The House with Laughing Windows 4K UHD Review

Arrow Video

4K UHD Release: December 2, 2025

Video: 1.85:1/2160p (HDR10)/Color

Audio: Italian LPCM 1.0 mono

Subtitles: English

Run Time: 110:42

Director: Pupi Avati

Art restorer Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) arrives at an isolated Italian village to repair a fresco depicting the agonizing martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. The original painter was a death artist – a madman so obsessed with mortality that, according to whispered rumors, he tortured his models in their final moments of life. When people begin to turn up dead, Stefano is forced to consider the possibility that the artist has returned to continue his brutal career – and that he is the primary target. (From Arrow’s official synopsis)

The Italian/Spanish giallo fad blew up in 1970, following the release of Dario Argento’s Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Italian: L'Uccello dalle piume di cristallo, 1970), and peaked quickly over the following year (Patrick and I did a two-part podcast on several of the 40+ gialli released in the year 1971, have a listen here and here). By the middle of the decade, the market was saturated. Quick, cheap, and derivative output brought down the quality, but the influx sludge also helped the cream rise to the top. So, while the films suffered on average, the sludge was largely forgotten and some of the greatest genre entries were released between 1973 and 1978, including Sergio Martino’s Torso (Italian: I Corpi Pesentano Tracce di Violenza Carnale, 1973), Dario Argento’s Deep Red (Italian: Profondo Rosso, 1975), Armando Crispino’s Autopsy (Italian: Macchie solari, 1975), and Pupi Avati’s The House with Laughing Windows (Italian: La casa dalle finestre che ridono, 1976).

House with Laughing Windows stands out first and foremost for its sheer artistry. It’s a truly gorgeous achievement that gives some of Mario Bava and Argento’s best a run for their money. But it endures, because of the ways that it expands the possibilities of the genre. First, it takes place in a rural location. From the beginning, the various giallo formulas have been associated with either gritty urban settings or glamorous European vacation spots. When they do take place outside of city centers, they’re typically situated in suburban mansions or, if the filmmakers are aiming for a Gothic vibe, spooky castles. Other exceptions to this rule are Antonio Bido’s The Bloodstained Shadow (Italian: Solamente nero, 1978) and Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling (Italian: Non si Sevizia un Paperino, 1972), the latter of which shares certain tones and themes with Avati’s film. 

Doing in part to its agrarian setting, The House with Laughing Windows functions sort of like an H.P. Lovecraft story or folk horror tale. An outsider comes into a sort of haunted rural community to investigate a mystery, discovers the diary of a madman, and finds himself tumbling into madness himself as he uncovers an impossible truth. These tropes also fit Argento’s popular The Bird with the Crystal Plumage formula, in which a foreigner with artistic proclivities obsessively plays amateur detective, putting himself and his loved ones in danger (more specifically, the leading men of both films leave their significant others alone and vulnerable to do a bit of last-minute sleuthing on the day they’re scheduled to leave town).

Also owing to Argento’s film, The House with Laughing Windows’ plot hinges on the idea that violent art can invoke violent behavior**. In The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, a painting of a crime awakens suppressed trauma and prompts a psychotic break. In this film, a series of murders snowball from an usually provocative artist’s compulsive desire to depict misery. But then Avati adds this occult, haunted house angle, turning a contemplative arthouse giallo into something more esoteric and paranoid. Is there a larger conspiracy behind the mystery and are the townspeople in on it? Or could there be something supernatural at play?

By the mid-’70s, the average giallo was measured in body counts and bare breasts per minute, which makes The House with Laughing Windows’ commitment to a slow burn all the more extraordinary. Again, I’m reminded of a Fulci movie*, The Psychic (Italian: Sette note in nero), though, this time, Avati was ahead of his counterpart, because that film wasn’t released until the following year, 1977. And, again, like The Psychic, what it lacks in sensationalism and sleaze (the sex scenes are downright tasteful!), The House with Laughing Windows makes up for with a mounting sense of dread that pays off with a stomach-dropping climax. When it comes time for violence, Avati doesn’t skimp on the red stuff.

Avati made other thrillers and horror movies. He followed up House with Laughing Windows with All The Souls… Except the Dead (Italian: Tutti defunti... tranne i morti, 1977), which is described as an Agatha Christie drawing room spoof in the vein of Robert Moore’s Murder by Death (1976). In recent years he directed The Hideout (Italian: Il nascondiglio, 2007) and Mr. Devil (Italian: Il signor Diavolo, 2019), both of which have garnered comparisons to his earlier work. House with Laughing Windows’ most direct follow-up and Avati’s most popular film outside of Italy was Zeder (1983). Released stateside as Revenge of the Dead and sold as a splattery zombie movie, Zeder is an implicitly supernatural take on similar themes.

* It’s probably worth noting that Avati eventually collaborated with Fulci by co-writing Dracula in the Provinces (Italian: Il cav. Costante Nicosia demoniaco, ovvero) the year before The House with Laughing Windows was released.

** Argento expanded on these ideas even more with The Stendhal Syndrome (1996), where a police detective suffers from the title condition, causing her to faint when in the presence of spectacular art. The House with Laughing Windows has a lot of other Argento-isms throughout: whispered threatening phone calls, an imposing villa full of secrets, and so on.

Bibliography

• Giallo & Thrilling All'Italiana – 1931-1983 by Antonio Bruschini and Stefano Piselli (Glittering Images, 2010)

• Italian Giallo in Film and Television: A Critical History by Roberto Curti (McFarland, 2022) – Curti refers to an “early draft” of what eventually became The House with Laughing Windows under the title Blood Relations (Italian: Balsamus l'uomo di Satana), which is a title shared by Avati’s 1970 directorial debut. He attributes this fact to an article in issue 175 of the Italian language magazine Notturno Cinema. Since I am unable to read the article or see the film, I cannot verify this, though the interviews included with this collection seem to imply that the two scripts were just being developed at the same time, not that they were based on the same script.

• Giallo Canvas: Art, Excess and Horror Cinema by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (McFarland, 2021) – In her analysis, Heller-Nicholas also refers to Mikel Koven’s La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film (Scarecrow, 2006).

Video

The House with Laughing Windows has long sat near the top of my Blu-ray wishlist for more than a decade. The film built much of its stateside reputation via Image Entertainment’s premiere DVD in 2003, but, when that went out of print, English speaking fans could only get the film on UK import DVD. The film finally hit Blu-ray from French company Le chat qui fume in 2024. Arrow’s release marks its 4K and HD North American debut. The new transfer was scanned and restored in 4K/16 bit from the original 35mm camera negative at L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, then graded at R3Store Studios in London by Arrow.

Pasquale Rachini’s beautiful photography tends to alternate between lush and hazy magic hour sequences and darkened interiors, some darker than others. The outdoor shots look great, especially the rich colors and fine details of wide-angle images, but the delicately balanced dark shots are a bigger improvement over muddy SD versions. Grain levels are fine and consistent, and details are clear without signs of oversharpening. The HDR boost is less than I’d been expecting, but this isn’t a particularly vivid film and the softer range fits the naturalistic photography.

The images on this page are taken from Arrow’s same-day Blu-ray and resized for the page. They don’t have the full 2160p resolution or HDR upgrade, but it illustrates the general cleanliness and color quality of the UHD.

The House with Laughing Windows will be/has been released by Shameless Entertainment in the UK shortly after Arrow’s North American disc hits stores. Shameless’ advertising claims that theirs will be an exclusive new grading of the same restoration and that the grading has been approved by Avati. I’ve had better luck with Arrow than Shameless over the years, but I am still very curious as to how the transfers measure up.

Audio

The House with Laughing Windows is presented with a solo Italian mono soundtrack option in uncompressed DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0. I suppose an English dub was never produced, further explaining its stateside obscurity over the years. Someone produced a 5.1 remix for the film’s DVD debut, but it hasn’t been included on a release since 2003. The mix is light on effects work with consistent, somewhat condensed dialogue performances. Composer Amedeo Tommass’ mostly piano and Wurlitzer-based score alternates between groovy themes, soap opera melodramatics, and a devastatingly creepy main motif. The music is a highlight and often stretches the dynamic range of the single-channel mix.

Extras

• Commentary with Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson – Heller-Nicholas, the aforementioned author of Giallo Canvas: Art, Excess and Horror Cinema, is joined by fellow critic and Australian Nelson for a friendly conversation about the giallo genre (with loads of relevant citations), The House with Laughing Windows’ place in the pantheon, the place that fine art occupies in gialli, the making of the film (including quotes from Avati himself), and the underlying theme of fascism throughout the story.

• Commentary with Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth – Ercolani, the author of Darkening the Italian Screen (McFarland, 2019 & 2023), and Howarth, the author of three volumes of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films (Midnart Marquee, 2015 & 2019) offer a broader look at Avati’s work, the film’s production, the wider careers of the cast & crew, and the film’s release and home video history. 

• Painted Screams (94:30, HD) – An extensive 2025 documentary from director Federico Caddeo featuring interviews with Avati, co-writer Antonio Avati, assistant director Cesare Bastelli, production designer Luciana Morosetti, assistant camera operation Toni Scaramuzza, sound mixer Enrico Blasi, Emanuele Taglietti (son of assistant production designer Otello), and actors Lino Capolicchio, Fancesca Marciano, Giulio Pizzirani, and Pietro Brambilla. There is an enormous amount of previously unreported information to be found here.

• La Casa e Sola (19:12, HD) – Former Fangoria editor-in-chief, Rue Morgue contributor, musician, and filmmaker Chris Alexander explores the film’s opening credits, plot, characters, and historical themes.

• The Art of Suffering (14:59, HD) – Author of All the Colors of Sergio Martino (Arrow Books, 2018) Kat Ellinger focuses on the philosophical meaning of the film via Nietzsche’s concepts of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. She draws comparisons to Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987), The Wicker Man (1973), and other folk horror films (referring to M.R. James, rather than H.P. Lovecraft), and calls The House with Laughing Windows as the Twin Peaks of gialli.

• Italian theatrical trailer

The images on this page are taken from Arrow’s 4K remastered BD – NOT the 4K UHD – and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.