The Embalmer (1965) by Dino Tavella

Director: Dino Tavella

Year: 1965

Country: Italy

Alternate Titles: Il mostro di Venezia; The Monster of Venice

Genre: Giallo

Plot:

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.

Review:

This one was a good giallo effort. One of the finer points of this one is the fact that there's quite a strong number of abduction sequences placed 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 its 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 from showing off the usual tourist locales of Venice is 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 looks cheap and somewhat low-budget in the worst ways, these really bring this one down here.

Overview: ***/5

A far better-than-expected effort, this one manages to be filled with enjoyable enough qualities to raise it up even though some of the flaws on display do come off quite heavy in terms of being problematic to get through. Those who appreciate this breed of proto-gialli, are curious about it, or are general Eurohorror fanatics while most others out there should heed caution with this one.