Viewers of gialli would be hard-pressed to find a film that ticks more of the genre’s boxes than 1973’s Torso, from writers Ernesto Gastaldi and Sergio Martino, with direction by Martino. It has copious amounts of gratuitous nudity, a killer who stalks women, a final reveal of the killer’s motivations that makes little sense, and enough blood and guts that the film bleeds over into the slasher horror genre.
In Perugia, Italy, a killer sets his sights on lovely female students of a local university. The women are stereotypical free spirits of the age; into drugs, sex, and nude sunbathing. They stand out amongst the stodgier parts of contemporary Italian society, not least because their miniskirts reach nowhere close to the knees. Martino seems to take glee in showing the clash between the prudes and the debauched. Continue reading “Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Torso, aka I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale”