my Movie

Movie Details

Title:   Torso
Director:   Sergio Martino
Year:   1973
Genre:   Giallo
Times Seen:   1
Last Seen:   03.30.06

Other Movies Seen By This Director (1)
- Sex with a Smile

Notes History
Date Viewed Venue Note
03.30.06Terror Thursday rounding out the first calendar of Terror Thursdays... the crowd has pretty consistently grown over the past two months... tonight didn't sell out like Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio but it was about as healthy as the usual Weird Wednesday crowd. It's pretty cool to see the series lift off like that... and it's also an opportunity for me to catch up with all these missed horror movie gems (and I thought I was a fan before I moved here!).

But... like 90% of this movie was pretty boring for me. I guess I'm not a big fan of giallos (gialli?)... they never make any sense to me but the whole concept and structure kind of hinges on having some sort of logic i would think... why have all of those long expository dialogue scenes when they don't make any sense and don't matter in the end anyway? I do like the death scenes though so I sit through them for rare glimpses of awesomality that I can go home with and Torso had one such scene.

The main girl is locked inside this room and the killer's left the house. She slides some newspaper under the door and pushes a pin into the keyhole to push out the key. We see the key jiggle in the door... jiggle, then fall, to land just off the newspaper. The girl slowly starts pulling the paper back, not knowing where the key landed... then we see the killer's gloved hand appear next to the door. he bends down, picks up the key, and puts it on the newspaper. It's maybe 30 seconds long and made the whole movie for me. Such an awesome tension flip flop and so economical. If someone told me that Martino made this entire movie just for that scene, I would believe him. I mean wow.

Otherwise, nothing too special.