Torso

An Italian thriller. Female students are being killed at a university. The killer does not show his face and the same trace is left at every scene: a scarf with a red and black pattern. The investigation gets nowhere. On campus everyone suspects everyone: an art history lecturer, a dealer, a student. Four friends decide to get away from the city. They go to a villa on a hill; quiet, isolated and known to nobody. The killer comes there too. The last section takes place entirely at that villa and is almost without dialogue. One of the women is trapped upstairs; downstairs the killer is clearing up and she hears every movement. That passage counts among the most remembered sequences of the genre. The production belongs to the Italian wave of thrillers in the 1970s. The common features of those films are here: a killer in gloves, unreliable witnesses and violence turned into a formal display. Suzy Kendall, Tina Aumont and Luc Merenda are in the cast. Sergio Martino directed. The film was cut in some countries on release because of its violence. One of the good examples of its kind for anyone who likes Italian thrillers and tension built in the editing. Before you watch, know this: the film shows the killings in detail and its view of its female characters belongs to the patterns of its period.