Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent, a Must See

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

A psychopath, who uses a musical score playing when he sets off to methodically kill his victims, torments a "widow" by leaving the removed body parts(from those he kills, with a large, sharp butcher knife) in her home or near her parents' house. Her past, what supposedly occurred to her husband and brother, is a piece to the puzzle as is a certain motorcycle accident caused by the quietly deranged killer(..we see this "accident" take place in the memory flashback of the killer at the very beginning of the film). Detective Michael(Tomas Arana, of Michelle Soavi's "The Church")is the one burdened with trying to find the killer and François Montagut is the killer he's pursuing. Joanna Pacula is Tracy, the female protagonist whose life is possibly endangered by the psycho leaving her the parts.Incredibly convoluted murder mystery(the identity of the killer, for example, yields a few twists)with a rather tasteless premise, stylishly executed by Lamberto Bava. I thought it was professionally made and not overly gory despite the killer's methods of destruction & removal of organs and limbs. There's a particular disturbing sequence where a schoolteacher, for the blind, is killed by the psycho while teaching class(..blood even sprays on a kid's face!). The victims chosen by the killer have something in common..there's a motive behind the killer's madness, so to speak. The theme of identity crisis plays at the heart of the film as to why the killer is committing his grisly deeds.I thought it was kind of cool seeing Joanna Pacula in a giallo type of mystery and felt she was fitting as a book editor paranoid and frightened by what is revolving around her..her husband's body was even removed from his grave to fuel her fear and horror(..although, even that sick event plays within this macabre plot as it plays out). Gianni Garko(..of Lucio Fulci's "Seven Notes in Black), looking quite suave in his tailored suits, has a nice little minor role as Michael's demanding Police Chief wanting the brooding detective to solve the complex case as bodies start to mount. Can not forget Giovanni Lombardo Radice as a flamboyantly gay aristocrat with ties to the killer and Tracy's husband. Erika Blanc portrays the coroner whose expertise come in handy as Michael pursues the killer, trying to piece this delicate puzzle together.

There once was an era, approximately from the late 60's up until the early 80's, during which nearly every Italian director delivered his own personal giallo-movie and they featured the craziest plots and the most far-fetched red herrings. What great times they were! After this, however, the magnificent sub genre almost got extinct and there were only TWO directors that regularly attempted to breathe new life into the formula of mad black-gloved killers and sleaze-laden twists. Dario Argento is the king even to this day and the other one is Lamberto Bava, who was responsible for some truly underrated giallo-efforts like "Delirium: Photos of Gioia" and "You'll Die at Midnight". "Body Puzzle" is yet another criminally neglected film that features all the giallo's extraordinary trademarks, although that sadly also includes the major holes in the plot. "Body Puzzle" serves the absolute most implausible story I've ever beheld, but there are plenty of sadistic & gore-soaked murders on display and the absurd screenplay hints at some controversial topics like hidden homosexuality and schizophrenia. Lamberto Bava doesn't really bother to keep the killer's identity secret, as we immediately witness how a handsome young man brutally stabs an anonymous candy store owner to death. Several more grisly murders are committed before police inspector Michael discovers that the victims have one thing in common. They all received donor organs from a pianist who died in a motorcycle accident and the mysterious killer tries to puzzle him back together. The inspect is much quicker when it comes to falling in love with the deceased pianist's wife, played by Joanna Pacula. "Body Puzzle" completely stops to make sense halfway, but you've got to love Bava's enthusiast direction and his desperate efforts to maintain the suspense. The music and camera-work are more than adequate while the cast features some familiar faces. Giovanni Lombardo Radice briefly appears as the exaggeratedly gay acquaintance of both the killer and the dead pianist. Italian horror fans will certainly recognize him as the poor sucker who always dies sensationally ("Cannibal Ferox", "City of the Living Dead", "Cannibal Apocalypse"…).

A cop is investigating a weird series of murders that don't add up. Parts are being removed like trophies but not the same part. He races against the clock to save the next possible victim and solve the body puzzle.'Body Puzzle' isn't a great movie by any stretch of the imagination but I didn't find it as bad as many reviewers suggest. It's not all that flashy as a Giallo or as well thought out but the acting isn't too horrid and the direction kept me zoned in. The plot is a bit far fetched but hey it's a slasher! What can you do? I give it a 3 of 5 for keeping me entertained and an interesting character or two.

James Blish's definition of the Idiot Plot is familiar to Bad Movie fans: it's the sort of plot that would be dealt with in seconds by normal people, which only works in the movies if everybody in the cast is an idiot. Body Puzzle is a classic example of the device.None of the "professional people" in the movie behave as though they knew anything about their jobs. The policemen do things that would have them booted off the force. There's a female psychiatrist who makes snap judgments on patients she's only seen for a few minutes, and shares these judgments with the police as though there was no such thing as doctor-patient confidentiality. There's a medical examiner who makes pronouncements on the times of death that don't fit even remotely with the timeline of the movie (a lot of this is Bava's and the editor's fault, though). We have a lifeguard (it seems to me he's performing his duties a very short time after a kidney replacement, but I don't know about such things) who gets killed in broad daylight in a swimming pool -- but nobody notices! And there are no traces of blood in the water, even though the victim has been dismembered.Then there's the final twist. It's a twist so jaw-droppingly stupid that I would never dream of giving it away.I will give one bit away, though, to give a further example of how awful the movie is: the hero comes across a freezer chest. Suspense builds as he opens the chest, to find... frozen pasta! Ahh, but underneath the pasta he finds the frozen corpse we've been expecting. Now, at this point, we're expecting the killer to sneak up behind him and surprise him. Everything points to this happening: the camera angles, the music, the rules of bad movie making... so what happens? The killer jumps OUT OF THE FREEZER CHEST! He was hiding UNDER THE BODY, UNDER THE PASTA!! First, how did he get there without assistance, covering himself up with frozen stuff and then closing the lid; second, why didn't he freeze to death, trapped under all that ice; and third, how did he know the hero would stop by and open the freezer?The mind boggles.