Smile Before Death

The sinfully slinky 'Smile Before Death' aka 'Il Sorriso della iena' (1972) remains a bizarrely under scrutinized, salaciously saucy slasher from cult Italian film-maker, Silvio 'Amuck!' Amadio. This deliciously deviant, unjustly obscure, sublimely sexy, full-bloodied, sensuously soft-bodied Giallo features that deliciously divine brunette Rosalba Neri, the wickedly sultry queen of B-Movie scream and hellaciously hunky, Hiram Keller as a voluptuously-villainous duo plotting to do most grievous harm to the stepdaughter of Hiram's resolutely ill-minded character.

Bravura genre director Silvio Amadio's breezily stylish and frequently raunchy follow-up to "Amuck!" is fulsomely engorged with giddy plot twists, plentifully lurid stalk an' slash, and is busily replete with the ubiquitous "shock" ending rabid Gialli/thriller fans so ardently crave! 'Smile before Death' is most certainly guaranteed to amuse and bemuse in equally confounding measure, and remains an entirely worthy entry to this most histrionic of iconoclastic, bombastic film idioms. This gorgeous Giallo's relative rarity is wholly undeserved and one sincerely hopes that eventually it will soon get a glisteringly-restored Italian language, UK-friendly, feature-loaded DVD/Blu-ray release that this tremendously exciting thriller so earnestly deserves!

I've pretty much seen all the classics as well as the hidden gems of the Italian sub genre of Giallo, so what remains now are the more obscure and undiscovered gems … If I'm lucky, at least. "Smile before Death" is such a film Giallo connoisseurs have certainly heard about already, but the film remains unavailable on DVD to this day and if you really want to see it you have to be satisfied with a computer ripped bootleg version with poor picture quality and unidentifiable foreign subtitles. "Smile before Death" is not bad, but certainly not great neither (otherwise it would be wider known by now, ha!) This isn't exactly what I would call the most exciting Giallo ever made. It opens promisingly enough, with the murder of a middle-aged woman in a remote country estate. The bedroom door was locked from the inside when they found the body and her throat was slit with a piece of glass that was found in her hand, so the police close the case as suicide. The teenage daughter Nancy comes to the estate and befriends her mother's best friend, a photographer, as well as her handsome lover. The initially shy Nancy is quickly drawn into the sleazy world of nude modeling and the sexual affection of mature men. She doesn't know, however, that the clue to solving her mother's dead lies with these same people and that she's actually an obstacle in the killer(s) complete fiendish scheme. "Smile before Death" a stylish but sadly dull and underwhelming mystery thriller. Apart from the murder on the mother near the beginning, which is shown repeatedly and at least three times, there's nothing even remotely suspenseful going on. I remember from "Amuck" – the other Giallo by Silvio Amadio – that the director is more interested in the naked bodies of his lead actresses than in suspense and gruesome killing. I can't say I blame him, especially when working with Rosalba Neri, but the lack of excitement here is really intolerable. The theme song is great but overused and after a while I got sick and tired of staring at the young lead actress' naked body. That's never a good sign. Patient viewers will be rewarded with an acceptably entertaining – albeit predictable and derivative – climax, but it's too late to safe the movie. One of the most disappointing Gialli I ever saw.

From the director of the better known "Alla Ricerca del Piacere" (aka "Amuck!") comes this stylish thriller that involves not only a confusing web of love affairs and relationships, but also - towards the climax - a bundle of twists that are guaranteed to surprise every viewer without becoming implausible at any moment.

And this is the big plus of this movie: The twists all work. The first half moves on relatively slow (similar to Silvio Amadio's above mentioned earlier Giallo), but the viewer already gets enough information to know that the plot isn't as simple as it seems. In the second half the film becomes a roller coaster ride of red herrings, plot twists and other surprises, which makes it decisively superior to Amadio's earlier effort.

The acting is also thoroughly convincing, which is especially important once the film is finished and the viewer gets the whole story. But the most remarkable thing in this intriguing Giallo is the lush, ear-catching main theme that will never let one go after being heard for the first time.

This obscure giallo was made after director Silvio Amado's excellent "Amuck" (his only work to get a decent DVD release so far), but before his tepid melodrama "So Young, So Lovely, So Vicious". It actually shares elements with both, but I'm pleased to report it is much closer in quality to "Amuck". Visually it is not as stylish (although that might just be due to the crappy available prints), but it has the same interesting plot twists and excellent acting.

After a her mother's suspicious suicide, a pretty teenage girl (Lucia Della Robbins)shows up at her Italian villa where she quickly discovers that her new and recently widowed stepfather (Hiram Keller) is having an affair with her mother's sexy photographer friend (Rosalba Neri, also in "Amuck"). The villainous pair plot to do in the precocious youngster, but it turns out she has her own sinister agenda as she has sexually insinuates herself between the two of them (bedding the stepfather and doing nude photo sessions with Neri). The ending is genuinely a surprise.

Neri is good as always (although she isn't quite as exciting shooting photographs as she is shooting a shotgun in a bikini). I initially thought the teenage girl should have been played by Gloria Guida (who was later in "So Young, So Lovely, So Vicious"). Robbins wasn't a sex bomb like Guida perhaps, but she turns out to be a much better actress going from wholesome innocence to sexual precociousness to scheming malevolence, where Guida could really only have pulled off the middle one very convincingly. Special mention should also be made of the catchy, cooing score, which somehow later made its way into a 1990's American car commercial (go figure). It's even more memorable than the "Sexual!" song from "Amuck". It's not a perfect movie perhaps--it suffers from having only one brief scene of Neri getting naked (made up somewhat by frequent scenes of Della Robbins getting naked)and, of course, it looks pretty crappy. Still with a restored print and a legitimate DVD release it could be a minor classic of the genre.

Teenaged Nancy Thompson arrives unexpectedly at her mothers county villa.She discovers that her mom has died a violent death.The police investigate and believe the she killed herself by cutting her throat with a piece of broken of glass.Nancy meets and becomes friends with Gina who was her mothers best friend and who has a special relationship with her stepfather.Soon the older man turns his roving eye toward this young beauty as suspicion about the suicide starts to come to light.Pretty sleazy and entertaining Italian giallo with plenty of nudity and some nasty surprises.I haven't seen Silvio Amadio's "Amuck" yet,but I'd like to.The performances of Jenny Tamburi and sexy Rosalba Neri are fantastic and I must say that they are perhaps the main reasons to see this surprisingly obscure giallo.8 out of 10.