Notable Cast: Suzy Kendall, Tina Aumont, Luc Merenda, John Richardson, Roberto Bisacco, Ernesto Colli, Angela Covello, Carla Brait, Conchita Airoldi, Patrizia Adiutori, Luciano Bartoli, Gianni Greco, Luciano De Ambosis
Torso was one of those films that when I told my cinephile
friends I hadn’t seen they would gasp in shock. ‘You really need to see it,’
they would say. ‘I know, I know. I’ll get to it eventually,’ I would reply.
Yet, it took my sorry keister a decent amount of years to get around to it and
if it wasn’t for the fact that it popped up to watch for free on my Amazon
Prime account I would have probably waited longer. Even then, my initial plan was to
put it on in the background as I folded laundry, so I didn’t plan to invest
myself fully to the film. I’ll be damned though. Sergio Martino directs the
hell out of it. Soon, I had forgotten my laundry and found the credits
rolling and an hour and a half had disappeared. Torso was a much better film
than the sleazy slasher/giallo hybrid concept made it sound and even though the
film is flawed in many regards, Martino brings such a solid game to his
direction that rarely did I get caught up in the problematic nuances while it
was playing. It’s a film that was built to appeal to the more generic horror
fans at its foundations of exploitation, but it’s shot and executed like it’s
the best damn piece of cinematic art released that year and it’s that intent
that carries the film through the tropes and clichés to being such a pleasant
surprise.