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Torso
Torso
	Italian film poster
Directed by	Sergio Martino
Screenplay by	Ernesto Gastaldi; Sergio Martino;
Story by	Sergio Martino
Produced by	Carlo Ponti
Starring	Suzy Kendall; Tina Aumont; Luc Merenda; John Richardson; Roberto Bisacco; Ernesto Colli; Angela Covello; Carla Brait; Conchita Airoldi; Luciano Bartoli; Carlo Alighiero;
Cinematography	Giancarlo Ferrando
Edited by	Eugenio Alabiso
Music by	Guido & Maurizio De Angelis
Production; company	Compagnia Cinematografica Champion
Distributed by	Interfilm
Release date	4 January 1973 (Italy);
Running time	93 minutes
Country	Italy
Language	Italian

Torso (Italian: 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. It has been called the earliest example of a slasher film.^[4]

Plot

At Università per Stranieri di Perugia, after art professor Franz's lecture on Perugino's painting of St Sebastian, student Jane approaches Franz to discuss the painting. Student Stefano joins the conversation to get closer to Jane's friend Dani, for whom he has unrequited love. Franz parts from the group, and Dani rejects Stefano's advances and rejoins Jane and their friends, including Carol and couple Katia and Ursula. That night, a peeping tom strangles Carol's friend Flo with a red-and-black scarf after slashing Flo's lover's throat.

The next day, Carol sees young doctor Roberto buying a red-and-black scarf from a lecherous street vendor. Carol meets Dani and is distraught to learn of the murders. Jane and Franz agree to attend a concert together. Jane sees Dani's wealthy uncle trying to break off a secret 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 with two men: Peter and George, who are infuriated when she rejects their sexual advances and leaves. She wanders into a swamp where she is murdered by Flo's killer, who had stalked her to the party.

Police inform the students about the scarves used by the killer and implore them to report any information. The killer threatens to murder Dani if she reports who she saw wearing a red-and-black scarf. After escaping another encounter with Stefano, who grabs and kisses Dani without her consent, she remembers seeing Stefano in a red-and-black scarf the day after Flo's murder. Dani's uncle suggests she spend time away at her family's villa in Tagliacozzo. Dani invites Jane, Katia, and Ursula to accompany her there. The killer runs over the street vendor for blackmailing him.

Dani encounters Roberto on the train to Tagliacozzo. After learning that Stefano left his apartment without explanation, Jane drives to the villa and leaves her car to be washed overnight at a service station. The killer spies on Katia and Ursula having sex at the villa. Upon discovering that a local peeping tom is spying on them, the killer murders him.

Stefano spies on the man delivering food to the girls. When Jane sprains her ankle, doctor Roberto gives her a sedative to help her sleep. When Dani answers the door, Stefano's corpse falls to the floor in front of the killer, who murders Dani, Katia, and Ursula.

Jane wakes to the massacre and hides while the killer dismembers and removes her friends' bodies. She attempts to attract attention from townsfolk by signalling with a mirror from the window. The killer locks up the villa and departs, trapping Jane.

That night, the killer returns and is revealed to be Franz, who became a psychopathic misogynist after the childhood trauma of witnessing his brother fall to his death while fetching a girl's doll. He tells Jane that Flo and Carol seduced him into a threesome and blackmailed him, and that he continued his killing spree to eliminate all witnesses. He tries to strangle Jane, but is attacked by Roberto, who saw the flashes from the villa window and learnt that Jane's car was still at the service station. Roberto pursues Franz to a barn and then to the cliffside where Franz falls to his death.

Cast

Suzy Kendall as Jane
Tina Aumont as Dani (Daniela)
Luc Merenda as Roberto
John Richardson as Franz
Roberto Bisacco as Stefano Vanzi
Ernesto Colli as Gianni Tomasso, the street vendor
Angela Covello [it] as Katia
Carla Brait [it] as Ursula
Conchita Airoldi as Carol Peterson
Patrizia Adiutori as Flo (Florence) Heineken
Luciano Bartoli as Peter
Gianni Greco as George
Luciano De Ambrosis as Inspector Martino
Carlo Alighiero as Uncle Nino

Release

The film was released with its original title in Italy on January 4, 1973.^[3] 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]

Critical response

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 with—not surprisingly—little to recommend it."^[8] The Los Angeles Times's 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 Hostel: Part II (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]