The Embalmer

Following a series of abductions, a local police officer in Venice investigating the disappearances is continually stumped about the nature of the crimes, and as the abductions continue a break in the case allows him to solve the identity of the strange killer and races to stop him.

This one wasn't all that awful a giallo effort. One of the finer points of this one is the fact that there's quite a strong number of abduction sequences place throughout here. Starting off rather quickly with the opening showing off several quick abductions, this comes off really nicely with the multiple women getting targeted and kidnapped while out in the city or near the water to get the mystery going in a big start, and once the action shifts to the maniac's headquarters below the city the underground catacombs have the appropriately dark and wet atmosphere throughout here. Since there's a nice bit of work done to enhance the atmosphere of the location with the dead women who are stuck inside the glass cases forever embalmed through the gruesome ideas contained within here. The later investigation scenes in the basement of the hotel or the backstage scenes of the club manage to feature some solid suspense moments, with the abduction off the boat amongst the crowded tourists is quite an impressive sequence. The other big point here is the big action in the finale where the tense and utterly chilling stalking in the underground sewers, as well as the confrontations in the crypt where it takes on some great work with the killers' disguise and the chases throughout the tunnels, give this a fun, action- packed finale. These here give this one enough to like to hold it up over it's few minor flaws. The biggest issue with the film is the absolutely dreadful pacing here, which really ruins the film more than anything. Although the inclusion of the girls' tourist trip to the city adds bodies to the killers' list, the fact that this stops the film cold to show off the usual tourist locales of Venice are far too obviously designed to pad out the running time, brief as it is. There's no real need for this one to go to that kind of duration dealing with the type of fodder as this one does, and once it moves forward with them running around to all the tourist locations and events the film has run through too much time to get back to the action in the remaining part of the film. That really does limit the action to a few scenes here alongside the other big flaw as the film's reliance on abductions over killing does hurt as well so this one does feel tamer than what came before. Although it does look cheap and somewhat low-budget in the worst ways, these here really do bring this one down.

Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

A guy with a snorkle steals the beautiful women of Venice and takes them in to his parlour to preserve their beauty. A clean-cut reporter investigates.

This b/w spaghetti-schlocker first showed in a drive-in double bill in 1966 with Michael Reeve's first film, THE SHE BEAST with Barbara Steele. It was then picked up again in 1973 in a triple-bill alongside T.V. Mikels' THE CORPSE GRINDERS and THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS where a nurse checked everyone's blood pressures before they watched these three absoulutely terrorfying movies!

Pretty interesting screening history for such an ordinary movie. Well, I suppose it's just standard drive-in fare. Enjoyable in it's own dull sort of way and worth the effort for all us completists.

Embalmer, The (1965)

** (out of 4)

A psychotic killer is on the loose in Venice but the police don't have a clue to who's killing all the beautiful women. This Italian film is also known as The Monster of Venice and is mildly interesting since it tries to mix the Italian giallo with the German krimi but the end results aren't as good as I had hoped. I'd still recommend this to those wanted to see where Dario Argento was influenced. The biggest problem is that the film is simply too slow to be any good and the actual mystery really isn't all that interesting. A few interesting ideas pop up including the killer who uses scuba gear so that he can make his escape and kill his victims at the same time. This is part of a Vintage triple feature that includes The Screaming Skull and I Eat Your Skin, which can be picked up at Best Buy for $7. The print here is in very bad shape but it's letterboxed, which I believe is a first for this film.

A man in a diving suit keeps going into the same underwater passage, picking girls off the same area on the wharf, for the purpose of preserving them. A reporter gets wind of this and tries to figure out what is going on. This takes place in Venice. It is full of stock footage and ridiculously long chases. At one point the hero has to slow down so he doesn't catch the guy he's chasing. There is never an explanation why the bad guy is doing this, nor do we care what happens to anyone. It's just another one of those movies made in the sixties to be put in double features at drive in movies where no one watches anyway. The sound is bad; the acting is awful, dubbed from Italian. There are barely any laughs.

This film predates Amsterdammned as a film with a scuba suit wearing psycho killer. Problem with scuba suits is that you can't move around well on land in them. That is no problem for this killer since many of his victims seem to literally walk right into his arms.

The series of killings, part of this film is the weak section, but the lair of the killer (which I won't spoil by telling what it is) final reel is worth the wait. Everything improves including the music during the final reel and when it's all over you'll feel better about the whole film than you will during parts in the middle. Most of the best images in the film are from that final 10 minutes but there are definitely some you'll remember.

Comedy intentional and unintentional also helps keep the film going. At least the American print I saw has almost no on screen violence, other than the macabre chase at the end. Dubbing is pretty poor but that goes with the territory.

A restoration of the original Italian version would be a great improvement I'm sure. Fans of films set in Venice will want to give this a look. Too bad the budget couldn't allow for any underwater photography that would have helped the early sections a great deal. All I'll say about the killer's identity is that in some Giallos the revelation is one of those, who was that guy again? In some Giallos that's the way it is.