Greta von Holstein is the main antagonist of the 1973 Italian horror film Death Smiles on a Murderer. Greta is a beautiful woman in Germany who was resurrected by her hideous brother Franz after she died, for the sole purpose of exploiting and brutalizing her. When she got revenge and escaped, she blended into aristocracy, with deadly consequences.
She's portrayed by Swedish actress Ewa Awlin, who also portrayed Gabri in Death Laid an Egg.
Biography[]
Greta was the isolated sister of Franz von Holstein, a man with a hunchback and a student of occult professor Kempte. Franz raped Greta to brainwash her into solitude with him, but she meets Dr. Herbert von Ravensbrück and starts a relationship with him instead. Franz is increasingly jealous, but he doesn't intervene. Dr. von Ravensbrück conceives a baby with Greta, but when she gives birth to the chld after they're stillborn, Greta dies. The doctor takes his leave and returns to his son Walter. Franz is distraught and deciphers and uses an Incan formula Kempte taught him to resurrect Greta. Hoping to possess her again, Franz hangs a medallion of the year she was resurrected around her neck, and Greta pretends to respond in affirmation by throwing white flowers Franz gave her back in his face. With new sinister powers, she then turns into a black cat and kills Franz by mangling his face with her claws, down to gouging his eyes out. Her white dress changes color to red, and she sets off into the world to find Dr. von Ravensbrück, hoping to get revenge on him for her death.
Greta makes a coachman ride her at high speed in a carriage to the von Ravensbrück manor. She impales the coachman when they reach their destination, causing the carriage to crash. Walter is sympathetic to her and dissuades Inspector Dannick from questioning her. Dr. Sturges examines her and finds she has no heartbeat, but is horrified by the ritualistic symbols on her medallion. Maid Gertrud recognizes Greta, so Greta sends an apparition of Franz to haunt her in her bedroom, cutting her neck with a scalpel in a hallucination. Greta is shown to have a scar on her neck, and Dr. Sturges realizes she's been zombified when she reacts with no pain from a needle in her eye. The coffin of the coachman reveals unnaturally swift rot, which reveals Greta resurrected him and them killed him when she had no use for him, but Dr. Sturges withholds the truth about Greta.
Greta sends Franz's ghost to chase Gertrud when she packs her bags to leave. Cornering her, Greta rejects Gertrud's pleas she's told no one who she is and doesn't intend to, firing a shotgun into Gertrud's face. Greta, ironically, joins the von Ravensbrück family for a pheasant hunt after the family's ball. Dr. Sturges deciphers the symbols on Greta's medallion to figure out the formula. Testing it on a cadaver in his lab, which becomes a success, Greta suddenly strangles Dr. Sturges, kills the reanimated person, and bludgeons Sturges' lab assistant who doesn't hear or speak. Walter and his wife Eva both compete for Greta's affections. Greta is convinced when Eva pushes her head under bath water as a joke, so Greta seduces her with a tease while drying herself off. They kiss and start an affair.
When Greta later turns to Walter for sexual solace, Eva peeps in on them and grows jealous. Bringing Greta to the cellar, Eva screams hatred at Greta and entombs her inside a hole in the wall. Inspector Dannick doesn't know what happened to Greta when he investigates, and Eva lies to Walter to keep him from suspecting. Greta escapes by turning into a black cat again, watching Eva from afar for the right moment for revenge. At a masquerade ball, Greta dons a red mask and participates when Eva has to guess all the guests. Greta pulls off her mask to scare Eva before fleeing. When Eva breaks open the tomb with an axe, Greta (as a cat) jumps out at Eva and runs up the stairs. She transforms back into herself, and when Eva approaches, she transforms into her decayed self before chasing a terrified Eva. Eva plummets out of the attic to her death, Walter and the guests finding her bloodied on the ground below.
Dr. von Ravensbrück returns for Eva's funeral, seeing Greta and flashing back to her death when giving birth. The doctor stays behind to pay respects at Greta's grave, staring at her in a photograph. Greta appears and remind Dr. von Ravensbrück of her death, then asks for him to kiss her. When she decays again, Dr. von Ravensbrück flees to a crypt where Eva was laid, but the door shuts him in. Eva's corpse reanimates and approaches the doctor, killing him while he screams. While Walter sleeps, Greta creeps in through her cat form, then changes back to herself to slowly wake Walter. She kisses Walter before showing her cadaver state again and killing Walter. Targeting butler Simeon, she finds him in the granary, promising money or love as a reward for his silence about her identity. She slashes Simeon's face with a cutthroat razor until he dies, leaving the police to find him dead, as well as Walter's remains nailed to a wall with the medallion on his person.
Dannick finally visits Kempte, who tells him the Incans wanted the formula to resurrect their king, and Franz was passionate about solving and briefly lost that passion after Greta's death. Given Franz's final address by Kempte, Dannick heads to the place and finds Franz's three-years-rotted corpse. Dannick visits Greta's grave, at a loss about figuring out who she is. Dannick returns home to greet his wife, who was always facing away from the viewers throughout the film. she turns and reveals herself as an elderly Greta, Dannick with a shocked expression from making the connection. It's presumed Greta kills him as well, with her ultimate fate being left unknown despite her having escaped capture.
Trivia[]
- The events of the film take from numerous works of historic publicized literature. The carriage accident is uncanny to Camilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, as well as several Poe short stories, including The Masque of the Red Death, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Black Cat.