| Torso | |
| Director: | Sergio Martino |
| Producer: | Carlo Ponti[1] |
| Screenplay: |
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| Story: | Sergio Martino[2] |
| Starring: |
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| Music: | Guido & Maurizio De Angelis |
| Cinematography: | Giancarlo Ferrando |
| Editing: | Eugenio Alabiso |
| Studio: | Compagnia Cinematografica Champion |
| Distributor: | Interfilm |
| Country: | Italy |
Torso (Italian: I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale|lit=The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence, also released as Carnal Violence) is a 1973 Italian giallo film directed by Sergio Martino, produced by Carlo Ponti, and starring Suzy Kendall, Tina Aumont, Luc Merenda, and John Richardson. Martino’s fifth gialli, the film centers on a string of brutal murders of young female students at an international college in Perugia. Several critics describe it as one of the earliest examples of a slasher film.[3]
In Perugia, the murder of several university students leads to a manhunt for a masked killer with a psychosexual disorder who uses red-and-black foulards to strangle his female victims before mutilating their bodies. When a wealthy student named Dani vaguely recalls having seen someone wearing such a scarf, she becomes the target of the mystery killer and, at her philandering uncle's suggestion, invites three of her girlfriends (two of them, lipstick lesbians) to stay with her at her family's remote country villa in Tagliacozzo.However, the isolated cliffside villa offers no protection from the killer, who has meanwhile run over the blackmailing street vendor he buys his scarves from. A local peeping tom and then Dani's impotent stalker (who wears a similar red-and-black scarf to the killer's) go up to the villa, only to be ruthlessly killed too. One of the girls, Jane, sprains her ankle and a local doctor gives her a sedative; as such, she is asleep when the killer forces his way into the villa and kills her three girlfriends. Jane wakes up the next day only to silently witness the unidentified killer dismember her friends' bodies. Having disposed of the corpses, the killer locks up the villa and departs, inadvertently leaving the injured Jane trapped inside. Later on, having realized that Jane is alive in the villa, the killer silently returns and reveals himself to her.
The killer is Franz, an art history lecturer whom Jane had befriended. He is a psychopathic misogynist as a result of a childhood trauma when he witnessed his brother fall to his death as he was trying to fetch a little girl's doll at a cliff's edge. Franz tells Jane that his first two victims (whom he calls "filthy bitches" and "dolls made out of flesh and blood") had seduced him into a threesome and then blackmailed him. He had continued his killing spree in order to cover his tracks. As Franz attempts to murder Jane to ensure he is never caught, the doctor shows up and, after a struggle, Franz falls to his death.
The film was released with its original title in Italy on January 4, 1973.[4] Joseph Brenner Associates later distributed a recut and rescored dubbed version as Torso in the US and the film became a success there on the drive-in and grindhouse circuits, often as a double feature with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).[5]
The film was released on DVD in the US by Anchor Bay Entertainment in 2000 and in the UK by Shameless in 2007. It has since had Blu-ray releases by Blue Underground in 2011, Shameless in 2017 and Arrow Video in 2018.[6]
George Anderson of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette deemed the film "another display of softcore sex and seamy violence that might better have been kept abroad."[7] Joe Baltake of the Philadelphia Daily News wrote: "Blood flows freely and limbs detach easily, in Sergio Martino's Torso, a disagreeable Italian import withnot surprisinglylittle to recommend it."[8] The Los Angeles Timess Linda Gross wrote that the film was a "lazy suspense movie" with a "disjointed and loose" screenplay.[9]
The extended cat-and-mouse villa scenes between the killer and the final girl in the film's last 30 minutes have led to Torso being retrospectively recognised as a "proto-slasher film".[10] Quentin Tarantino showed his print of the film at the 1999 QT-Fest[11] and fellow filmmaker Eli Roth has cited the film among his favourite gialli and an influence on Grindhouse and (both 2007).[12]
PopMatters gave it a 7 out of 10 rating,[13] while Slant Magazine said it "pales next to director Sergio Martino's more inventive sleaze-thrillers (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, All the Colors of the Dark)".[14]
In their 2017 article, Complex named Torso the 6th best slasher film of all time.[15]