James Blish's definition of the Idiot Plot is familiar to Bad Movie fans: it's the sort of plot that would be dealt with in seconds by normal people, which only works in the movies if everybody in the cast is an idiot. Body Puzzle is a classic example of the device.
None of the "professional people" in the movie behave as though they knew anything about their jobs. The policemen do things that would have them booted off the force. There's a female psychiatrist who makes snap judgments on patients she's only seen for a few minutes, and shares these judgments with the police as though there was no such thing as doctor-patient confidentiality. There's a medical examiner who makes pronouncements on the times of death that don't fit even remotely with the timeline of the movie (a lot of this is Bava's and the editor's fault, though). We have a lifeguard (it seems to me he's performing his duties a very short time after a kidney replacement, but I don't know about such things) who gets killed in broad daylight in a swimming pool -- but nobody notices! And there are no traces of blood in the water, even though the victim has been dismembered.
Then there's the final twist. It's a twist so jaw-droppingly stupid that I would never dream of giving it away.
I will give one bit away, though, to give a further example of how awful the movie is: the hero comes across a freezer chest. Suspense builds as he opens the chest, to find... frozen pasta! Ahh, but underneath the pasta he finds the frozen corpse we've been expecting. Now, at this point, we're expecting the killer to sneak up behind him and surprise him. Everything points to this happening: the camera angles, the music, the rules of bad movie making... so what happens? The killer jumps OUT OF THE FREEZER CHEST! He was hiding UNDER THE BODY, UNDER THE PASTA!! First, how did he get there without assistance, covering himself up with frozen stuff and then closing the lid; second, why didn't he freeze to death, trapped under all that ice; and third, how did he know the hero would stop by and open the freezer?
The mind boggles.
None of the "professional people" in the movie behave as though they knew anything about their jobs. The policemen do things that would have them booted off the force. There's a female psychiatrist who makes snap judgments on patients she's only seen for a few minutes, and shares these judgments with the police as though there was no such thing as doctor-patient confidentiality. There's a medical examiner who makes pronouncements on the times of death that don't fit even remotely with the timeline of the movie (a lot of this is Bava's and the editor's fault, though). We have a lifeguard (it seems to me he's performing his duties a very short time after a kidney replacement, but I don't know about such things) who gets killed in broad daylight in a swimming pool -- but nobody notices! And there are no traces of blood in the water, even though the victim has been dismembered.
Then there's the final twist. It's a twist so jaw-droppingly stupid that I would never dream of giving it away.
I will give one bit away, though, to give a further example of how awful the movie is: the hero comes across a freezer chest. Suspense builds as he opens the chest, to find... frozen pasta! Ahh, but underneath the pasta he finds the frozen corpse we've been expecting. Now, at this point, we're expecting the killer to sneak up behind him and surprise him. Everything points to this happening: the camera angles, the music, the rules of bad movie making... so what happens? The killer jumps OUT OF THE FREEZER CHEST! He was hiding UNDER THE BODY, UNDER THE PASTA!! First, how did he get there without assistance, covering himself up with frozen stuff and then closing the lid; second, why didn't he freeze to death, trapped under all that ice; and third, how did he know the hero would stop by and open the freezer?
The mind boggles.