After being left disappointing,and then being left completely gripped with Bava's first and second films,I decided to watch his last ever "Giallo" with above average expectations of it leaning more on the great A Blade In The Dark side,and less on the muddling Macabre.The plot: Heading to lay flowers by her husbands grave,Tracy is stopped in her tracks by police,who tell her that she cant lay the flowers by her husband,due to a grave robber having tampered with her husbands corpse during the night.Shortly after the grave robbery,murders start increasing rapidly around the city.Investigating the case,Police Detecive Michele notices that the serial killers "signature" seems to be getting hold of peoples recently transplanted organs.Suspecting that time is not on his side,Michele does everything he can,to stop the killer in time,before he gets the final piece of his own puzzle.. View on the film: For his directing,Lamberto scales back the Giallo/Slasher mash- up,which had made A Blade In the Dark so enjoyable,and instead goes for a very near-middle of the road style of directing,with the main stylish moments being the use of a freezer (a call back to his first film,Macabre),some good tracking shots which show the characters in a jig saw puzzle way,and the stand out swimming pool and class room murder scenes,which allows Bava to at last show what he could have done for the whole film.Due to the plot of the film being a great opportunity for a fast moving Giallo-horror,the screenwriters instead decide to make the film into a Giallo drama!,and although the script does contain a nice twist,the rest of the screenplay just feels like it is on auto- pilot,with there being nothing particularly bad with the film,but there also being nothing particularly great,to turn the film into a must see Giallo. Final view on the film:A pleasant enough Giallo dram,which is just about saved from being middle of the road,by the stylish "horror" moments from Bava.

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.