Rating: C-
Dir: Lamberto Bava
Star: Tomas Arana, Joanna Pacula, Francois Montagut, Erika Blanc
a.k.a. Body Puzzle
[18] My contribution to National Cinema Day was to sit at home and watch this 1992 giallo, now coming out through ‘A Taste of Fear’. And that’s an appropriate label, since a taste is ultimately all it provides. It’s a typically intricate, albeit slightly wobbly, storyline, with a serial killer reclaiming donor organs from their recipients because… because he’s a serial killer, y’know? Motivation is not Bava’s strong point — as anyone who’s seen Demons 2 knows, things need no justification apart from that they look good. There is the inevitably mind-boggling twist ending, but it’s helped by a decent performance from Thomas Arana as the cop leading the hunt, and bonus points for having a psychopath who resembles a young Rutger Hauer. If this film is a body part, it’s closest to a pair of tonsils: nothing you’d really miss, but not completely useless.