Instant Favorite.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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.

More of a tourist trip through Venice than an effective psycho-thriller regarding a madman, in scuba diver gear, who selects pretty victims on the streets nearby canals, securing them from behind, pulling them into the water, dragging the drowned bodies into his submerged monastery, embalming the poor girls, preserving their beauty using a serum he has perfected. Andrea(Luigi Martocci)is a newspaper reporter who pursues the case, falling in love with a tourist, Maureen(Maureen Brown)who has brought along a class of schoolgirls, as he shows them around the city. Andrea believes the girls are being hunted down and kidnapped by a homicidal maniac, but his superiors aren't interested in his opinions, since there are few facts substantiating them. Soon, however, Andrea's feelings are confirmed as he uncovers the monastery, but will he be able to stop the killer who has targeted Maureen next(..she, through chance, discovers a secret passage to the monastery putting herself at risk)? What really sets THE EMBALMER back is the unfocused story-line with the director seeming little concerned for the pace, rather interested in Venice itself with great lengths displaying Andrea giving his new friends a tour of the city. The methods of the killer become repetitious and drab, him removing his monk robe, putting on his goggles, descending into the water, coming ashore, awaiting for his target victim behind a corner, cloaked in darkness, before seizing her, diving into the canals back to his lair. We see the killer, in a monk robe, working on his experimental serum, as the dead female's body lies on a slab, injecting it as he speaks with enthusiasm and admiration on his newest acquisition, as his trophy case of preserved corpses grows in number. The director sets up who the next victim will be in a snapshot of them during an ordinary day. There's potential for a good thriller here lost within a rather plodding approach, and a lack of skill at moving the story along. Certain characters are dwelled on for great lengths, but aren't that interesting..and the hotel where Maureen's girls stay is definitely of great importance to the director since he spends a lot of time there. Venice is an ideal setting for a giallo thriller(..see THE BLOOD-STAINED SHADOW for instance), and the underwater monastery is particularly atmospheric(..the showcase of the entire film is at the end where we discover the robed skeletons of monks who died within the church;and the killer has a really nifty skull mask he wears as he chases Maureen), but there's a way to shoot a thriller effectively without dulling the audience into a coma over mundane filler which grinds the pace to a halt. As an early form of the Italian giallo, I recommend it to buffs, but wouldn't call it a classic. I think if more focus had been given to the detective elements of the story than countless time on the alluring beauty of Venice and the entertainment that awaits you there, then this could've been far more memorable than it turns out.

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.

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!