of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, The Masque of the Red Death, the Red Death enters Prospero's masquerade ball in a blood-spattered robe and a mask resembling that of the corpses that died from the plague, Greta enters the masked ball of the von Ravensbrücks clad in red and wearing a corpse-like mask. The film was given a low budget of 150 million Italian lire. Death Smiles on a Murderer was shot between November and December 1972 with a working title of 7 strani cadaveri (). Some scenes were not in the script and were improvised on set. These include a scene in which Luciano Rossi is attacked by a cat, which D'Amato achieved by throwing the cat against Rossi's face. Release Death Smiles on a Murderer was released in Italy on 11 July 1973. Film historian Roberto Curti referred to this box office as "scarce business" noting its unimportant distributor Florida Cinematografica. In Italy, the film grossed a total of 70,990,000 Italian lire. It was released in the United States as Death Smiles on a Murderer and Death Smiles at Murder. A blu-ray of the film was released on 21 May 2018 by Arrow Video in a "2k restoration from the original camera negative", containing English and Italian audio, a commentary track by film historian Tim Lucas and the original English and Italian trailers. Reception In Matthew Edwards' book on Klaus Kinski published in 2016, the film, called "trippy, but fascinating", is compared to Jess Franco's Venus in Furs in that its "existential, haunting and dreamlike qualities do nothing to detract from the enjoyment of what takes place on screen". References Footnotes Sources External links Death Smiles on a Murderer at Variety Distribution 1973 films 1973 horror films Italian horror films Films directed by Joe D'Amato Gothic horror films Films set in 1909 Films set in 1906 Films scored by Berto Pisano Giallo films 1970s ghost films Italian ghost films Italian serial killer films 1970s Italian-language films 1970s Italian films