Before he was Joe D'Amato, the great cinematographer-turned-exploitation producer/director Aristide Massaccesi tried his hand at the Italian gothic with quirky results in DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER, on Blu-ray from Arrow Video.

An overturned carriage outside the residence of the Ravensbrücks brings alluring amnesiac Greta (Ewa Aulin, BLOODY CEREMONY) into the lives of Walter (Sergio Doria, THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE) and Eva (Angela Bo, COFFIN FROM HONG KONG). Although Greta quickly heats of the blood of the household – including watchful butler Simeon (Marco Mariani, YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY) – Dr. Sturges (Klaus Kinski, SLAUGHTER HOTEL) discovers that the girl is actually dead, and that the secret of her reanimation is related to his own experiments to discover the secrets of life and death. As Greta is separately seduced by (or seduces) the couple, those who discover or suspect the truth are gruesomely murdered, possibly by Greta's incestuously-devoted hunchbacked brother Franz (Luciano Rossi, DEATH WALKS AT MIDNIGHT). When the killings rise above the servant class, Inspector Dannick (Attilio Dottesio, HOTEL PARADISE) starts to investigate but he will have a harder time piecing together the puzzle than the attentive viewer.

Riffing on Le Fanu's "Carmilla" with nods to either Poe's "The Black Cat" or "Cask of Amontillado", DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER's non-linear assemblage of modern and gothic Italian elements of crumbling villas, lesbianism, gory mayhem, and lyrical scoring seemed compelling but nonsensical with a WTF final shot that appeared to confirm that everything preceding was really nothing more than a motion picture portfolio for cinematographer-turned-director Massaccesi, assistant director Claudio Bernabei (RED COAT) who co-scripted and handled the art direction and costume design, and assistant director Romano Scandariato who would continue to collaborate with Massaccesi on his subsequent softcore 1970s ventures like EMANUELLE AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE. Seen again, the shuffled time frame of events becomes easier to organize and the roles of various characters easier to interpret, from fearful maid Gertrud (Carla Mancini, THE LADY IN RED KILLS SEVEN TIMES) and aging dandy Herbert (Giacomo Rossi Stuart, KILL BABY KILL) to the Ravensbrück's Siamese cat, some of whom may also be already dead or soon to be. Massaccesi's cinematography has always been striking in his own directorial efforts or his works-for-hire like Alberto de Martino's THE TEMPTER, Paolo Solvay's THE DEVIL'S WEDDING NIGHT, or fellow former cinematographer Massimo Dallamano's WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE?, but his trés canted wide angles and crash zooms work surprisingly well with this 1970s take on the 1960s Italian gothics when combined with the lyrical score of Berto Pisano (ARCANA) which spikes a harpsichord and string-dominated score with fuzz guitar stings and female vocalizing that is less Ennio Morricone than Piero Umiliani. The film also debuts certain special effects techniques that would inform later D'Amato works as well as their execution through editing (a jump cut involving an attacking cat would be used again in EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD), although D'Amato bewildering would not repeat his method of match cutting to create the seamless passage of time within single shots that is especially striking here. The final shot manages to be entirely dramatically nonsensical yet satisfying.

Released direct to television as part of Avco Embassy's horror package – which included MURDER MANSION, A BELL FROM HELL, HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB, FURY OF THE WOLFMAN, and others – in a heavily-abbreviated version titled DEATH SMILES ON A MURDER (the film's export title as it appears is DEATH SMILES AT MURDER) was only available stateside in that version as a VHS from Something Weird Video. The Dutch company Italian Shock put out a DVD last decade featuring a non-anamorphic letterboxed transfer with hissy English dubbed audio. While anamorphic transfers have popped up since then in Italy and Germany, they were not English-friendly. Transferred from a 2K scan of the original camera negative, the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer is gorgeous, sporting rich colors and crisp detail in spite of the various degrees of on-camera diffusion and lighting schemes that introduce flare and halos within the image that are in no way digital flaws. The image is virtually spotless with a vertical scratch that appears only in insert shots during a murder suggesting that these bits were shot entirely separately from the rest of the action. Clean English and Italian mono tracks are presented in LPCM 1.0 with English SDH subtitles for the English dub and English translation for the Italian. Seamless branching allows the display of English or Italian opening and closing credits, but one cannot toggle between the audio or subtitle tracks via remote.

The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by Video Watchdog's Tim Lucas who notes the film's influences in both gothic fiction and the Italian gothic of the 1960s while also noting with pleasure the film's emphasis on voyeurism as the work of a cinematographer turned director. As expected, Lucas also notes parallels to the films of Mario Bava, notably KILL, BABY KILL and the casting of Stuart as well as the concept of "eternal return" and LISA AND THE DEVIL. There is a lot of description of the onscreen action, but this is necessary for him to convey how the film switches between objective and subjective perspectives, and how the unreliability of some perspectives is conveyed through the camerawork. "D'Amato Smiles on Death" (5:57) is an archival interview with the director D'Amato culled from a longer piece in which he notes his love of the horror genre and the opportunity to work with the likes of Aulin and Kinski.

Long out of the spotlight, actress Aulin appears in a new video interview titled "All About Ewa" (45:55) in which she recalls getting into modeling as a child and then auditioning for films, appearing in a Swedish short film at fifteen and coming to Italy two years later to shoot DON JUAN IN SICILY for Alberto Lattuada followed by her wild trio of DEADLY SWEET for Tinto Brass, DEATH LAID AN EGG for Guilio Questi, and CANDY as well as START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME with Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland, Romolo Guerrieri's THE DOUBLE, Jorge Grau's BLOODY CEREMONY, and Alberto Bevilacqua's THIS KIND OF LOVE. She recalls the opportunities for travel and getting to meet interesting people, maintaining a friendship with Jean-Louis Trintignant, being in awe of Lucia Bosé, and others who were a bit more distant like Jean Sorel. She also recalls acting in and producing MICROSCOPIC LIQUID SUBWAY TO OBLIVION written and directed by her then-husband John Shadow who felt he was being squashed by her persona, and her disappointment with the results.