Body Puzzle( Misteria) 1992

This is another made for TV quickie effort by italian director Lamberto Bava, which  feels and looks rather cheap in its execution. The story is pretty intriguing, unfortunately the lackluster treatment meted out to the story and an over-the-top ending mar what could have been a taut thriller. Here we have an  maniac who for no reasons apparent murders strangers in grisly fashion and removes an organ from their bodies( a heart, a kidney, and then eyeballs).Hence the police team is confronted with the puzzle of 'body parts' of victims and their connection to the killer, in order that they can discern his motives.

The police officer investigating the murders tracks down the woman who has 'received' an organ wrapped in a packet from the first victim and placed in her refrigerator, and has her husband's writing on top of the package. The woman Tracy is young and recently widowed and has more than a few troubles ahead of her. The officer Michele finds out that the killer had not broken into her house, but rather had a set of keys for them. The letter by her husband Abe was also supposedly left on the package so that Tracy would recognise it. Her husband's grave has been dug out and the body has disappeared. Michele delves a little deeper into Abe's history and discovers two important things- one, that Abe used to rent a country house after his marriage to Tracy where he would get both men and women for sexual trysts; second, Tracy tells him that he had a friend Timothy Bell who was so obsessed with Abe, and so devastated by his marriage to Tracy that he left menacing letters to Tracy and Abe and broke into their apartment several times. Michele suspects that Tim and Abe could have been lovers, and that Tim could be indeed committing these murders. The motive of Tim is also soon made clear- all the victims have had organ transplants from Abe before his death, and hence Tim is trying to resurrect Abe by stealing his corpse and collecting the organs that belonged to him. He also finds that Timothy was undergoing treatment at a psychiatric hospital and that he had taken over the identity of Abe, which indeed was consolation for him rather than facing the reality of Abe's demise.

Michele also finds that Timothy, after his release from the hospital, had been working as a helper in the general hospital, and from here he stole the files relating to Abe's organ transplant, which made it possible for him to trace the victims. A surprising 'twist' occurs almost three-fourths through the movie. It turns out that the police is not so efficient after all, Michele has got his fundamentals wrong. The man he assumed to be Timothy was in fact Abe, so now the facts get a reversal- the police in fact are looking for Abe, who has for some reasons survived, and it is Tim who is dead. Abe has assumed Tim's identity and is collecting his transplanted organs from their recipients by killing them. He has also stolen Tim's body so that he can bring him back from death.

The police race against time to save two more organ recipients of Timothy, a pregnant woman who has had a kidney transfer, and another woman, a primary school teacher, who had her vision restored by cornea transplant from Timothy. Michele manages to rescue the pregnant lady, but  the teacher is unfortunately killed by Abe. This scene is particularly disconcerting, the teacher is stabbed several times in a class full of blind children, and one of the kids even has blood spurted on his face.Abe then removes the eyeballs from the victim and leaves.

Meanwhile, Tracy has found signs that a man is residing in her summer house and Michele agrees to stay above for the night in order that he can catch the intruder. When Tracy is alone in her house for a few minutes, Abe appears with a knife and attempts to kill her too. When she tries to make him understand his mistakes and tells him she still loves him, a supposedly repentant Abe rushes out and speeds off in his motor-bike. Tracy follows him, but Abe is hit by a car coming in the opposite direction of the road, and dies when he falls through the windscreen of the car.

A recent DVD version was released by Raro Video in 2011 running to 102 minutes. Overall, this is a forgettable movie by Bava and deserves a miss.