Giovanni: “Corpses are like guests; they stink after three days.”
A slightly more obscure giallo released during the heyday of the craze, co-writer/director Silvio Amadio’s Smile Before Death (1972) is a psychological mystery thriller that certainly pushes the boundaries of the already boundary-pushing Italian genre.
Amadio starts with a wild opener, as wealthy Dorothy Emerson (Zora Gheorgieva) is found brutally murdered by an unknown assailant. . . with it promptly being classified as a suicide by the incompetent police, this then turns into a slow burner of sorts.
With her philandering husband Marco (Silvano Tranquilli – So Sweet, So Dead; The Horrible Dr. Hichcock) still living in the impressive abode, it didn’t take long for her best friend and his mistress, Gianni (Rosalba Neri – The French Sex Murders; The Girl in Room 2A), to move in with him.
Complicatedly for the lecherous couple, Dorothy’s teenaged daughter Nancy Thompson (Jenny Tamburi) decides to drop out of boarding school in England and return home after hearing the awful news. Oddly enough, Nancy has never met her mother’s new husband before, nor has she met her best friend, as her mom liked nothing better than shipping her off so she didn’t have to deal with her.
Further confusing things, live-in housekeeper Magda (Dana Ghia – Nine Guests for a Crime; Seven Dead in the Cat’s Eye) is still whispering about her suspicions about Dorothy’s death, while groundskeeper Giovanni (Luigi Antonio Guerra) also snoops around, and throw in Dorothy’s much younger lover (Hiram Keller – Seven Dead in the Cat’s Eye) who is also lingering nearby, and you’ve got one messy household.
As the likeable, free-loving teen ingratiates herself in the affair-happy couple, she praises Marco’s youthful sporty ways, while her hippie-like behaviour leads her to tease photographer Gianni into snapping sexy and sometimes nude images of her. Making things feel both like an awkward love triangle and more than a tad incestuous, what will come of the threesome as they live off of dead Dorothy’s dime? One also has to wonder if the murderer resides within the house or just outside the place.
Set in a groovy avant garde house with very modern interior lighting, eye-drawing artwork, and dynamic decor, the sleek model-like fashion also stands out. Adding a further visual layer to the frequently sexy and sometimes violent visuals of this slow burner, things build to a wild ending with multiple twists and turns.
Though perhaps a touch slow for some viewers, Smile Before Death still glimmers thanks to its visual panache, kinkily edgy sexuality, and lingering murder mystery hovering around a monetary motive. For fans of Barbara Bouchet, they’ll be very happy that she appears in this one, but also a bit disappointed as she can be spotted grooving to some music as a party is being held in the house, but never does anything more after that. Plus, plenty of mileage is gotten out of the quite repetitively catchy but kind of mismatched score by Roberto Pregadio, with its lyrics sung by Edda Dell`Orso (which became very popular again in America thanks to it being used in a Honda Civic commercial released in 2001). So, beware of everyone and trust no one in this deadly Italian murder mystery, don’t even trust old adages such as ‘like mother, like daughter’.
This film can be watched in its original Italian with English subtitles, or in dubbed English