By Geno McGahee
Italian horror from the 70’s can be incredibly strange and have a great deal of sleaze and that is what the 1973 slasher “TORSO” is all about. From the outset, the film establishes that it’s going to showcase some beautiful women naked throughout and they will be hunted and killed by a pervert in a ski mask. I wonder if Siskel and Ebert enjoyed this movie. Probably not.
The killer has some hang-ups when it comes to sex. He is initially caught as a peeping Tom but after a chase by an angry boyfriend, the killer gives him the what for. He returns to the car and kills the girl, slicing her up the stomach and between her boobs in a gruesome manner. I know cops (at least in movies) say that a murderer uses a knife as their dick (if they’re male, I guess) and that seems logical here. Considering that he goes after naked women mostly or while they’re having sex, he obviously has problems in that area, and uses his dick knife for revenge. Dick Knife sounds like an interesting title for a movie…
TORSO gets stranger as we forge along. We have a party where two hairy dudes grope a girls boobs and she just sits back and allows it. During that time, we have some tight shots of a near-topless girl dancing with her boobs flopping around. The camera guy elected to lie on his back and have the girl dance over him as he shakes her ass in her Daisy Dukes. At this point, I’m guessing that the camera guy is screaming “I love my job.”
As the two goons feel up the girl, she gets irritated and burns one of them with a cigarette and the chase is on. She escapes but she runs into the killer and that was probably better than the two perverts finding her.
Unfortunately, TORSO moves along at a snail’s pace. The nudity and sex is so excessive that this feels like a soft core porn movie disguised as a slasher. The balance should be on the horror elements with some T&A sprinkled in. Just a sprinkle. Sergio Martino grabbed handfuls after handfuls of sprinkles and a handful of something else for all we know. Hell, when you’re around that many hot naked women, I wouldn’t hold it against him if he retired to the men’s room for 10 minutes.
This movie is good for the first fifteen minutes and good for the last fifteen minutes, but unless you are just content to look at naked girls rather than a story, the middle hour of this drags on. I was happy to report that although this was the 70s, the dreaded 70’s bush was not as evident as I thought it would be. Maybe it’s because they focused on the boobs more so.
The reveal of the killer and his immediate turn to cartoonish bad guy was worth the wait though and I found myself laughing often at the ridiculousness that this movie displayed in the last 15 minutes. They were capable of making such quality stuff and they took the easy way out and just packed it with tits. Packed it with Tits…another great movie title. I’m inspired today.
In the end, I recommend TORSO, but it’s not one of the better slashers. I can see how it influenced slashers to come with some of the tactics that they used, but there obviously wasn’t a lot of focus on making a good story. This was just sleaze put out there to attract as sleaze does. I’m pro-sleaze but really wanted to see a good slasher. Damn.
Rating: 5.5/10
