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Torso
[Blu-ray 4K]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Arrow Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (5th September 2024). |
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The Film
 The sunny idyll of the summer school session in art history at the University of Perugia is shattered with the murders of students Flo (Giovannona Long-Thigh's Patrizia Adiutori) and Jean (Escape from Galaxy 3's Fausto Di Bella), the girl having been strangled and mutilated post-mortem. The subsequent murder of Carol (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh's Cristina Airoldi) in a marshland has Inspector Martino (Italian dubbing performer Luciano De Ambrosis) suspecting they are the work of the same assailant since both girls were strangled with the same foulard (scarf), the design of which classmate Daniella (The Nude Princess's Tina Aumont) recalls seeing someone wearing but cannot recall whom. She suspects childhood friend Stefano (Camille 2000's Roberto Bisacco) who has obsessed with her, and threatening phone calls have her uncle (Cat O'Nine Tails' Carlo Alighiero) suggesting that she should get away to the family's country villa. She invites lesbians Ursula (The Case of the Bloody Iris' Carla Brait) and Katia (Baba Yaga's Angela Covello) as well as American friend Jane (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage's Suzy Kendall) who has developed a tentative flirtation with her professor Franz (Frankenstein '80's John Richardson). Jane arrives at the villa late and a fall down the steps takes her out of commission as well as the notice of the killer as he moves in on the villa for the kill. Perhaps more so a giallo forerunner for the American slasher genre than even Mario Bava's Bay of Blood – which slasher fans have come to know was overtly paid visual homage in Friday the 13th, Part 2 – Sergio Martino's Torso is a much a bridge between older women-in-peril thrillers like screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi's own acknowledged influence Midnight Lace, contemporary proto-final girl thrillers like See No Evil and Wait Until Dark – although Jane's disability is only temporary – and the American model to come from Black Christmas onward while drawing giallo-esque associations between female victims and dolls, violence and classical art ("He was a painter, not a butcher"), and a killer's trauma that is not related to the primal scene but nevertheless has a Freudian effect on their sexuality while upping the ages of the victims so that the presentation of free love and sex is less sensationalist than other "schoolgirls in peril" gialli. Although there is some rather unconvincing slashing, eye-gouging, head-crushing, throat-slashing, and limb-sawing, Torso - its Italian title being "The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence" - is still less of a body count film than a thriller with the suspense ramped up during the final half-hour as Jane discovers that she is the only one still alive in the villa and endeavors to keep the killer ignorant of her presence. The killer's identity is pretty obvious even if he is given scarcely more screen time than any of the other male characters in the film, among them crime film star Luc Merenda (Puzzle) putting in a couple days work as an obvious red herring, Luciano Bartoli (Bizarre) as one of Daniella's classmates, and comedy actor Vincenzo Crocitti (To Be Twenty) as an ogling delivery man. The crucial clue relating to the pattern of a scarf that probably would not have as much importance placed on it by either the killer or a potential victim in the real world is one of those fiddly touches of Gastaldi who had a working relationship with Martino's producer brother Luciano Martino from the early sixties when Sergio Martino was working on others' works as production manager. Although not photographed in scope like his other giallo collaborations with Martino, the cinematography of Giancarlo Ferrando (All the Colors of the Dark) is artful and inventive, framing some of the gory highlights just out of view as well as the killer's facial features, while Guido and Maurizio de Angelis (A Blade in the Dark) provide a wonderfully diverse score - originally released on a CD with Bruno Nicolai's score for Umberto Lenzi's Eyeball and later alone on an expanded CD from Digitmovies - including a sultry sax main theme, jangling suspense cues, and a folksy piece for the pot party. The English export version lost an introductory art history sequence following the opening credits which visually introduced all of the principal characters along with a sequence of the inspector questioning a tramp in the aftermath of the first murders, Roberto giving a ride to a patient, and the last lines of dialogue. 
Video
Although the export title of the film was "Carnal Violence", the film was released theatrically stateside by Joseph Brenner Associates as Torso ("It saturates the screen with terror!") in an R-rated version that removed some gore from a version already missing a few dialogue scenes never dubbed into English - presumably the same version was what was released in the UK under that title theatrically and on cassette with additional BBFC cuts going by the 84 minute PAL running time - which was later released on cassette by Prism Entertainment. The film made its DVD debut in 2000 from Anchor Bay Entertainment in an anamorphic transfer that restored the gore and Italian-only dialogue scenes and was uncut as far as the audio was concerned; however, the master was missing the image track for the art history lecture that follows the credits so the dialogue was played over the credits with English subtitles. A 2003 German DVD from X-Rated Kult Video – the inaugural release of their "Italo-Giallo-Series #1" – featured a non-anamorphic 1.66:1 transfer but was uncut while the Italian DVD from Alan Young Pictures featured an anamorphic transfer and commentary by Martino but its composite English track was a mess. Blue Underground issued a direct port of the Anchor Bay edition in 2010 before they put out a Blu-ray in 2011 featuring Italian and reconstructed English export versions as separate encodes (and supplementing the 2010 DVD of the Anchor Bay hybrid version with an "Uncensored English Version"). In the UK, Shameless first released Torso on DVD in 2007 in an uncut edition with English subtitles for the Italian-only scenes, presumably from the same PAL master as the Italian DVD and the tasteless tagline "Where whores meet saws!" Their subsequent Blu-ray edition appeared to utilize the same master as the Blue Underground edition, with the notable difference between the two being Shameless' recovery of the English insert version of the note written to Jane on her windshield which was in Italian on previous digital masters. Arrow's Region A 2018 Blu-ray was derived from a new 2K restoration of the original camera negative which was the source for four seamlessly-branched versions: the original Italian version (93:36), a hybrid English/Italian audio version with optional English subtitles for scenes when the cut reverts to Italian (93:02), the export version with the "Carnal Violence" title card (90:12), and the American Torso version (89:33).  Because the opening and closing title sequences for the U.S. "Torso" were derived partially from video and damaged film sources, Arrow has dropped the American cut from their 2160p24 HEVC Dolby Vision 1.66:1 widescreen 4K UltraHD disc – sourced from a new 4K scan of the original camera negatives – drops the U.S. version but recreates through seamless branching the the original Italian version (93:39), a hybrid English/Italian audio version with optional English subtitles for scenes when the cut reverts to Italian (93:00), the export version with the "Carnal Violence" title card (90:11). While the framing is pretty much identical, the grading is brighter and more vibrant during some of the night-for-night scenes while some of the day-for-night scenes are also more legible than before while still largely leaning toward the earlier Arrow grade with some exceptions like the marshland murder that looks more like Anchor Bay's SD grade than any of the more blue-tinted variations on the previous Blu-rays but still more twilit than before. The grade is more saturated with skin tones looking pinker without effecting the reds or whites (screen captures are from the Blu-ray edition for the purpose of illustrating the film review). The Italian version and both English versions also differ in featuring an insert of a note from Stefano to Dani and the aforementioned windshield note in their respective languages.
Audio
The Italian version features an Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono track with optional English subtitles while the hybrid version features the English track in DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono with sequences exclusive to the Italian version in Italian with optional English subtitles – although this hybrid version leaves out the last lines of offscreen dialogue before the end credits – while the export version features the English DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono track with optional SDH subtitles. The tracks sound similar to the versions on the Blu-ray so they probably have not been remastered or, at least, they have undergone the same sort of cleanup as before. 
Extras
For the most part, extras on the new 4K edition mirror the Blu-ray starting with an audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger who had at the time just written a book for Arrow on Martino. She notes that Martino has been acclaimed as a giallo director, although he only did a handful and each of them were very different, lacking the stylistic and thematic cohesion of the likes of Dario Argento, and that Martino's versatility in various popular genres tends to go unnoted even though it is comparable to that of Lenzi's abilities to work across genres. Ellinger note only provides a survey of Martino's gialli leading up to Torso – along with the few times he returned to the genre in the eighties onwards – but also his sex comedies which are often dismissed as fluff and less discussed than his action films. Of the film, she notes that it began as a treatment titled "Four Girls Alone" combining his admiration for the British thriller See No Evil with a then-recent true crime story - that he passed along to his producer brother Luciano who did not have time to read it, so he pitched it to Carlo Ponti associate Antonio Cervi (The Spider Labyrinth) who called him on Ponti's behalf after seeing All the Colors of the Dark. She also discusses the film's deployment of exploitable hippie free love in a post-Manson era where a streak of cynicism polluted "All the Colors of Terror" (34:01) is a new interview with Martino in which he covers his inspirations for the film and his meeting with Cervi and Ponti, the selection of Perugia as the setting to allow for an international cast, as well as how the Meredith Kercher murder has stirred up interest in the film again with Martino even being invited to the city to discuss the film (colleague Ruggero Deodato already exploited that true crime with Ballad in Blood). He also recalls his dislike of the distributor's Italian title since the bodies bore no traces of carnal violence. "The Discreet Charm of the Genre" (34:52) is an interview with actor Merenda that actually focuses on much of his other filmography, including his crime films, and Action, the low-budget film undertaken by Tinto Brass in the aftermath of Caligula being taken away from him, with only passing remarks about Torso no matter how many cutaways to clips from the Martino film the featurette offers. "Dial S for Suspense" (29:15) is an interview with screenwriter Gastaldi which also focuses far more on his other genre works, his thoughts on giallo plotting - distinguishing his plots from so-called gialli that are just action or suspense - and only briefly touching upon the device of the key in Torso (suggesting that Martino's treatment may indeed have had more to do with the plotting than Gastaldi).  "Women in Blood" (24:58) is an interview with Martino's daughter Federica who reflects on the film and her ideas for a sequel that she may be undertaking after her current project "Girl Hunt" about "femicide" - the featurette does draw some parallels between the characters she describes in her film and the central quartet of women in Torso with some cutaways to clips from the film - as well as discussing her film education in New York with classmate Eli Roth who did not know that her father was Sergio Martino until he came to Italy to promote Hostel (elsewhere Roth has noted that both Torso and Martino's Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key were an influence on Hostel: Part II). "Saturating the Screen" (25:03) is an interview with writer Mikel J. Koven, author of "La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film", who reveals that he was initially interested in doing a book on slasher films only for his research into the influence of the giallo on slashers becoming a book in itself. He frames his analysis of Torso as a discussion of how Gastaldi and Martino were sowing the seeds of the slasher with the film, pointing out the ways in which it does anticipate the latter genre and the ways in which it does not; for instance, the switch from Daniella as detective in the first half to Jane whose cat-and-mouse game with the killer in the second half does not entirely turn her into a "final girl" going by Carol J. Clover's definition. Also included is "Sergio Martino Live" (46:59), a Q&A at the Abatoir Film Festival, that encompasses everything from Martino's filmmaking family and their place in the history of Italian cinema to an overview of his films and their reception. In place of the branched U.S. version, Arrow's 4K edition includes the U.S. opening and closing credits – still from a mix of video and mottled film sources – as a self-contained extra (4:02). An Italian theatrical trailer (3:07 each) and a virtually-identical English export trailer (3:05) are also included but sadly not the U.S. trailer which highlighted producer Ponti and his more prestigious Dr. Zhivago. 
Packaging
Not provided for review were the reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Adam Rabalais or the illustrated collector's booklet featuring writing on the film by Adrian Smith and Howard Hughes included with the first pressing only. A limited edition cover version is exclusively available from Arrow Video.
Overall
Sergio Martino's Torso is a bridge between the classic woman-in-peril thrillers and the American slasher films to come.
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