Torso / Sergio Martino / Shudder / Fresh Notes

 

Included with my old review, I had a lot more to say after another rewatch. Shudder had Torso on the Slashics channel, so it would be on at different times. Eventually I was like, "I need to get to this pronto." It is quite lurid, sleazy, and gets really down and dirty. A Martino Giallo isn't shy about that kind of content.

A fresh revisit of the film was inevitable when I noticed Torso (1973) on the Shudder Slashics channel around Friday/Saturday last week. All of Martino's Giallo are heavy on nudity, but I had forgotten the amount in Torso. This go-around, I really was taken to the early scenes on the college campus in (I assume) Rome with the young student body attending an art class, discussing a particular painter who was an atheist dedicated to saints and martyrs, with plenty of beautiful women studiously investigated by Martino's camera. The lurid "eyes" of Martino's camera (there are plenty of thirsty men also studying the women) never take a vacation when canvasing head to toe particular actresses in the film. The savagery of the film towards these women can be very visceral as expected in a Giallo. Like when Conchita Airoldi's Carol, with her shirt unbuttoned by a guy hoping to get lucky at a nearby ruins attended by a gallery of zonked-out kids, some making out, a few playing music, some staring into space, and others sort of hanging around and chilling. Carol previously is seen by the striking Tina Aumont (as Daniella) in the car with an older man ending his relationship with her. Carol seems to retreat to the ruins with two guys in her art class, both looking to score. Before one of them could unbutton her pants (another kissing her breasts), Carol dismissively excuses herself, leaving them unsatisfied. Heading into a nearby woods, featuring a number of muddy puddles, the killer emerges in his ski mask, with the red-and-black scarf, is able to eventually catch up to her. Wrapping her neck with the scarf, the killer buries her face into a muddy puddle, making her death even more humiliating, before cutting her body with his knife. In a grisly bit of business at the end, Suzy Kendall's Jane must look on as the killer uses a saw on her friends after slicing their throats while sleeping off pain pills meant to help her rest after a bad fall down the stairs hurting her ankle.

Martino surprised me with how the killer strangles Bisacco's Stefano, cutting away to an awakening Jane, before we see all three of her friends dead. It is rather abrupt and startling (and rather ballsy and daring) how the killer seems to just go for them all with one fail swoop. It really must have been a manic attack with the knife, hurriedly chaotic, in a rush, before the three young women could flee the premises. 

The Giallo is just not for everyone. It is an acquired taste a certain audience won't like at all. Women are often not only naked or engaged in sex, but the camera has a taste for their bodies (as do the men, often commenting about how they sexually feel) in detail. The "anatomic" camera lusts after them. And this film once again has a traumatic experience (one boy sees his brother fall from the top of a hill, crashing into a rock, feeling a girl there with them wanting her doll was responsible, this causing a mental break that causes him to want to punish naughty women) behind the mania. This doesn't have the fashion industry but does feature affluent Bourgeoisie   with nice villas and homes. The swerve with Stefano is obvious if watch a lot of these, but he's obsessive and "hands on" enough to warrant suspicion. 

Kendall is just a very pretty woman with Martino's camera right up in her face, and its understandable since the lens benefits from her beauty, no matter if crying or frightened (or especially horrified) by her experience with the killer hacking up her friends. 

I really like this film much more than I did in 2006. The film, while hard to watch and visceral as the genre is reputed to be, has quite a backdrop with Italian locations, the campus and it's surroundings, then the villa high up the mountain from a smaller village below. While the underlying psychosis triggering the killer might not be altogether sound, the talented crew really get the most out of their locations and I find myself almost always immersed in these 70s Italian horror films.

Notably, Carol's face when being felt up and kissed on by the two guys at the ruins on the couch really stood out to me. There is nothing sexy or arousing about it. She is numb and looks as if she'd rather be anywhere else. And to know not long after she'd be so vilely and cruelly attacked has this tragic chill to it.

I think I'll move this rating to **** / *****