996 DVD player (I did it for you guys!)
and wanted to see what this silver baby could do. A bit of a digression here
to explain why the Malata was a necessary capital outlay for MonsterHunter
Enterprises. Previously I had a Pioneer DV 505 or something. That was okay
until I figured out that all the really crappy horror movies I never heard of
were available in other countries with different region coding (Each part of
the world has a different numerical code for their DVDs and only those coded
for that particular region can play on most players sold in that country - this
done to ensure that while we can buy a Criterion edition of something like Armageddon, we can't get ahold of something like Uzumaki). The Pioneer wasn't going to get the job done "as is" so I broke the thing
open, busted out my new soldering iron and went to work like I was Dr. Moreau
trying to create a woman out of a panther. After several suspenseful minutes,
the operation was done and I now had a a DVD player that would allow me to
select any dang region I wanted. So far, so good. Well, then I began to
notice that all the really, truly, awful horror movies I had never heard of
weren't only on DVDs from outside my region, but they were in PAL format! This
is apparently used in backward countries outside of these United States and I
had
previously run into the PAL format when I was trying to play an Electronic Arts
Rugby game on my PS2. The PAL
format won't play properly on NTSC equipment (what we use here in the States)
so I set out to get another DVD player that would play those PAL discs like
Andrea Bianchi's Massacre. Well, I ran down to Wal-Mart, picked up an Apex 1500 (with a certain serial
number), took it home and changed up the firmware for the cheap thing with some
files downloaded from the internet and burned onto CD. The Apex has some kind
of built in PAL converter that allows it to display that format on American
TVs.
The firmware change was to make it a region free player. That was fine until I
realized that there was still one more step to go. The Apex was unable to
display PAL discs that were anamorphic widescreen properly, instead, stretching
the image to fill up the screen. The next thing I know, I'm waiting on the
Malata to show up from Canada. And that's how I ended up with three DVD
players, each much better than the last, but by no means perfect. The Malata
seems to be doing the trick, but make no mistake, if this baby falls down on
the job, it's out!  The House With The Windows That Laughed is one of these region 2 Pal DVDs that is also anamorphic widescreen, meaning
you'll need some way cool DVD player that only bitchin' dudes like me have to
get the full effect. So
after spending $300 (not sure if that was Canadian or American) on the Malata
and about ten trillion lira (or is that Euros?) on the DVD itself, I
can tell you that this movie is a rather dull affair and that while the Malata
has handled all these bizarro DVD formats I chucked at it, none of these have
been worth busting your hump (and wallet) to get). Not Ring 0 , not Massacre, especially not any of those rotten Japan Shock DVDs (though some are
available for American DVD players so you don't even need to try the Pal ones
from them). The House With The Windows That Laughed comes closest to justifying all that money that could have been spent on
wrestling pay-per-views, but it's just too uneventful, too prosaic, too boring,
if you will, to really merit the money and effort to get it. As you might have
already guessed, this position is heresy among all the Euro geeks out there
that spend hours of time on the message boards arguing about the merits of
various Italian Hercules, Maciste and Goliath movies and which one of Dario
Argento's
"animal trilogy" kicks the most arse . While prowling these cesspools of
self-important poserdom, I noticed
all these nerds got themselves into a tizzy when one of them heard that The House With The Windows That Laughed was coming to DVD in Italy. Breathlessly, we all
waited for several days until one of them could get ahold of some scans of the
menus for the DVD and confirm or deny that there would be English subtitles.
Finally, in a moment as important in life as anytime the U.S. wins a World Cup
game (i.e. not at all), the word came down that yes indeed, we would have
English subtitles. Immediately these dudes went out and got their copies and
started posting all their laughably fannish comments praising this film like
they might encounter director Pupi Avati at one of their little club meetings
sometime. Generally, I make it a rule never to read anyone else's reviews of
things, mainly because they're full of crap, barfing out the same tired trash
that every other sheep that ever sat through it thought. I will tell you this,
I have never, ever sat down to watch a classic film. Once the end credits have
rolled, I might have just seen a classic, but before it starts it's just
another movie whether it's got Tracy and/or Hepburn, H.G. Lewis, or Bava
(either of them). I will admit to glancing at the glowing comments that these
goons made about this movie and deciding that I owed it to myself, no - I owed
it you all, to check this thing out (now, can you all send some money to cover
the cost of this favor I did for you?). The results weren't hideous, but the
movie (as I should have expected from one about an Italian guy with a beard)
was quite underwhelming.  The bearded guy in question this time is named Stefano. He's not a cop, a nosy
reporter or concert pianist, but is a painter. He has taken a job finishing a
fresco (which is apparently different than a Fresca, a refreshingly different
soft drink) at a church on an isolated island somewhere in Italy. I'm assuming
that he lied on his job application about his age, because this dude looks like
he's in his late twenties or so and you just know that the priest in charge of
the church probably was advertising for a ten year old boy or something (or is
that just an American phenomenon?). I had high hopes for this film when
Stefano got off the boat and set foot onto the island. There was a sultry
broad making eyes at him and a midget greeted him on shore. This midget, Solmi
was the mayor of the island and some of you probably are bursting a few blood
vessels trying to place him. Come on, he was Mr. Big in the hit movie Zeder, also by Pupi Avati. A side note to show you the risks of memory loss.
Pupi's Zeder was also released in the United States years ago on video under the
zombie-esque title Revenge Of The Dead. Though it has been close to seventeen years since I saw that movie one
terrible afternoon, not a day goes by that I don't reflect on the momentous
boredom I suffered as I sat through scenes of people babbling on about K
factors or K rations or whatever. Many times since that fateful day, I've
found myself in some pretty tight scrapes and I've always got through all of
'em by telling myself that I made it through Zeder and by god, ain't not gonna be nothing in this life that's rougher 'en that,
brother! But the one thing I forgot was who directed it. Oh Pupi, why? Pupi
shows us the embryonic stages of his uniquely dull film style with this film,
but he tricks the viewer with the lush scenery and the mounting mystery of what
strange things are going on at this church and the fresco. Naturally, the
pay-off for all of this is fairly stupid and prompts lots of shoulder
shrugging, but at least you got to see lots of green fields and water and old
houses along the way (that's called atmosphere in the biz - you use a lot of
that when you don't have much in the way of excitement in your film). So
what's the deal with this painting? The old artist,
a cat named Linquini or something disappeared and never finished it. The
picture is of some saint getting stabbed by a couple of chicks and it really
isn't very good, but Stefano figures a job's a job. But first, he hooks up
with the local school teacher the first night he's there (his buddy - how did
he have a buddy on this isolated island of all places?) says she's a whore and
has pumped everybody in the village except the priest (I think we know why not,
right?) and Stefano says that sounds good to him. She later disappears and I
was never sure if she was supposed to be a victim of whatever sinister forces
were at work on the island, but Stefano isn't too irked because the replacement
teacher proves to be just as easy as the first one! 
As might be expected on an island run by a midget who thinks that a
painting in a church of a dude getting hacked up will jumpstart the tourist
trade, strange things begin occurring. First of all there is Stefano's buddy.
This guy keeps getting ready to tell Stefano something about a house and the
first painter, but is always interrupted and finally gets himself tossed out of
second story window to his death. Stefano swears he saw a shadow behind his
friend, but no one else can say that so the matter pretty much drops and
Stefano seems to forget that his friend died mysteriously before he could give
up any info. That's okay though, because so much other crazy stuff is going on
that Stefano is kept rather busy. He gets prank calls telling him not to
finish the picture. He sees strange flowers in the church that he saw someone
else pick earlier. He hears threatening voices on a tape machine. And there's
the strange altar boy that pedals around on his bike with a container that he
won't tell Stefano what it's filled with. It's all very intriguing, if
exceptionally tortoise-paced and you're hoping for more details so that you can
figure out what is going on. The film though, takes it's own sweet time doing
much of anything and when it does something, it's not exactly news-flash
material - Stefano getting kicked out of his hotel room for a guest that
doesn't exist? Odd, but not anything that's going to make me quit lying down
on my couch and sit up in fear or anything. This Pupi guy parcels out clues
and action like it was ten buck champagne. Once he's kicked out of his hotel
room, the altar boy sets him up at his old, run down place that is also
inhabited by a bed-ridden old woman. The yawns keep coming as we get to watch
him
move the new school teacher in there with him. Her name is Francesca and she
doesn't really have a lot to do, but get herself raped by the altar boy. I was
never too sure what was going on with Stefano. First, he hosed that first
teacher, then he went and nabbed this one, all the while rarely showing up for
work at the church. When he wasn't pumping schoolmarms, he was outside looking
at old buildings, asking the town drunk what he knew about that crazy painter
before him (did a lot more painting than pumping, I'll wager) and accusing
Francesca of screwing up his precious tapes of the painter's ghostly voice. Pupi has no choice toward the end of the film, but to add some action to
things. You could tell that this goes against his general nature when we get
not one, but two digging scenes. The town drunk tells the story about the
painter and somehow it involves the painter's two sisters and killing a bunch
of people. He takes him out to the painter's house (I think this is the house
with the big Rolling Stone-style lips painted around the windows - hence the
title) and digs up some bones there to prove that this is literally where the
secrets are buried. Then you have Stefano taking the police there to show them
where the bodies are buried, but of course they turn up nothing. They do manage
to turn up the town drunk, all dead and bloated in the water though, so it
wasn't a total loss. Stefano ends up back at that house where he and Francesca
had been bunking and gets himself stabbed. He also finds out the answers to
such burning questions as, "what happened to the painter," "how are his sisters
involved" and "what was in that stupid can the retarded altar boy was carrying
around". The remainder of
the movie is him stumbling around town with his little stab wound, trying to
get help, but the only person
who will answer his pleas is that priest at the church where he was working on
the fresco (If you can't depend on your boss, who can you depend on?). The
priest turns out to be a refugee from one of those Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible movies and allows us to have one of those shock endings that is required under
Italian law. The movie could be called an interesting departure from the entire
Italian giallo movement, except that the more the movie plods along, giving the
minutest tidbits about things, the less interested you become. By the time it
was finally over, I just wanted to see it so that I could saw that I saw it, if
you know what I mean. I wasn't getting any enjoyment out of it. It wasn't
particularly scary and Pupi underplayed everything in the movie so that you
weren't even jolted by musical cues, which is usually de rigueur in Italian
horror flicks. Yes, those are annoying and are cheap shocks, but I use them to
keep myself awake! Another big problem with all this
restrained-to-the-point-of-non-existent terror is that this Stefano guy fails
to engage us on any level. He shows up to paint, sticks his nose in the other
painter's business, and beds every girl under thirty on the island. Other than
being a nosy stud, you know little about who he is and the guy who plays him,
does so in a completely disconnected way, just wandering from odd occurrence to
odd occurrence, not ever demonstrating any reason to like him. It felt like I
was watching a stranger, even though I spent almost two non car chase and/or
explosion filled hours with him. Usually, these movies can't help but get
their characters over when they sacrifice anything that smells like action. An
overrated, uninvolving affair, that felt like it should have been a lot better.
It's highlighted by the beautiful job they did restoring the print and the
great location shooting by Pupi, but what you are ultimately left with is a
surprisingly nice looking film that eventually chokes on its own
atmosphere.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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