I absolutely love the opening minutes of The Embalmer.

There are no fancy introductions with a credit sequence scrolling in over wide shots of posh European locations, or a gritty urban landscape seen from the inside of a car. Instead we are immediately thrust into the crypt of a perverted mad scientist, shrouded in a dark hooded robe, perusing his budding collection of petrified female victims. The intro credits roll, the next victim is identified, and our ambitious manic has now donned a full wetsuit and scuba gear as he sets out to plumb the depths of the Venice canals to claim his next trophy!

As a bevy of young girls arrive in the city, the maniac continues to kill and collect them, and things get a bit silly. The characters are one-dimensional, cliche, and forgettable. Potential suspects and red herrings are thrown at us from all angles. The English dubbing is atrocious. And there’s even an Elvis lookalike who plays guitar like he’s getting paid by the strum! But if you’re in the right mood (i.e. drunk!), The Embalmer is an entertaining romp with an action packed third act that includes a killer reveal in a grim reaper mask.

Clearly the Embalmer owes its style to the British horror and German krimi films from the previous decade, but perhaps the success of Bava’s first two Gialli inspired one-hit-wonder director Dino Tavella to add a few flourishes to the film that would go on to become staples of the Gialli that followed it. Specifically, the emphasis on Andrea, who is way more effective at finding the killer than the police, reinforces the amateur detective trope that Bava introduced in The Girl Who Knew Too Much two years earlier.

Unfortunately the film doesn’t score very high in the signatures section, and the one big omission is that we never really know the killer’s motivation. It seems likely that he has suffered some psychological trauma in the past, but this is never revealed so I left those points off.

The last thing to mention is that this is the first Giallo to take place in Venice, a landscape that would be further explored in Who Saw Her Die and The Bloodstained Shadow. Venice is certainly a unique and beautiful canvas for painting a Giallo. I’m not sure how I feel about a potential cleaned up blu-ray release of this film, but clearly there are plenty of outdoor scenes in The Embalmer that would benefit. On the other hand, the gritty and grainy version available now adds an extra bit of trashy charm that might get lost in the remastering. Time will tell…