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Torso

Torso

List Price: $29.98
Your Price: $26.98
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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: DVD quality fantastic - film is a revelation
Review: I originally saw this giallo about 5 years ago in a terrible censored and pan and scanned video. Thought the film was awful. The quality of this DVD is magnificent and greatly improves the film - it can now be seen in all its original stylish, suspenseful and misogynistic glory. The ski-masked, knife wielding killer must have inspired the Halloween series. Director Sergio Martino's use of colour is awesome in the two early murder scenes. The last half hour, with Suzy Kendall alone in the house with the killer (not having taken her clothes off, she is the only woman allowed to survive), having to watch her friends being dismembered is really tense and exciting.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great game of suspence
Review: I've seen many of Martino's movies and I can say he's one of the best directors of Italian Gialli in the 60's and 70's. TORSO is an elegant Giallo with basically all of the main features of the genre: a psycopath who stabs (and not only...) young screaming, beautiful girls, black gloves, raincoats and masks, a desolated villa, suspence, blood and whatsoever...The final solution is maybe not as original as the explanation of a child thrauma which has puzzled the killer's mind forever.
ABE presents this movie totally uncut in Widescreen 1.85:1 enhanced for 16x9 TV with both Italian and English mono audio tracks (Some of the English soundtrack was either never recorded or lost and therefore some whole or parts of scenes are in Italian with English subtitles). Unfortunately, the only extra features available are two mesmerizing trailers, but the menus are a sight for sore eyes. It's worth it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Stylish and Sexy
Review: In addition to some great atmosphere and location, director Sergio Martino adds touches of voyeurism and fetishism to elevate his horror / giallo to minor classic status ... The result is TORSO, a murder-mystery that, while not groundbraking, is highly enjoyable and visually exciting ... There are sequences in this film that are outstanding, particularly a sexy mud-soaked chase through the woods, and a wonderful dialog-free span in the final reel ... During that time, the lone ( injured ) survivor of a group of women candidly watches as the masked killer dismembers and disposes of the victims ... Very creepy, and recalls the feel of Hitchcock's FRENZY or DePalma's DRESSED TO KILL ... Not quite up to the level of something like Argento's DEEP RED, however, with it's ulta-sexy cast and stylish camerawork, TORSO would be perfect on a doublebill with any of the aforementioned films ...

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: "i hack them up like dolls"
Review: says the killer. which pretty much describes the modus operandi of TORSO, your average woman-slashing, daftly-scripted giallo. it's not a particularly good one--neither as outlandish or outstanding as some of its other '70s counterparts--but a definite must-see for the final reel, a masterpiece of staging suspense that will have Hitchcock rolling in his grave and Brian de Palma green with envy (which i'm sure he must have ripped off somewhere along the line).

the annoying thing about anchor bay's disc is the spurts of italian dialogue with english subtitles interspersed throughout the movie--it's kind of jarring. what they should have done is had english subtitles for the whole italian track (like on DEEP RED), so you get the option of watching either one. both the trailers are great though.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Below average film, few extras, not worth it.
Review: This DVD was highly recommended to me by several horror/giallo fans. After watching it for myself, I was very much let down. Basically, there's some guy going around killing people, and unfortunately, some of the effects make Herschell Gordon Lewis look like George Lucas. Fortunately, the guys in the audience can gape at the abundance of naked women running around on screen, and then they'll scream in disgust when they realize that Suzy Kendall remains clothed the entire time.

Director and co-screenplay writer Sergio Martino develops a loosely interesting mystery through the films course. However, after the first half-hour everything about Torso becomes tediously redundant and stale, and the murder scenes do not succeed in creating any horrific element at all (one scene, where the killer is chasing a witness through the city streets, is actually very effective, though). Redeeming the film somewhat, Torso does have some terrific performances and cinematography coutesy of veteran Giancarlo Ferrando.

Aside from the film, this Anchor Bay release lacks extras aside from two trailers. It also contains scenes where no English translation is present, making the switch from English to Italian at the drop-of-a-hat slightly frustrating (the same problem occurs in the Anchor Bay version of Argento's brilliant Deep Red). Overall, I don't recommend this one.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Good Movie, GREAT DVD...
Review: This is a better than average Italian horror flick that most likely influenced films such as "Friday the 13th" & "Halloween". The scene with the girl lost in the woods is excellent. The trees are spinning around her and then suddenly...well I won't tell you, but the scene is just wonderfully shot. There is lots of sex and nudity involved (being that the killer IS a psychosexual) but the gore isn't as heavy as suggested with a title like "Torso". It kind of reminds me of a foreign "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". The DVD itself is pretty good. Not PACKED with extras, but still visually marvelous. I was hesitant to buy this film, but I'm glad I did. This is a MUST HAVE for any true horror fans collection!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Awesome Italian Slasher!!
Review: Torso is a great depiction of the better side of italian cinema. There are a lot of really good italian horror/slasher films and a lot of bad ones. This is a great example of a very good one. This film has everything you could ask for in a movie like this: Great violence scenes, nudity with very good looking italian women, good plot line and some stylish camera work to boot. Torso is relatively the same film as a movie called "Pieces" but this film is much much better. The dubbing can of course get a little annoying but honestly, the movie was so good that after about 15 minutes I barely noticed it.

Overall, very stylish italian horror from the 70's. Pick this one up...it's a keeper.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A great Giallo, hats off to Martino
Review: Torso is a great representation of what was going on with the Italian giallo scene in the early seventies. A great looking, very slick piece that is superbly suspensful. You can't go wrong having this one in your collection. If you dig Italian horror and suspense, this is a must. If you look in any of the Italian horror film guides, like Spagehtti Nightmares, this is mentioned. Although Martino didn't do a whole lot of films, this one certainly stands out. The killer and his outfit are especially creepy. Fans of this will also like Aldo Lado's Who Saw Her Die? also an excellent piece. THis is a great print of this movie and shouldn't be missed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A great Giallo, hats off to Martino
Review: Torso is a great representation of what was going on with the Italian giallo scene in the early seventies. A great looking, very slick piece that is superbly suspensful. You can't go wrong having this one in your collection. If you dig Italian horror and suspense, this is a must. If you look in any of the Italian horror film guides, like Spagehtti Nightmares, this is mentioned. Although Martino didn't do a whole lot of films, this one certainly stands out. The killer and his outfit are especially creepy. Fans of this will also like Aldo Lado's Who Saw Her Die? also an excellent piece. THis is a great print of this movie and shouldn't be missed.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: This TORSO Has No Heartbeat.
Review: TORSO is, in many ways, the best possible example of the giallo genre, containing EVERY classic element, but yet simultaneously fails as an overall film experience, never really fully delivering on many of the ingredients it serves up.

As in many of the great giallo (think for instance, Argento's DEEP RED...), TORSO contains what can be considered the required fare:
1. A bevy of beautiful victims. This is where this entry does not fail. A half dozen or so gorgeous women line up to be undressed and then summarily hacked up, though not before undressing and engaging in activity rife with lesbian under- (or over-) tones.

2. A [...] killer (As the trailer mentions about 1,000 times). One whose identity is masked throughout - and, as in many giallo, one whose madness is tied to a frequently-flashbacked childhood tragedy. Still, the best shocks come when a character you care for turns out to be the madman and this is one character we never get to know.

3. Red herrings at every turn. TORSO parades at least five potential killers before us and those even remotely experienced in the genre can pick the killer out on his first appearance. Still, it's fun to watch the other hopefuls get theirs as well.

4. Graphic and creative kills. TORSO really, really fails in this department. We do get an ultra-fake [...]-slashing which, by now, is tired fare, an eye-gouging and, most impressively, a double-head-smashed-between-speeding-car-and-wall scene. Still, serious gorehounds will find TORSO extremely unfulfilling in this category.

5. Nail-biting suspense. Again, TORSO flails here. The final moments of the film, when our sole surviving heroine releases herself from her hiding place while we know the killer awaits outside the door, provides the most suspenseful moment, but by this point, we already know how the film will end and, frankly, can't wait for it to be over.

TORSO, simply put, is a flop. A beautifully photographed flop, peopled with gorgeous, frequently topless actresses, showered with the occasional splatter of blood but rarely surrounded with suspense. Anchor Bay has provided a great-looking DVD but one with no extras save for a couple trailers, though, really, once this film has been seen, little more is desired.


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