In short: Body Puzzle (1992)

Rich widow Tracy (Joanna Pacula) is having a bit of a hard time. Someone is sneaking around leaving her rather disturbing presents, things like a  human ear, a hand, or a “finger” (“it’s not a finger”), like a kitten gone bad. These body parts belong to the victims of a series of murders shaking the town. Apart from his habit concerning Tracy, the killer (François Montagut) likes to put a bit of Mussorgsky on his walkman while he’s working, so expect to hear the same bit of “Night on Bare Mountain” again and again and again.

Cop Michele (Tomas Arana) is on the case, yet despite the killer’s fixation on Tracy, he has a lot of trouble catching his man, or finding the bizarre secret behind the murders.

As a rule of thumb (there are of course obvious exceptions to this rule), the more time a giallo spends following a cop on a police procedural (but with everyone involved being pretty darn dumb) style investigation, the less enjoyable it becomes. Lamberto Bava’s Body Puzzle certainly is a pretty great example for this rule. But it goes even further to demonstrate it: while the scenes of the killer slashing his victims are generally entertaining enough (and sometimes even a little bloody), and those of Tracy being stalked by him are even downright suspenseful, whenever our hero Michele starts investigating – usually slowly and badly – the film turns into a void of utter boredom that suffers from the blandness of Michele, the general – there is one terrible gay stereotype which isn’t enjoyable but at least memorable – lack of distinction of the characters he interviews, and what looks like an inability by Bava to film these investigations in any interesting, stylish or even just economical manner.

Unfortunately, at least half of the film is taken up by Michele’s non-adventures, always slowing things down in the worst possible moment. This state of affairs is made even less interesting by the perfunctory romance between Tracy and our man Michele in scenes that feel so pointless and disinterested, I can’t help but ask myself if the producers strong-armed Bava into including them.


Of course, as this was made in the early 90s, long after the genre had faded away, it was certainly not easy for Bava to get a giallo made at all; going by the results, I’m just not sure it was worth his effort.

Three Films Make A Post: MONSTER MACHINE VS. HELPLESS BEAUTY!

Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956): Despite its climax in a pretty awesome battle for and semi-destruction of Washington (effects by the glorious Ray Harryhausen, of course), and its status as a demi-classic I've never been that fond of Fred F. "The Giant Claw will forever overshadow all those decent movies I made" Sears's Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. I think it's actually some of the film's virtues that drag its entertainment value down for me. The comparative lack of nonsense science (apart from a bit of "that's not how time works, guys!"), the avoidance of the usual horrifying romance by letting hero Hugh Marlowe and heroine Joan Taylor already be married, and other elements like them do look good on paper but the film doesn't offer much that's interesting or entertaining in their stead before it's time to destroy Washington DC. Sure, there's the usual "the aliens are communists" subtext, but that's neither interesting nor commendable - and worked better in much crazier films.

The Haunted Sea (1997): The only remarkable things about this decidedly boring horror movie are a) the curious fact it needed two directors b) its idea that cursed Aztec gold can turn a man into a were-snakeosaurus c) the clear enthusiasm with which its early scenes look for pretences for Krista Allen to take her shirt off, and d) the appearances of James Brolin and Joanna Pacula who are slumming even below their usual slumming standards. The rest is an especially uninteresting case of corridor horror that can't even be saved from the tedium and stupidity of its plot by those scenes of Krista Allen taking her shirt off.

The Haunter of the Dark (2011): One of the most pleasant aspects of keeping track of Lovecraft fandom is that one will again and again stumble upon decidedly awe-inspiring pieces of fan-driven art like this computer animated short movie adaptation of Lovecraft's final story (freely available to watch here). There's so much obvious love and passion oozing out of every minute of the film it seems somewhat churlish to criticize it for anything; helpfully, there really isn't much about the short to criticize. The animation gets a bit rough from time to time, and not every voice actor is doing quite as good a job as Richard Grove does as Robert Blake, but that's the sort of minor complaint a film like this transcends by doing so much right.

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