TORSO (1973)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

I've not yet got around to reviewing Sergio Martino's 1972 YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM, one of the few giallos I deem as being on the level with Dario Argento's BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE. Since I haven't found much mythicity in the few other Martino films I've reviewed here, I didn't know what to expect of TORSO, directed and co-written by Martino the ensuing year. But I'm pleased to see that the film fulfills the subgenre's interactions of female sexual display and the violence it summons from psychopaths, often but not always male.

The early scenes of the movie suggest both the perils and pleasures of looking, suggesting that Martino sought to imitate either Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Scopophilia, or the academic treatises written about Hitchcock. The films upon a sex-scene between two nude women and a barely seen third person, but one of them is seen digging his/her fingers into the eyes of a pale-skinned doll. "Injury to the eye motif," indeed. Following credits, the audience meets our viewpoint character, college student Jane (Suzy Kendall), as she attends an art class in Perugia, Italy. Can it be coincidence that handsome Professor Franz (John Richardson) just happens to be lecturing on a particular artist's depiction of St. Sebastian, a medieval saint who suffered one of the more spectacular deaths in history, that of being riddled with arrows? As if to subvert any validity to religious martyrdom, though, Franz and his students engage in a learned discussion as to whether or not the artist in question even gave a flying fig about Christianity.

So there are the pleasures of looking-- not only in terms of fine art, but also the lissome charms of the many attractive female students (apparently no homely girls go to this college). But the perils aren't far behind. Two students, male and female, drive out to a lonely spot to neck, but someone peeks into their car. The enraged male takes off after the transgressor, despite the girl telling him not to bother. The result is that a mystery killer, clad in a white ski-mask, offs them both, strangling the woman with a distinctive red-and-black scarf. More killings ensue, and Jane and her friends finally flee the campus for the private estate. But the serial killer follows them, and soon Jane is reduced to The Final Girl in this pre-slasher psycho.

Martino's compositions display a Hitchcockian artiness across the board, not focusing only upon the spectacular murders but also upon the more prosaic scenes as well. Additionally, though many giallos fall into the trap of reducing the female victims to exquisite corpses-to-be, Martino and co-scripter Ernesto Gastaldi include many naturalistic details to sustain the illusion that the victims were real people whose young lives were ended horribly (and not only the female characters, by the bye). Martino and Gastaldi had worked together in varying capacities on both Bava's THE WHIP AND THE BODY and Martino's ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, but TORSO seems to have been their most fruitful collaboration.

As it's not necessarily to disclose the killer's identity to discuss the film's mythicity, I'll hold off on that detail, aside from saying that the motivations seem to have been borrowed both from Bava's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (killing spree to cover specific murder) and 1944's THE LODGER (killer deeply affected by sibling's untimely demise). Said sibling's demise is even tied to feminine manipulation, which, more than beauty, is the cause for the killer to treat women as "dolls" to be ruined and discarded.