Il mostro di Venezia (The Monster of Venice) is at once a giallo and an Italian Gothic; it’s a movie that, when I started watching, I immediately knew was meant for me. 

A skull-masked serial killer is swimming the canals of Venice, where he takes women, drowns them and then embalms their bodies so that they stay alive for him forever. This would be the perfect time for some college girls to come to town, but hey, who am I to say what you do when a mad scientist is on the loose, taking over a monastery deep inside the bowels of Venice? Who are we to look down upon him as he hangs out with a bunch of decaying, dead monks?

Reporter Andrea (Luigi Martocci) falls for one of those girls and, when one of her friends is taken, decides to become the giallo hero, trying to do what the police fail to do. 

I don’t get all the hate for this movie, but then again, it hits all my buttons. Krimi killer. Wax museum vibes. Giallo plot. Gothic setting. Jazz. Girls in peril. Defund the giallo police. Defend The Embalmer. 

Director Dino Tavella only made one other movie, A Dirty War. 

You can watch this on Tubi.