#death smiles on a murderer

[goryhorroor]

day 26 of horror: more underrated/obscure essential horror films

[weirdlookindog]

Death Smiles on a Murderer aka La morte ha sorriso all'assassino (1973).

[briarrosefromthedead]

Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973) dir. Joe D’Amato

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Death Smiles on a Murderer (D’Amato, 1973)

This is a ‘70s Italian horror film, meaning that the women are all absurdly beautiful and maybe a little perverted deep down, and the men carry a sense of imminent danger. This is also a period horror film, meaning that the characters are often costumed in pleasingly textured fabrics, and the women often wear extravagant headgear, and we get to spend a good amount of time in finely aged manors, their ornate designs coated with a nice coating of dust and wear. It even throws the lead actress in a cape and has her wander down creepy corridors, which is the ultimate sign of quality in films like this one, even if it contrives the scene by placing it after a costume party. (One should not need an actual reason to drift down the halls of a manor in a cape. As for that costume party, it has the characters playing a game where one of them guesses who is behind each mask, which is a much less impressive feat when you consider the masks barely cover their faces and their costumes are otherwise quite distinct.) What I’m saying is that the film contains a number of elements that make me already inclined to like it, but there are things that might make it engaging for those without the exact same cinematic tastes as myself.

The plot is...difficult to explain. There’s the opening scene where the main character is sexually assaulted by a hunchback, whom she also loves, but maybe gets involved with somebody else. And then many years later, either the same character or somebody who looks like her is in a carriage accident where the coachman is killed and she’s rendered unconscious and possibly stricken with a case amnesia. Enter Klaus Kinski as a doctor, whose tests involve turning around as she undresses while watching her with a comically large mirror and later poking a needle in her eye, and I think we’re all glad that medical science has come a long way since the early 1900s. Oh, and there might be a serum to reanimate the dead. Oh, and the lady of the house has an affair with her, but only after trying to drown her in a bathtub. Oh, and there’s a character who I can only describe as Italian Tom Skeritt. Oh, and there are multiple scenes where character run away in fear from a (possible) female zombie, which carry the same charge as the central conflict of Petey Wheatstraw, where our hero Rudy Ray Moore tries to weasel out of a deal to marry the devil’s daughter because she’s so damn ugly.

If this sounds incoherent, it certainly plays that way as you watch the movie, but not entirely in a bad way. There is some dispute as to who wrote how much of the screenplay, but the general sense I get is that there were changes along the way, from what was originally supposed to be more of a giallo to something with a bit more gothic horror flavour. There are certain elements inspired by Edgar Allan Poe (a character gets trapped behind a brick wall, a black cat), tossed into the strange psychosexual blender that produced this movie. This is directed by Joe D’Amato, whose style has always struck me as simultaneously restrained and blunt. The restraint tamps down the narrative incoherence, to the point that the proceedings register has half-remembered memories stewing in one’s subconscious, rather than something overtly dreamlike. The bluntness gives a charge to the scenes of violence, which involve a good deal of facial trauma (shotgun blast, razor slice, eye-gouging by feline).

If you’ve seen the poster, of a guy who looks like Kinski getting his face scratched up by an angry black cat, I can confirm that happens, just not to Kinski. Kinski spends most of the movie away from the other actors and instead fiddling with lab equipment, which seems suspiciously like a ploy to manage the notoriously volatile actor. You do not get any explosive outbursts here, but even in understated mode, Kinski’s very presence suggests that he might go off at any moment. And in the lead role, you get Ewa Aulin, who goes a long way in making this movie work. I have no idea if she’s a “good” actress in the traditional sense, but I do know that she pulls off what’s required for the role, in that she manages to be distressingly sexy while suggesting twisted psychological depths. Maybe the movie cheats to make me like her by putting her in a cape, but the heart wants what it wants.

[bizarrelittlemew]

🥺 -> 🥹 -> 😠

[spiraling-trap]

would you bury me? would you carry me to the end?

[moonlightperseus]

it BETTER move kipperlily from an A+ to a failing grade once it gets out she’s killed TWO of her own party members

[suchawrathfullamb]

Whore Graham Appreciation

[angelthemanspanker]

The way some people characterise Buffy in fics like you described genuinely put me off Buffy fandom for years, it was absolutely everywhere, in Spuffy fics, in faith/buffy fics, it felt like I couldn't read a fic without the obligatory 'Buffy apologises to whoever the fuck for being so mean' and I just stopped, it was so baffling

For real its so weirdly pervasive. It genuinely blows my mind bc I totally get the urge to use your fic to call out a character/plot point you don't like, more power to you. Like I'm constantly imagining rewrites of the scenes where Xander is at his most insufferable but no one in-show is verbalising obvious holes in his bullshit (my big one is that besides a one off line from Buffy that everyone in the show ignores and a DELETED line from Giles is that NO ONE calls him on his absolutely infuriating "I was jealous of Angel being with the girl I like and I'm gonna have the gall to pretend it was bc I saw him turning evil coming" BULLSHIT)

But like. Buffy? You came out of this show and the person you had beef with and want to call out is BUFFY? THE VAMPIRE SLAYER? The protagonist of all time? Bc she's mean sometimes :( people try to apologise for trying to kill her and she's so unsympathetic :( she carries out her responsibility as the Slayer whether she wants to or not even if the person she's targeting is a character I like :( why won't she apologise. why won't she apologise. why does she insist on taking up space. why can't she just be nice all the time. yes my ao3 tag is princessspuffy why do you ask. yeah I know their relationship is abusive but I think Spike would forgive her :)

[tequiilasunriise]

Wenclair’s peak dynamic is that Enid would die fer Wednesday, Wednesday would live fer Enid, and they would kill fer each other.

[problemswithbooks]

With the tentative and rough translations out, i have to say, yeah, Hori really doesn't get what he's actually writing and if he was trying to make Toga's entire deal a metaphor for queerness, he's ended up being quite offensive.

Like first off it seems he has Toga say she falls in love easily with boy and girls and...animals. Which, I always felt the bird thing as a kid could have negative connotations, but wrote it off as 'she was a little kid and this was before her desire for blood was wrapped up in her romantic feelings' type things. So having Hori reinstate that yes, she does still love animals to the point of blood drinking desire--a desire Hori coded as sexual/romantic is not a good look.

It also just makes me question if she could ever own a pet or if she'd end up killing it because she loved it to much and she needed to drink it's blood.

Also getting her perspective on the boy she attacked isn't great either. The translation is rough and basic so it could change, but I don't think there's any translation that could make the situation not read poorly.

In the rough translations she says something along the lines of "I didn't ask to drink his blood because I was afraid he'd hate me and think I was a decent monster."

I could see an alternative translation being "I asked for his blood and he called me a deviant monster, and I sucked his blood."

Again if Hori is trying to make a queer metaphor with Toga, this is a huge issue. Her attacking the boy was always a big problem, but if he didn't bring it up again I think a lot of casual readers would have forgotten it. But now it's front and center again and brings back bad connotations for Toga and a queer reading of her character.

Because again if we read her blood drinking as queerness, and Hori has already coded it in the past as lust while just last chapter confirming that Toga sees it as kissing in the very least we get two equally bad reads.

A) Due to fear of rejection Toga did not ask for consent and decided she'd just make sexual advances toward someone she had a crush regardless.

or B) She got rejected and told no, and then made the sexual advance anyway.

With a queer reading this only becomes worse because it pays into the really negative and even dangerous idea that same sex attracted people will go after anyone regardless of consent or the other persons orientation. It continues to perpetuate the idea that queer people are sexual predators, who target straight people or in the very least do not care about consent, or are unable to control themselves long enough to get it.

But even without a queer reading what Toga did is wrong. It sucks that people don't get her way of showing love, but consent is still needed regardless. You can't just do what you want to someone because you were to afraid to ask them out. You can't just do what you want with someone after they tell you no. Even if the boy had called her a monster that would not make it ok for Toga to, essentially sexually assault him (yes, kissing someone against their will is sexual assault, which is what Toga sees her blood drinking as).

And I think that's why Toga's character is really hard to get behind for some people--because at the end of the day she's literally just saying "I can't help but sexually assault people (and animals apparently)', and the solution to this is to give her exactly what she wants and apologize for not seeing how much pain she was in when she was actively trying to sexually assault people.

[weirdlookindog]

Ewa Aulin in Death Smiles on a Murderer aka La morte ha sorriso all'assassino (1973).

[batwynn]

POV: you didn’t compliment his fish.

[esteemed-excellency]

For @hurdygurdywizard, who asked about guilt and secret (I couldn't edit the ask sorry)

guilt: What is your OC guilty about? How do they handle their guilt? Do they try to avoid guilt, or do they accept it?

Hiram is SO guilty but he's too self absorbed to be remorseful. He's confident he can manage whatever comes his way and in those rare instances when he has a "oh god what have I done" moment, it's not because he feels guilty but because he should've predicted better outcomes for his actions. He admits to be unapologetically fallible, but never guilty. He will admit to be "a bit sorry" only if he has to.

Here's a short non-comprehensive list of things he should be a bit sorry about:

secret: What's one secret your OC never wants anyone to know about them?

answered here

[minthara]

game of spot the difference

[transfagfemme]

Forever remembering that the best moment of Neil's life was when he watched Riko die. HE IS REAL AS FUCK FOR THAT 😭🔥🙏‼️