Crew
Director – Lamberto Bava, Screenplay – Bruce Martin, Photography – Luigi Kuveiller, Music – Carlo Maria Cordio, Makeup Effects – Franco Casagni, Production Design – David Bassan. Production Company – P.A.C. (Produzioni Atlas Consorziate).
Cast
Joanna Pacula (Tracy Grant), Tomas Arana (Inspector Michael Livet), Francois Montagut (Abe Grant), Gianni Garko (Police Chief), Erika Blanc (Dr Corti), Matteo Gazzolo (Gigli), Giovanni Lombardo Radice (Morangi), Susanna Javicoli (Mrs Consorti), Ursula von Baechler (Katia Lelli), Sebastiano Lo Monaco (Mortician)
Plot
Widowed editor Tracy Grant is shocked to find a severed ear has left in her fridge. Police determine that this comes from a murder victim elsewhere in the city. What is even more disconcerting is that the writing left at the scene is that of Tracy’s late husband Abe. Other murders are conducted and body parts left taunting Tracy. Police inspector Michael Livet investigates, trying to find the secrets behind the mysterious death of Abe.
Giallo is a distinctive Italian film genre that emerged in the 1960s, nominally based on mystery and thriller plots but spun in a way that pushes well over into sado-sexual horror. Stylistically, giallo is marked by its distinctively lurid colour schemes; elaborately stylized murder set-pieces; mysterious killers whose identity is hidden until the end revelation; and wildly contrived plots that operate on a surreal logic. The genre was put in place, although not created, by Mario Bava with Blood and Black Lace (1964), while its most famous purveyor would become Dario Argento.
Body Puzzle comes from Lamberto Bava, who is the son of Mario Bava. Lamberto had worked as an assistant director on his father’s film since the 1960s before being offered the chance to direct with the perversely interesting necrophilia film Macabre (1980). What caused Lambeto’s career to take off was his fifth film Demons (1985), a Dario Argento-produced work where the possessed dead take over a movie theatre. (See below for Lamberto Bava’s other films).
As can be observed about most of Lamberto’ output, his father may have formulated the style of the giallo film but talent obviously did not run in the family and Lamberto’s ventures into the genre have been desultory. His output is not entirely awful – Macabre and Demons are well worthwhile – but most of his other films are a pale shadow of his father’s oeuvre.
Body Puzzle has a captivating set-up to it – a killer is creating a puzzle out of body parts and leaving these in and around heroine Joanna Pacula’s home. The kicker is that the handwriting left behind is that of her dead husband. Alas, the great failing of the film is that it is not put together in any interesting way. Something like a modern American-made Serial Killer Thriller, which was just starting around the time this came out, would have had a field day with this set-up but the giallo genre was never good at constructing plots. The body puzzle aspect is never relevant to the film, for instance. The revelation of what is happening is still the same half-hearted afterthought that it usually is in giallo films.
There are odd moments of style that shine through – the attack on the second victim in a toilet cubicle where her arm is grabbed under the partition before the stocking masked killer jumps over the top and slices her arm off at the wrist, which then falls into the toilet, all as shot from beneath the water in the bowl. In actuality though, Body Puzzle has little to recommend it. There is none of the visual extravagance of either Mario Bava or Dario Argento. There is not even the sadistic or exploitation element of Lamberto’s earlier Delirium (1987). The plot feels like missed opportunities.
Lamberto Bava’s other genre films are:– Macabre/Frozen Terror (1980), A Blade in the Dark (1983), Devouring Waves/Devil Fish (1984), Demons (1985), Delirium (1987), Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns (1987), Graveyard Disturbance (1987), Demons 3: The Ogre (1988), Dinner with a Vampire (1988), The Mask of the Demon (1989), The Prince of Terror (1988), The Torturer (2005) and Ghost Son (2007). Nowadays, Lamberto Bava mostly works in tv.
Trailer here