Arrow Video
Blu-ray Release: September 17, 2024
Video: 1.66:1/2160p (HDR/Dolby Vision)/Color
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 Mono English, Italian, English/Italian hybrid mix
Subtitles: English, English SDH
Run Time: 93:36 (Italian Cut)/93:00 (Hybrid Cut)/90:12 (Carnal Violence Export Cut)
Director: Sergio Martino
Note: I'm recycling ideas from my original Blu-ray review, but have made significant revisions to the main review and video section.
A sex maniac is prowling the streets of Perugia, targeting a picturesque university town’s female students. Alarmed at the plummeting life expectancy of the student body, Jane (Suzy Kendall) and her three friends elope to a secluded country villa – only to discover that, far from having left the terror behind, they’ve brought it with them! (From Arrow’s official synopsis)
Sergio Martino’s considerable contributions to giallo cinema were once overlooked in favor of Dario Argento’s enduringly popular films and the work of other talented ‘jack of all trade’ directors, like Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, and Umberto Lenzi. But times change and, in terms of sheer numbers, Martino’s canon output is second only to Argento. Beginning with The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (Italian: Lo Strano Vizio Della Signora Wardh; aka: Blade of the Killer, 1971), Martino made a total of seven distinguished and stylish genre entries: The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (Italian: La Coda dello Scorpione, 1971), All the Colors of the Dark (Italian: Tutti i Colori del Duio, 1972), Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (Italian: Il Tuo Vizio è Una Stanza Chiusa e Solo Io ne ho la Chiave, 1972), The Suspicious Death of a Minor (Italian: Morte Sospetta di una Minorenne; 1975), The Scorpion with Two Tails (Italian: Assassinio al Cimitero Etrusco, 1982), a made-for-TV throwback Mozart Is a Murderer (Italian: Mozart È un Assassino, 1999), and, right in the middle of it all, Torso (Italian: I Corpi Pesentano Tracce di Violenza Carnale, 1973).
Torso is uneven, compared to The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, and it lacks the hypnotizing intensity of All the Colors of the Dark, but it is Martino’s most tightly-knit thriller, as well as an accessible entry point for burgeoning giallo fans that are looking to move beyond Argento, Bava, and Fulci. Tasked by mega-producer Carlo Ponti to match the increasingly transgressive market, Martino and co-writer Ernesto Gastaldi delivered a particularly shocking version of the stalk & slash formula. The promise of salacious brutality was actually baked into the Italian title, which literally translates to The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence, and was a central part of the English language ad campaign, which declared “Enter...if you dare the mind of a psychosexual killer.” However, Torso’s gender politics aren’t as simple as the title and campaign may imply. Between and beneath scenes of sleepy-eyed hippies, softcore trysts, and bodily mutilations, is a film that is genuinely sympathetic towards its female cast and saturated by the theme that all men – not just knife-wielding maniacs – pose a danger to women.
The film’s heroines endure relentless lechery, suspicious glances, unwanted advances, and direct threats from all manner of strangers, fellow students, significant others, and paternal figures. Martino emphasizes the issue by casting so many men as red herrings that the killer’s identity is almost a trivial detail (the official Italian advertising actually gave it away). This may have been an accidental side effect of sloppy and/or indifferent writing, though it seems unlikely that Martino and especially Gastaldi, who was one of the originators of the giallo blueprint, weren’t making a meta statement about misogyny in gialli. It might not have been a moral statement – women are still carved to pieces in full color, after all – but, at the very least, the filmmakers were relating enough to their female characters to recognize the oppressiveness of the toxically masculine atmosphere*.
(The following paragraph includes spoilers)
Torso is also notable for its asymmetrical structure. After already breaking the formula by moving the story from a sprawling urban environment to a concentrated urban location, the second act ends with the abrupt, off-screen slaughter of all but one of the students, Jane (played by Suzy Kendall, an accomplished British actress and breakout star of Argento’s Bird with the Crystal Plumage [Italian: L'Uccello dalle piume di cristallo, 1970]), who then finds herself locked inside an unfamiliar villa with the killer as he goes about disposing of bodies, unaware of her presence. Where earlier scenes had the looser framework of past Martino gialli, this detached third act is methodically tuned, laser focused, almost dialogue-free, and builds to what might be the single greatest shock in the history of Italian thrillers**.
Bava’s A Bay of Blood (Italian: Ecologia del delitto; aka: Twitch of the Death Nerve, 1971) and Argento’s Deep Red (Italian: Profondo Rosso, 1975) are generally recognized as giallo’s biggest influences on North American slashers. John Carpenter proudly admitted that he was inspired by Italian thrillers when he made Halloween (1978), especially Argento’s work, and Sean Cunningham reluctantly admitted that he and other Friday the 13th directors lifted gore gags from Bay of Blood. But Torso also meets most slasher prerequisites – a masked madman driven to kill specifically sexually active/sinful victims, a specific murder weapon (a scarf), a sex-and-alcohol-fueled college coed holiday vacation, and a sole surviving ‘Final Girl’ – while still preserving all the important stock giallo tropes, including black gloves, misread clues, multiple red herrings, and an artistic non-Italian protagonist. Unlike Deep Red, it also predates two key North American proto-slashers in Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (also 1974).
* Queer behavior, specifically lesbianism, isn’t treated with much respect or understanding, though two of the characters being lesbian lovers is no more indicative of ‘sinful’ behavior than wearing tight clothing or having sex with men. At worst, the other characters are merely annoyed by their relentless affection for each other.
** The final act is sort of an homage to Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), though in a less literal sense than Eloy de la Iglesia’s The Glass Ceiling (Spanish: El techo de cristal, 1971). Like Jimmy Stewart, Jane is hobbled by a foot injury, though, instead of witnessing a murder, she witnesses the bloody aftermath. The other obvious inspiration would be Terrence Young’s Wait Until Dark (1967), but in this very disc’s extras Martino actually refers to Richard Fleischer’s 1971 Wait Until Dark rip-off See No Evil (aka: Blind Terror) instead.
Bibliography:
La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film by Mikel J. Koven (Scarecrow Press, 2006)
The Giallo Canvas: Art, Excess and Horror Cinema by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (McFarland, 2021)
Video
The first official North American video releases of Torso were VHS tapes from Prism (the box sported a custom tagline that read “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was kidstuff compared to this”) and Condor Video. It was re-released on VHS in widescreen by Anchor Bay in 2000 alongside its anamorphic DVD debut, later reissued by Blue Underground. Blue Underground’s 2011 Blu-ray then acted as both an HD debut and the North American debut of the alternate Italian cut of the film, which runs about 94 minutes, versus the roughly 90-minute import/English language cut.
Arrow’s original 2018 Blu-ray (re-released as part of their Giallo Essentials: Yellow collection in 2021) featured a new 2K restoration of the original negative, both the 94 and 90-minute cuts, and the correct 1.66:1 aspect ratio. The images on this page are taken from the 1080p, 2K restoration and are only included for illustrative purposes (to see a direct comparison between the BU and Arrow discs, see this older review).
For the film’s 2160p, UltraHD debut, Arrow has gone back to the original camera negative for a 4K restoration. My screener disc didn’t come with a booklet explaining the process behind the restoration, but I’m going to assume that they went to L’Immagine Ritrovata for the scan, then graded and cleaned it up themselves, including the extra HDR/Dolby Vision coating. They’ve dropped the US R-rated cut from this release, since the sources were not up to snuff, but we still have the original Italian cut, an English and Italian hybrid language cut (see Audio section below), and the slightly shorter Carnal Violence export cut.
The 4K remaster is similar to the 2K version, but there are some notable differences and improvements. The detail upgrade is pretty substantial, especially in busy wide-angle shots that sometimes appear mushy on both previous Blu-ray releases. Film grain and other textures appear accurate – finer than those other discs without any signs of DNR or overloaded machine noise. The biggest improvements are found in the new color grade and its extra HDR boost. Colors are more naturalistic and brighter, closer to the Blue Underground disc, minus the overloaded highlights and occasional yellowish tint. Daylight scenes and dim interiors are practically perfect (arguably a little over-cooled). The perpetually underlit night sequences are better balanced, as well, including the always problematic forest murder, which has looked like murky blue soup on all previous releases, especially Arrow’s Blu-ray. The trade off is that the scene now looks like it takes place around dawn, instead of the middle of the night. I’d rather not speculate as to which grading Martino and cinematographer Giancarlo Ferrando might prefer.
Audio
While the Torso cut is missing this time, the audio options are largely the same as they were on Arrow’s previous Blu-ray, including DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono Italian, English, and an Italian & English mixed track for the hybrid version, which switches automatically from English to Italian with subtitles for the brief scenes that were never dubbed for English language releases. Note that you must choose your preferred audio along with your preferred cut and cannot switch between dubs without going back to the menu and picking a different cut.
As per usual, I’ll remind everyone that Italian films from the era were recorded without sound, so all tracks are dubbed and the international cast was often speaking English or mixed languages on set. There is no ‘original language’ track. Once again, while effects and music is comparable between the tracks, the dialogue on the English dub has a condensed, occasionally muffled quality. This isn’t a constant issue and seems to be most prevalent at the ends of reels. Personally, I still prefer this track, due to Kendall, John Richardson, French actor Luc Merenda, and some of the Italian cast clearly speaking English on set (it doesn’t seem like any of them dubbed their own performance), but the rest of you might want to stick with the more consistent and clean Italian option.
Composers Guido & Maurizio De Angelis (aka: Oliver Onions) were largely known for pop songs and for their work on comedy westerns, poliziotteschi (also often comedies), and collaborations with Enzo G. Castellari and the Martino Brothers. Torso appears to have been their only giallo score, though Castallari’s The House by the Edge of the Lake (Italian: Sensitività, 1979) might also count. Their music here alternates (somewhat incessantly) between three major pieces –a jaunty love theme, a slow, plinking guitar dirge, and a drum-driven suspense theme – and sounds about equal on all three tracks.
Extras
Commentary by Kat Ellinger – The critic, editor-in-chief of Diabolique Magazine, and writer of All The Colours Of Sergio Martino (Arrow Books, 2018) supplies a personable, yet jam-packed expert commentary that contextualizes the film, covers Martino’s greater career and the careers of the rest of the cast & crew, and incorporates loads of behind-the-scenes factoids. Ellinger’s tracks and video essays are always informational, but the intimate knowledge of Martino’s life she gained from writing/researching the book means that this one is a little extra special and entertaining.
All the Colors of Terror (34:02, HD) – The first Arrow exclusive interview with Martino himself. The director discusses the story’s inspiration, his other giallo work, production, shooting on location in Perugia, working with the cast & crew, the film’s enduring legacy with younger fans, and more. He’s pretty critical of the final product, but is still proud of the last 30 minutes.
The Discreet Charm of the Genre (34:53, HD) – Actor Luc Merenda talks about his career, his desire for a change of pace from French television when he started taking Italian film jobs, his distaste for violence, and continuing to work with Martino after Torso.
Dial S for Suspense (29:16, HD) – During this mile-a-minute interview, co-screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi recalls his storied working relationship with Martino, as well as the various other nooks & crannies of his career as a writer.
Women in Blood (24:59, HD) – Martino's daughter Federica, who is a director and screenwriter herself, talks about her father’s career and Torso in particular from a critical standpoint, while also discussing how she’d remake the movie for modern audiences (I’m not clear on if this is a hypothetical remake or something she’s actively pursuing). She ends the interview with a story about attending film school alongside Eli Roth, who didn’t realize who her dad was until years later, when he introduced Torso at a film festival.
Saturating the Screen (25:04, HD) – Writer Mikel J. Koven, the author of La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film, connects Torso to North American slasher movies in a more academic and graceful way than I did in my review, especially when he breaks down and compares the quintessential tropes of gialli and slashers.
Sergio Martino Live (47:00, HD) – An extensive post-movie Q&A with Martino from the Abattoir Film Festival.
Alternate Torso opening credits (4:02, HD) – This was culled from trailers and VHS sources.
Italian and English trailers (sadly, the US Torso trailer is nowhere to be found)
The images on this page are taken from Arrow’s original, 2K restoration Blu-ray – NOT the 4K UHD – and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.
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