In last month’s edition of Rogue Cinema I reviewed what was in my opinion, one of the worst gialli with In the Folds of the Flesh.  This month I am going to review what is in my opinion one of the high points of gialli cinema with the Eurotrash film Torso.

Sergio Martino is a prolific veteran of Italian cinema, having made mondo movies, softcore sex films, sex comedies, cannibal films, westerns, apocalyptic films, and even giant monster movies.   But he is best known for a series of gialli in the early-to-mid-seventies such as The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, All the Colors of the Dark, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I have the Key, and, of course, Torso.  All of these films are as lurid as the titles.

This time out, the plot concerns a series of sex murders (indeed, the original title of this film is The Corpses Bear Traces of Carnal Violence) in the college town of Peruggia, Italy, where an American girl, Jane (played by the lovely British actress Suzy Kendall) and her European friends attend classes.  As the murders mount, so does the pressure on both the police and the student body to solve the mystery of the killer’s identity.  Tina Aumont plays Daniela who is haunted by the one clue the police have:  a red and black scarf the killer left behind.  Daniela knows she has seen the scarf before, but can’t put her finger on the owner’s identity.  Increasingly frustrated at her failed memory, Daniela’s uncle suggests Daniela and her friends go to his country villa to relax for the weekend and take their minds off of the crimes.  But the killer follows them, killing all three girls but unknowingly leaving Jane asleep upstairs.  Jane awakens the next morning to witness the killer dismembering her friends (hence, “Torso”).  But each time the killer leaves the villa to bury a body, he locks the door, trapping Jane inside.  Will Jane survive?  Does Jane know the killer’s identity?  Will the killer get away with his horrific crimes?  All these questions are answered by the end of the film.

Director Martino has created a classic giallo with all the elements one has come to expect from 70’s Italian cinema:  lots of sleazy sex and tons of nudity, brutal, cartoon-like violence, plenty of red herrings, and a “shocking” ending.  In fact, the film opens with a group sex scene being photographed and there is a liberal sprinkling of lovemaking throughout the film, both heterosexual as well as lesbian.  And I think every single female in the picture (with the exception of our star, Suzy Kendall) gets naked, many several times, and they are all fabulously beautiful.

The violence is brutal and bloody, but these films were usually made on shoestring budgets, so the special effects are cheap; as a result, the entire effect is fairly cheesy.  For instance, one man has his head crushed repeatedly by a car.  We see the car approach the head, then there is a quick cut and we see an obviously fake head get squished against the wall, blood gushing out.  The car backs up and the head expands again--showing it is rubber—before getting crushed again.  Cut to a scene of the real man’s head (that has just been crushed beyond recognition, twice), but it is totally intact with the only apparent injury being some blood on his forehead and around his mouth!  There are several examples of such effects, but for those not used to a lot of blood, it could still be a bit much for you.

There are plenty of red herrings here, too.  Is it the weird guy who is obviously obsessed by Daniela, or could it be the two drugged-out motorcycle hippies that are angry about being blue-balled by one of the friends?  Is it the handsome but mysterious doctor who keeps popping up as if he’s following the girls across the Italian countryside, or is it Daniela’s uncle who seems to be a peeping Tom and a bit of a pervert?

Whoever the killer is, I must say that he is one of the scariest murderers ever on film.  The ski mask he wears is very intimidating and the entire presence is genuinely scary.  Martino effectively delivers several Hitchcockian scenes of tension and the result is a very creepy film throughout, especially once the girls arrive at the villa.  One scene in particular has Jane sneaking down the stairs as the killer exits the front door to do away with another body.  But just as she steps into the open, the front door cracks open and the killer’s hand appears.  He’s forgotten something and is coming back in, trapping Jane in the middle of a wide open room with no place to hide.  Another scene has the killer pursuing an inebriated young woman through a swamp.  Here Martino uses the trees and sunlight-and-shadow lighting to great effect.  Genuinely creepy stuff!

Of course, some of the characters do inexplicably stupid things.  For example, one character leaves his car when he catches someone in a ski mask peeping in at him and his girl making out.  Clearly, this is a bad move.  And once he disappears, the half-naked girl then decides to do the same thing!  What are you thinking?!  Obviously, she isn’t thinking at all….But aside from those minor contrivances, this is a giallo that is packed with sleaze and packed with tension.  The narrative is easy to follow (sometimes in these things you just have to completely suspend your belief in order to get through the film) and the red herrings are entirely plausible.

The reveal of the killer’s identity is incredibly hokey.  Supposedly as a small child he watched his best friend take a fall off a cliff because a young girl scared him.  The friend was trying to retrieve a doll hanging precariously from the cliff after the girl promised to “show her panties.”  But the girl screams, making the boy fall and killing him.  This so traumatized the killer that he thinks that all girls are whores and dolls so he kills them and pokes their eyes out.  Again, this is typical of these types of films—if killers were made on account of this type of flimsy reasoning, it’s a wonder that anyone is alive and well in Italy.  But aside from this one major complaint, the film as a whole is very well-made and highly enjoyable.

Severely censored when first released in America, all the sex and violence has been reinserted so the film can be presented totally uncut, although perhaps today the film would receive an R rating even uncut if submitted to the MPAA.  Some scenes were never dubbed, so there are a few places where the actors speak Italian and subtitles appear.  Highly recommended, quality Italian giallo.