| 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 |
| Runtime: | 93 minutes |
| Country: | Italy |
Torso (it|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 giallo, 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]
After a university lecture on Perugino's painting of St Sebastian given by art professor Franz in Perugia, a student named Jane approaches Franz to further discuss the painting and artist. Another student named Stefano insinuates himself into the conversation to get closer to Jane's nearby friend Dani, for whom he has an unrequited love. Franz and Jane part ways, and Dani rejects Stefano's offer to take her home and rejoins her group of friends, which also includes Katia and Ursula, who are dating, and Carol. That night, a peeping tom strangles Carol's friend Flo with a red-and-black scarf after slashing the throat of Flo's lover.
The next day, Carol encounters a handsome young doctor, Roberto, purchasing a red-and-black scarf from a lecherous street vendor. Carol then meets up with Dani and is distraught upon learning about the murders in the morning newspaper. Jane and Franz later resume their conversation about art and agree to attend a concert together. Afterward, Jane witnesses Dani's wealthy uncle trying to break off a secret love affair with Carol. That night, Stefano pays for a prostitute, whom he assaults for implying that he is homosexual or impotent. Carol attends a party and smokes cannabis with Peter and George, but she infuriates them when she rejects their sexual advances and leaves. She wanders into a nearby swamp, where she is murdered by Flo's killer, who had stalked her to the party.
Police brief the university students on the murders, showing them the scarf found at the swamp, and implore them to report any useful information. Dani receives a phone call from the killer, who threatens to murder her if she reports who she saw wearing a red-and-black scarf. After escaping another encounter with a desperate Stefano, who grabs and kisses Dani without her consent, she recalls seeing him in a red-and-black scarf the day after Flo's murder. Dani's uncle suggests that she spend a few nights at her family's remote country villa in Tagliacozzo. Dani invites Jane, Katia, and Ursula to accompany her. That night, the killer runs over the street vendor for blackmailing him.
The next day, as Dani, Katia, and Ursula ride the train to Tagliacozzo, Dani encounters Roberto, the young doctor that Carol saw purchasing a scarf. After snooping around Stefano's apartment and learning from his grandmother that he left with no explanation, Jane drives to the villa alone and leaves her car to be washed at a service station and retrieved the next day. At the villa, the killer spies on Katia and Ursula having sex. Upon discovering that a local peeping tom is simultaneously spying on the women, the killer pursues and murders him.
The next day, Stefano spies on the man delivering food to the girls at the villa. Jane sprains her ankle, and the girls summon a doctor, who happens to be Roberto. He gives Jane a sedative to help her sleep and advises her to see a specialist the next day if her ankle condition worsens. That night, the villa's doorbell rings, and Dani cautiously answers, only to witness Stefano's dead body fall through the doorway with the killer right behind him. The killer murders Dani, Katia, and Ursula.Jane wakes up the next day, discovers the massacre, and hides while the killer dismembers and removes her friends' bodies from the scene. In a hurry to return to her bedroom, Jane forgets her shoes on the stairs, and later accidentally knocks over a chair and leaves the bedroom window unlocked after using a signal mirror to attract attention from townsfolk. The killer locks up the villa, including the bedroom in which Jane has hidden, and departs, leaving Jane trapped. Later, the killer returns and reveals himself to her.
The killer is Franz, who is a psychopathic misogynist as a result of a childhood trauma when he witnessed his brother fall to his death while trying to fetch a girl's doll at a cliff's edge. Franz tells Jane that Flo and Carol had seduced him into a threesome and then blackmailed him, and that he had continued his killing spree to remove all witnesses. Franz tries to strangle Jane to ensure that he is never caught, but Roberto reappears, having deduced that there was trouble at the villa after witnessing flashes from a villa window and learning that Jane's car was left at the service station. Roberto attacks Franz, who fends him off and flees the house with Roberto in pursuit. The two men fight in a nearby barn and continue their struggle onto the cliffside until 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]