La mort a souri à l'assassin

Joe D'Amato gets a hard time for being a trashy director due to those porn films he made, but he often delved into other genres, and when he got them right, he often blew away the competition. This film, his official debut film (as he did a few Bava-style completion jobs for other directors) is a crazy mix of Gothic Horror and Giallo, and it's a beauty. Also, some people call it confusing, but it's not at all.

At first we see brother Luciano Rossi lamenting the death of his sister Greta, plus we also get a flashback that shows that the relationship was a bit...er...intimate. Next thing you know, Greta's alive and getting involved in a carriage crash outside one of those huge mansions you get in 99% of these films. She's taken in by a sister and brother and examined by doctor Klaus Kinski. Now, Kinski is freaky enough looking, but when he leans over Greta all his veins stick out on his head, and he looks like a Klingon! I digress - Klaus finds a weird necklace on Greta, takes a pin and sticks it through her eyeball, and then leaves, thoughtful. Greta strangely shows no affects of having a pin shoved through her eye and sets her sights on bedding both the brother and the sister.

Around this time it appears that Luciano Rossi is kicking about stalking a member of staff at the mansion who receives a very gory shotgun blast to the face. Yes, someone is out to kill everyone, but is it the creepy butler guy who is spying on everyone? Or the jealous sister, who tries to drown Greta in the bath, then beds her. It's not Klaus Kinski though, because he manages, using something on that weird necklace Greta had, to create a formula that can bring the dead back to life, which not only gets him killed by a mystery person, but also his assistant, and the poor corpse he brought back to life!

I'll stop there with the plot, because what first appears to be a kind of period Giallo ends up being far more sinister. It's like Joe D'Amato thought the genre wasn't strange or gory enough, and packs the film with people with their guts or brains hanging out, others nailed to walls, having their faces slashed to ribbons, or having their eyeballs pulled out by a cat. Being Joe, he doesn't skimp on the sex either, as Greta gets it on with just about everybody. You also get two creepy actors for the price of one, with Kinski and Rossi getting their own space to roll their eyes and be weird. Giacomo Rossi-Stuart looks depressingly aged in this film for some reason.

So once again Joe comes out on top like he did later in the post-apocalyptic genre with Endgame and 2020:Texas Gladiators, and the classic video nasty Anthropophagus. Maybe not so much with Ator The Fighting Eagle, which is a PG rated Conan rip-off that is great for all the wrong reasons.

Death Smiled at Murder…and horror admirers all over the world salute Joe D'Amato for delivering this film, by which he proves that he's not just an insane and untalented adult-filmmaker. Okay, D'Amato made a lot of meaningless, cheap quickies throughout his entire fertile career but he does know how to tell a creepy and unsettling horror tale. Just look at 'Beyond the Darkness'…or this 'Death smiled at Murder', which is an even better example. The plot doesn't always make sense, but it's beautiful to look at and it's very stylishly elaborated. The settings and photography are mesmerizing and the delightful musical score is almost hypnotic. But of course, this wouldn't be a D'Amato film if it didn't also feature a rather large dose of sleaze and violence. Kinky Joe shamelessly stuffed his film like a Thanksgiving turkey with slightly perverted elements (incestuous lust, an obscene love-triangle…) and nauseating gore (decomposed corpses, a face entirely shattered by shotgun…)

Summarizing the plot of 'Death Smiled at Murder' isn't a very easy thing to do as it handles about multiple macabre topics. A sinister doctor is on the verge of translating an ancient formula carrying the secret of how to raise the dead. A beautiful young girl and her deranged brother seem to be involved in this process as well but they first annihilate the entire population of a countryside mansion. The owners of this mansion, a rich couple, are both romantically involved with the gorgeous girl named Greta. The acting is fairly good as well, with Klaus Kinski on top. His role in the film isn't very essential, but his up-to-no-good grimaces provide the story with an extra bit of eeriness. With this film, D'Amato proved being capable of delivering films that are on the same quality-level as some of the Jess Franco films and maybe some of the weakest Mario Bava films. Recommended to every fan of top-Eurosleaze

You have to see this movie more than once to understand and figure out what's going on.In short,after being reanimated from the dead,Greta Von Holstein(Ewa Aulin)seeks revenge on a lover who jilted her by faking a carriage accident and causing the death of its driver on the estate of the son of the man who impregnated her.She is in cahoots with the butler of the estate,who helps with a lot of her dirty work(then meets his end after she uses him).A doctor(Klaus Kinski)finds out her secret after ministering to her after the buggy accident and copies an Incan formula off of her gold pendant for his own use and fame.The pendant was made for her by her brother(with whom she had an incestuous relationship with)who brought her back from the grave after a miscarriage and inscribed her name,the year of her rebirth,and a mathematical formula for reanimation on the pendant.Greta causes the death of almost everyone in the cast,but you won't really understand anything until about halfway through the movie.And she makes sure no one is left to tell her tale!Surrealistic sound track by Berto Pisano keeps the movie on it's feet in the tradition of Phantasm.Definitely a must see!

Death Smiles on a Murderer is not your average Joe D'Amato film. The prolific Italian director made a name for himself by directing cheap, trashy productions; and while this film isn't exactly "high quality" (in the usual sense of the word), it's certainly a lot classier than your average D'Amato sleaze. The film mixes Gothic horror, zombies and Giallo elements into a cocktail of the popular genres of the early seventies. As you might expect considering the heavy fusing of multiple genres, the film isn't always coherent; and despite the fact that it could be considered a classy film, D'Amato has still seen fit to insert some trashy gore sequences. The result is a mixed bag. The somewhat confusing plot focuses on a young woman called Greta. She is involved in a coach accident which leaves the driver dead after he is impaled. Greta is then taken in by a couple who seem to become strangely fascinated by her. Around the same time, there's also a doctor working on a formula to bring the dead back to life, and this somehow connects through flashbacks...

The setting and atmosphere are the key element of the film. Death Smiles on a Murderer is very well photographed and every frame in the film is great to look at. This serves the film well as it ensures that it remains interesting even when the plot starts to dry up. The plot itself takes influence from a range of sources, but most recognisably the great Edgar Allen Poe with several themes from the highly influential "The Black Cat". The head of the cast list is Klaus Kinski - but unfortunately, he doesn't appear in the film for long at all and he isn't given much to do with the screen time he does get, which is a shame. The leading ladies are Ewa Aulin and Angela Bo, and while neither of them stand out for their acting; they both look nice. The special effects don't really suit the film and Joe D'Amato probably would have been better advised to cut down on the bloodshed - but I can't complain too much because the gore does make the film more fun. Overall, I can't say I was overly impressed with Death Smiles on a Murderer - it looks nice and has its moments, but it's not put together well enough to be one of the great Italian horror films.

This movie seems interesting on paper: it's directed by the infamous Aristide Massacessi (aka Joe D'Amato) and it features overly intense German actor Klaus Kinski and Swedish nymphet Ewe "Candy" Aulin. But fans may find D'Amato being a little too classy, Kinski being a little too subdued, and Aulin being a little too dressed. This movie is a latter-day Italian Gothic but it was made at a time when those films, which had been big in the 60's, were in decline and the more delirious Italian gialli were ascendant. This film is a strange hybrid of the two--it has the period trappings of a Gothic horror but makes even less sense than your average giallo.

The plot (if that word applies here)involves two different doctors who seem to be reviving the dead for some reason--or are they? (I'm not being mysterious here--I really don't know). One of them is Klaus Kinski, but I suspect the famously temperamental actor might have stormed off the set so they gave part of his role to somebody else. Ewe Aulin is the dead(?) woman who seems no worse for wear. After her carriage crashes on the estate of a nobleman (who coincidentally is the doctor's son),he and his wife take her in and they both fall in love with her. The wife, however, is very jealous (although it's not clear of whom) and keeps trying to kill this possibly already dead girl. After an unsuccessful bathtub drowning (which naturally turns into a steamy lesbian sex scene) she seals her in a tomb with the family cat (for yet another Italian homage to Edgar Allen Poe) before the movie sinks completely into incomprehensibility.

This film resembles other latter-day Italian gothics like "The Devil's Wedding Night" (with Rosalba Neri) or "The Night Evelyn Came out of the Grave" (with Erika Blanc). I would have preferred Neri or Blanc to Aulin in this kind of movie--they all look good naked, of course, but Blanc and Neri are a lot better in these evil roles. The cinematography here is definitely superior to the other two films, however, and is the best thing about this movie (it's easy to forget that D'Amato was a superb cinematographer before he became a world-renowned pornographer). Fans of virtuoso cinematography, non-linear Eurohorror, and badly-dubbed Eurobabes, who aren't bothered too much by a complete lack of plot will probably like this. Others may not.