The Embalmer

This is not a great movie, but it's reasonably good, I think (and certainly not overlong). I saw it on Alpha's full-frame DVD, with the title The Embalmer, and dubbed in English. I understand Sinister Cinema's copy is widescreen, but I think it's also dubbed.

The cinematography is never particularly exceptional, but serviceable. The wet-suit clad killer emerging from canals, revisited in Amsterdamned (1988), is a decent idea. The jazzy musical score was enjoyable, if occasionally repetitive. The Venice locations are well used.

I didn't really understand who the killer was, and it was surprising how brutal the movie was with regard to who it was willing to kill off, while the movie lacked scenes of explicit 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.

This film could be considered either a early giallo (like "Blood and Black Lace") or an Italian version of a German krimi (like "Dead Eyes of London"). A maniac is stalking the canals of Venice. Dressed as a frogman he is snatching young girls and taking them back to his lair, an underground monastery, where he ,uh, well embalms them as a way of preserving their beauty for all eternity.

This movie obviously makes very little sense--there has got to be an easier way to procure victims than donning a scuba outfit and pulling them out of gondolas, and for some reason the character dresses up in a robe and skeleton mask like the Phantom of the Opera even when he is alone in his hideout. Still as completely improbable as this is, it makes for some great scenes with pretty girls being dragged into canals at night by the sinister frogman (an idea later borrowed for the more violent Dutch thriller "Amsterdamned"), and the exciting finale where the masked killer hides among the skeletal corpses of monks in order to surprise the female protagonist who has wandered into his lair.

The movie is unusually depraved (always a plus) for a film made in 1965 with the whole embalming idea, and it breaks any number of cinematic rules. The cops are completely useless, chalking up the disappearances to accidental drownings, so it's up to an intrepid journalist and two hilarious winos who keep seeing "a big fish with a headlight" swimming under the bridge where they drink to crack the case. The end where the journalist hero rushes to save his girlfriend from the killer has some very unusual and shocking surprises. Of course, this movie doesn't offer the nudity or violence many Italian exploitation connoisseurs might expect (and it's in black and white), but it's still a worthwhile little 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.