Wow! Such a good movie.

What makes it different from others?

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

In the 1960s, a series of low budget films known as Spaghetti Westerns emerged from Italy; Clint Eastwood starred in a number of these, most notably "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly". The 1970s saw horror films given the same treatment, and one or two of them were not bad. Sadly, this is neither number one nor number two.Set in 1909, "Death Smiles On A Murderer" begins with a fatal crash and what appears to be a rape, then it slows right down to a virtual crawl. There is a lot of background music, which is not a bad thing for a supermarket or an elevator, but not here.This film tries to be all things to all men – and women: Dr Frankenstein meets the zombies with a ghostly theme, detective novel, heck, there is even a hint of lesbian sex thrown in. Finally, it descends into silliness with a murder by what appears to be a supernatural cat, a scene that would have made Ed Wood cringe. It's an old story: jack of all trades, master of none.

This early D'Amato film bears some affinity to the work of Mario Bava, being a 19th Century Gothic horror long on style and atmosphere if short on coherence. The basic plot involves a brother who raises his sister from the dead (using an old Incan ritual) in order that she gets revenge on those who were responsible for her death; a number of gory murders ensues.D'Amato attacks the story is a very strange way, deliberately I would presume to emphasise the tale's strangeness and put the audience in a similar position of mystification as the characters find themselves under. This approach is not entirely successful, although the dizzying maze of Dutch angles, stalking and spying POV shots, extreme close-ups (especially of eyes) makes the film constantly compelling. Klaus Kinski gets star billing for what is essentially a bit part as a scientist in a sub-plot (which links with the Incan ritual) and his early demise is problematic, as his appearance and then disappearance have the stench of a red herring.The film seems to be an extended riff on the idea that human relationships are an unhealthy brew of thwarted desire, jealousy and rage. The most effective moments have the characters stalked by the dead sister, who turns from ravishing beauty to mouldering corpse from shot to shot. The party with masks and the idea that beauty can suddenly turn rotten lead me to suspect that the film is an unacknowledged inspiration for some scenes in Kubrick's The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut.The finale, with the dead sister being revealed as the old woman cohabiting with the detective, is half-hokum and half inspired derangement of time; like Nicholson's final Shining moment, frozen in a picture from the 1920s, this reveal suggests that the detective has been doomed timelessly to follow a case which is in some ways a re-enactment of is own marital relationship, a reflection of the deadly tortures which seemingly ordinary married people wish to enact on each other. The story bears some similarities to the work of Poe, and like D'Amato's Emanuelle's Revenge, it uses the images of immolation behind a wall from that storyteller's A Cask of Amontillado.

My grade of 8 out of 10 for this movie is very inflated. I'm under the impression that the reason people say this is Joe D'amato film with some actual class is because Joe D'amato is generally known for making such sleazy garbage. But anyone who has seen films from Jess Franco, particularly that of the 'Venus in Furs' or 'Vampiros Lesbos' variety will see that this is no different from those Euro-trash pictures. Like Franco, D'amato employs something of a slow, atmospheric texture, a convoluted 'plot', copious amounts of nudity that somehow fit within the film, a few choice death scenes and of course, the strongest element of them all: Klaus Kinski!!! If you're a Euro-trash fan, especially that of Jess Franco it's definitely worth a look.

I don't know why this has the fans it does and I don't know why I have even given it the score I have. This is preposterous. There are many a giallo where one has to suspend disbelief, let the picture roll and catch up with it somewhere before it becomes delirious and some poor police officer has to eventually explain what we have seen. But, this has very little going for it and has overlong sequences where nothing happens and have no relevance to anything while we have to listen to a most repetitive soundtrack, even by Italian standards. Not a giallo, this is a complete mish mash of horror ideas featuring Klaus Kinski in one his most blatant 'phoned in' performances. I reckon he turned up, did a day's work and cleared off leaving Mr D'Amato to get others to fill in. Ewa is of course pretty but no it is not enough, and in the end we have seen far too much of her popping up all over the place, long after we have completely lost interest in this mindless and pretentious twaddle. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood!