After her mother dies of an apparent self-inflicted slash to the throat, Nancy Thompson travels to stay with her step-father (ie her mother's husband) whom she's never actually met. He lives in a freshly-inherited villa, along with a shrewish housekeeper who suspects that the suicide was murder, and a friend/companion who knows that the suicide was murder. If I tell you that Nancy is played by Jenny Tamburi and the friend/companion is a photographer played by Rosalba Neri, you can probably figure out what happens in the second act, before the film remembers that it's meant to have a mystery element, and questions arise as to just what exactly did happen to Nancy's mother...
One of the 'isolated rich people eyeing each other suspiciously and plotting against each other so they can land a chunky inheritance' subgenre (ie it don't have a mysterious killer), Smile Before Death is not quite as sunny and breezy as the best of that genre - the low budget and rushed schedule is fairly apparent, with very little in the way of exterior scenes. The villa around which most of the action is set is, though, delightfully kitsch and colourful. The story has very little flesh on its bones, though that's not to say that the movie is lacking in flesh* - Amadio certainly knew how to maximise his resources, one (/two [/four]) of which in this instance were the actresses' willingness to disrobe.
The film takes a bit of time to get going, and if you don't like the theme tune you'll probably not make it past the first ten minutes (around half of which are accompanied by said song). Some loooooong montages may also test the patience, although fans of 1970s fashions and décor will be in their element. Amadio, from the few of his films I've seen, seems to have been able to effortlessly capture contemporaneous moods and styles, and wasn't afraid of progress and change. His son, in the special features on the Arrow Blu, claims that his two co-writers were aged around thirty, which further shows Amadio's willingness to remain hip to the groove.
Something else that's very 70s is the general scuzzy Lolita theme, which wouldn't really fly nowadays. Nancy openly craves the affection of her stepfather and his lover (Neri), and she doesn't seem too fussed whether the affection is of the parental or sexual variety. In fact, she almost conflates the two, telling Neri's Gianna that she sees her as a mother figure, and then, having sufficiently buttered the mother-photographer up, convinces her to photograph her in the nip. Sitting side-by-side with the incest-lite theme is the mystery angle - was Nancy's mother murdered? (Yes, obviously, is the answer.) And does her step-father, who will lose his inherited estate when Nancy comes of age, have murderous designs on the teenager? (Yes, obviously, is the answer.) And is there more to the apparently-innocent teenager who nymphs her way through the house like a cross between Yojimbo and Lolita? (...)
The mystery angle is, as I stated in the synopsis, summarily parked for much of the film - we even have an early sequence in which Nancy falls from a yacht and her step-father conspicuously fails to try to rescue her, which is certainly quite telling. This doesn't seem to unduly bother her, though, as she picks up where she left off, continuing to seduce her way through the house (albeit she does recall the yacht episode later on, when the plot kicks in). The plot isn't anything to write home about - or if you do write home, you want to have some other news or it'll be a very short missive. There's no killer, and we find out the truth about Nancy's mother's demise quite early on, so we're left with a sort of mystery of intentions, where we're never quite sure who's playing who, but any seasoned gialloista will have a good sense of where it's all heading - if the very final twist takes you by surprise then you should be ashamed of yourself. You shouldn't be ashamed if you enjoy this film, though - it was pretty much created to be easily-consumable fluff. And an excuse for Silvio Amadio to film tits. Which makes it a resounding success on both counts.
PS Keep an eye out for whom I believe is the other Amuck! alumna, Barbara Bouchet, in a wide shot at a party. I may be confusing her with a girl who is late driven home by Nancy's FiL, but then again I may not be.
*If you have the Arrow Blu ray there's even more flesh for you to consume, in the form of a special feature of extended nudie scenes.