Watch Death Smiles on a Murderer For Free

Best movie of this year hands down!

Such a frustrating disappointment

Pretty Good

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

A man discovers an ancient Incan formula for raising the dead, and uses it for a series of revenge murders."Death Smiles on a Murderer" was produced by Franco Gaudenzi, who writer-director Joe D'Amato had met through production manager Oscar Santaniello. Their first collaboration led to D'Amato directing "Un bounty killer a Trinità", one of the several films directed by D'Amato with someone else taking credit. This was the first film D'Amato directed himself where he used his real name in the credits: Aristide Massaccesi.The film credits the script to D'Amato, Romano Scandariato and Claudio Bernabei, though the latter was said to just be a typist by D'Amato. The story is credited to D'Amato, which Scandariato said was "more or less one page". Scandariato stated the film was originally written with more suspense and more of a giallo, but this was changed out of necessity. The film was given a low budget of 150 million Italian lire."Death Smiles on a Murderer" was shot between November and December 1972 with a working title of "Seven Strange Corpses". Some scenes which were not in the script were improvised on set. These included a scene where Luciano Rossi was attacked by a cat, which saw D'Amato achieve his desired effect by allegedly throwing the cat against Rossi's face. (I have real doubts about this given the footage that resulted.)Actress Ewa Aulin was well-known at the time, though has strangely fallen into obscurity. Klaus Kinski is still widely known today, though perhaps more for his madness and depravity than his acting. He became involved purely for the money and had no real opinion of the material one way or the other.While D'amato is best known for his exploitation work and occasional outright pornography, this film is rather tame. The gore is no worse than your standard horror film of the era, and while there is some nudity and romantic elements, it is fairly restrained, nothing remotely as blatant as we might see from Jean Rollin.The Arrow Blu-ray is superb, with both English and Italian versions of the film. The incredible Tim Lucas provides audio commentary. Ewa Aulin has a brand-new interview, almost an hour in length. D'Amto is captured in an archive interview (primarily talking about Kinski). And a video essay covering D'Amato's career is worth a watch. An all-around spectacular package for the film.

Once you watch this film, you'll wonder - just how did this play on TV? It was part of the 13 titles included in Avco Embassy's Nightmare Theater package syndicated in 1975 (the others were Marta, Maniac Mansion, Night of the Sorcerers, Fury of the Wolfman, Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Horror Rises from the Tomb, Dear Dead Delilah, Doomwatch, Bell from Hell, Witches Mountain, Mummy's Revenge and The Witch) and several of these films aired intact on regular television! I can't imagine - nor will you once you read this - what people thought! I even found a mention that the scene where Klaus Kinski inserts a pin into a girl's eye aired uncut on Pittsburgh's beloved Chiller Theater (indeed, it played on July 7, 1979 and December 26, 1981, thanks to the amazing listing on the Chiller Theater fan site). 1906. Austria. Greta von Holstein (Ewa Aulin, Candy from Candy as well as Death Laid an Egg) has been used and abused by all of the men in her life, including Dr. von Ravensbrück, a rich cad who knocks her up and leaves her to die in childbirth.Three years later. Her hunchback brother Franz, besotten with incestual love, brings her back to life with a magic medallion inscribed with the secret of life over death. He tries to get back into her pants, so she throws a black cat at his face. It eats his eyeballs, because, well, this is a Joe D'Amoto movie. She then escapes into the world where she seeks revenge on the von Ravensbrück's family.Walter, the son of the doctor who done her wrong, and Eve, his wife, take her in after an accident outside their home. They both fall in love with her, which gives D'Amoto license to shoot long lovemaking scenes. You may know him on one hand for his horror films, like Beyond the Darkness, Ator, Antropophagus, Frankenstein 2000 and Absurd. But you may also know him for his adult films like Porno Holocaust and the Rocco Siffredi vehicle Tarzan X - Shame of Jane. Here, he combines his love of the female form with his eye for murder and insanity.Eva is becoming jealous of Greta. But what he doesn't know is that her new lover is wiping out people left and right, just for fun. The butler in the gallery with a razor. The maid in the woods with a shotgun. A lab assistant in the lab with a metal club. Even the family doctor (Klaus Kinski, do I need to say more or tell you he was in Schizoid, Crawlspace, Marquis de Sade: Justine and more? Or that he was also maniac who was drafted to the German army, spent time as a POW and drank his own urine to get sick and get home earlier. This is not the craziest Kinski story, by the way) is strangled right after he learned how to use hr amulet to bring back the dead that he had been experimenting on (as you do).Eva's jealousy wins out, so she walls her up alive in the rooms beneath the castle, killing her. But Greta isn't done yet. She shows up as a ghost at a party and lures Eva toward falling off the roof. That night, Greta's ghost gives Walter a fatal heart attack in bed. And all of this was just to lure her old lover, Dr. von Ravensbrück, to the funeral, where she leads him to a vault and suffocates him.A police inspector wonders if he'll ever add up the case, as he finds the corpse of Greta's brother near her empty grave. She's gone and he wonders what ever happened to her. The person he has been telling the story to? Greta.I was really struck by Berto Pisano's music in this. He also contributed the starnge soundtrack to Burial Ground. Here, his music is jazzy and then atonal, with sharp stings to call out the action.I feel like I need to take a long shower after watching this movie. Which isn't a bad thing, really. It's an effective mix of giallo and gothic romance, with plenty of sleaze and gore for those seeking those thrills.

1906 - Greta (Ewa Aulin) is raped by her brother, the hunchback Franz (Luciano Rossi). They become lovers. One day she meets Dr. von Ravensbrück - it's love at first sight. Her brother Franz sees it all with bitter eyes. Greta gets pregnant from Dr. von Ravensbrück. Greta and her son die during childbirth to Franz's great grief.Three years later Walter von Ravensbrück (son of Dr. von Ravensbrück) and his wife Eva are drinking tea in the garden of their mansion. A black carriage led by black horses driven by a black-clad coachman is arriving - it is going very fast. Accident! The carriage flips over and the driver dies impaled on the wheel axle almost in front of their eyes. They discover an unconscious girl inside the carriage. She doesn't remember anything from the past, she doesn't even know her own name.This girl is, of course, Greta. Is she alive? Is she dead? What is clear is that she came like an angel of death. Her arrival will unleash a death carnival.There are other characters in this film - Dr. Sturges (Klaus Kinski) is making a research on resurrection. Inspector Dannick (Attilio Dottesio) is trying in vain to make sense of what is happening. There's a prying servant maid - Franz or Franz's ghost (Greta's brother) is haunting her. She will be the first to suffer a horrible death. Other deaths will follow and in-between a lesbian affair (one woman tries to kill another and then they both laugh and make love to each other - oh me oh my!), ménage-à-trois, parties, dancing , masks and deaths. The film ends with a Mona Lisa smile and a puzzled look.If Joe D'Amato tried at all to tell a story, he must certainly have forgotten all about it during the process of writing and filming. Anyway "La morte ha sorriso al assassino" is very stylishly filmed, excellent decor and costumes. The camera and editing are very awake and the film's colors are beautiful and soft as the countryside surrounding the mansion. The soundtrack enhances the mystery and mellow beauty of some scenes. Ewa Aulin is surrealistically unconvincing and sweet as the avenging angel that raises havoc all around.The hype is right: The film is really addictive. See the film and don't try to make sense out of the story, or rather, see and understand the film your own way.

Death Smiles at Murder-Aristide Massaccesi (aka Joe D'Amato) This is not your typical D'Amato movie, if there is such a thing. There's graphic violence, a little gore, but nothing really over the top. But what this movie has, is a little style and maybe even ~~gasp~~ some class. It's very confusing, and includes everything from reanimation, to a three way love affair, to a murder mystery. The basic plot is about a young beautiful woman Greta, who shows up at a Villa and is involved in a horse carriage accident which impales the driver. A couple take her in since she has developed amnesia. There's a series of flashbacks that attempt to cast some Intel on who she is, but not why she is there. Klaus Kinski has a small role as the doctor who attends to her, but has a totally different agenda which deals with a concoction he's working on to bring back the dead. Soon the movie gets even more bizarre and even takes a little from Poe's "Black Cat". Everything looks pretty damn good in this movie, the sets, the actors, and the main thing I noticed is the main theme to the soundtrack is straight out of "Suspiria". In fact, you could pretty much say ~~stolen from Suspiria~~.Both the Husband and his Wife fall in love with Greta, and the Wife especially turns out to be rather jealous and walls up Greta in the dungeon. After that some even more bizarre happenings occurs resulting in the gruesome death of the Wife. But what happened to the walled up Greta? Well, that little chore is up to the local Police Inspector, and he hasn't got a clue as to what is going on, because Greta has vanished. This all culminates in a fairly good, if not confusing, ending that seems to put most of pieces back in order.