The Embalmer

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.

Low budget thriller concerns the disappearance of young women in Venice, prompting a dapper investigative reporter (and ladies' man) to suspect that it's the work of an aquatic monster who lunges from the city's canals snatching his victims and taking them to a watery grave. The audience however knows this isn't the case, the culprit a mysterious madman whose underwater access to a secret mausoleum conceals a morbid treasure trove of beautiful mummies to indulge his sick, private fantasies.

Predictable, though not unwatchable, it's a beatnik-inspired Venetian affair with lots of acoustic guitar and jazzy ensembles, underground clubs, pointless dancing and a window into the care-free 60's pop-culture scene that inhabited Italy at the time. The dubbing is typically facile and so it's difficult to gauge whether the acting is any good, though it doesn't necessarily diminish the movie, assuming you don't have high expectations of this bloodless, though still somewhat ghoulish Italian horror movie.

Like the sour and salty odour of Parmesan, this film reminds you that not every Italian horror film is as serious as Il Demonio. Instead, the Embalmer embraces you like a melted Tellagio and a warm Cacio (with Pepe, of course). We have a killer who alternates between dressing up as a skull faced monk and dressing up as a scuba diving serial killer! This film takes place in Venice (hence: the killer using scuba gear to snare his victims), and although the kills are spread across the film like Bel Paese over a nice Panini, there are patches of the film where my mind was wandering, which caused a jerk reaction like that of the olfactory sensation of sniffing a particularly ripe Cambazola.

For the most part though the film is like cutting into a Calzone and seeing the contents ooze out. Loads of Mozzarella cheese, basically. From the Italian-Elvis clone bursting from a sarcophagus and singing an Italian-Elvis Clone song to the killer having a severe case of expositionitus, this film is like eating a sandwich which consists of a sharp Provolone with Parma Ham - High notes mixed with dull, Earthy plodding plot.

The milky Fontina element comes from the bad dubbing, the gratuitous touring of Venice (including a glass blowing shop!) and the bad acting. The pecorino like goodness comes from the surprisingly high body count and the fact that the killer is really the guy you though immediately was the killer.

It's kind of sweet (like Marscopone and Ricotta) that the film does try to give you some red herrings, but the film is not the best in terms of what Italian 1965 horror has to offer, kind of like Goronzola, you wouldn't pick it first if someone served you a plate of bad analogies.

This might come as a surprise, but I used to sell Italian cheese. Now I just watch it.

I was really expecting something pretty good from The Embalmer...but unfortunately all I got was a dreary horror flick with a couple of good ideas and a complete lack of suspense. The film was apparently inspired by Edgar Wallace, who was the inspiration for a lot of the German "Krimi" style of film-making. Not being too familiar with Wallace's work, I can't say how true that is - but The Embalmer is certainly not the Giallo I was expecting. The film is set in Venice, and makes best use of the scenery...though it does get a bit boring as the film sets the scene without putting anything relevant to the story with it! The film was possibly an inspiration on the brilliant Dutch "Giallo" Amsterdamned as it focuses on a killer who lives under the Venetian canals. The killer is selecting young women of Venice and dragging them to the depths of the canal, where he has his way with them - by filling them up with embalming fluid to keep them beautiful for all time (etc etc). A journalist picks up the story, and soon ends up falling in love with the killer's next victim.

The main problem with this film is that it's entirely lacklustre! The cinematography, acting, direction, plot line etc all stink of a group of people that couldn't really be bothered to come up with something half decent. The film is not very suspenseful at all, and a lot of is made up of mind numbing diatribe, which means that when we actually get to watch the killer with his victims, most viewers will already be bored out of their brains. The killer himself looks cool - completed clad in black with a skull mask, but that's the only good thing about him. He makes long winded speeches to his dead victims that were obviously intended to be scary, but actually come as being rather silly. It does boil down to a fairly decent finale, which despite not justifying the rest of the film; at least ensures that the movie doesn't just leave a bad taste in the viewer's mouths by the end of the film. Overall, this is a good film to track down because it's extremely rare and seen in some circles as a precursor to the Giallo genre - but trust me, it's not worth the time and effort!

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.