Death Smiles on a Murderer (; English title sequence: Death Smiles at Murder) is a 1973 Italian horror film directed by Joe D'Amato and starring Ewa Aulin, Klaus Kinski and Luciano Rossi. Plot 1906. In a crypt-like room, hunchbacked Franz von Holstein mourns over the body of Greta, his young sister and only love. A first flashback shows him sexually assaulting her, after which she expresses her wish to leave this cursed place with him, to live and to be among people. In a second flashback, she teases him into chasing her when she stumbles upon Doctor Herbert von Ravensbrück; they get romantically involved while Franz watches from hiding. 1909. Walter von Ravensbrück (Herbert's son) and his wife Eva are being served tea by butler Simeon when a carriage driving by at high speed is overturned and the coachman fatally impaled. Inside the coach is Greta, unconscious. Inspector Dannick wants to question her, but Walter convinces him otherwise. They do not meet. Instead, Doctor Sturges is called to check on her. He hears no heartbeat and discovers her gold medallion carrying the inscription "Greta 1906" as well as mysterious symbols, which he recognises, perturbed. Getrud, the Ravensbrücks' servant, having recognised Greta, is haunted in her room by Franz von Holstein, who repeatedly vanishes and reappears and cuts her neck open with a scalpel - a wound that bleeds but disappears. Sturges discovers a scar on Greta's neck on the same spot. He inserts a needle into her right eyeball, causing neither damage nor pain and confirming that Greta is undead. For the coachman's death certificate, he opens the coffin to discover the corpse's rapid decomposition - an indication that he was undead at the time of the crash. Sturges keeps both facts secret. Gertrud packs her things, leaves, and is chased by Franz's apparition along a path at whose end she is approached by an unseen assailant, who - despite her assertion that she has not told anyone and is leaving for good - kills her with a point blank shotgun blast to her face. After a ball, Greta, the von Ravensbrücks and their guests go on a pheasant hunt with shotguns. Meanwhile, Doctor Sturges is working in his underground laboratory. The medallion's symbols contain a formula for the creation of life. Just as Sturges succeeds in bringing one of his corpses to life, he is strangled by an unseen