Skip Navigation

Dr Mikel J. Koven
University of Wales, Aberystwyth

Torso: Typical Giallo and Prototypical Slasher

Photograph of Dr Mikel J. Koven making presentation

Movie icon Windows Media Video
[Download Windows Media Player]

Torso (Sergio Martino, 1973) is typical of the giallo film – the Italian-made low-budget horror murder mystery movies which typified the terza visione (3rd class) movie houses in rural and industrial Italy and the downtown grind-houses and rural drive-in movies in the United States during the 1970s. All the genre’s attributes are included in this film – black gloved wearing killer, beautiful young women victims, gory deaths, and “lectures about Italian architecture”. But Martino’s film is also noteworthy as a film which shifts its location halfway through and becomes more akin to the slasher movie – those Canadian and American low-budget shockers which dominated horror cinema in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In particular, slasher films like Prom Night, My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday to Me and Terror Train owe a considerable debt to these Italian shockers. This presentation will explore firstly how Torso exemplifies the giallo film and acts as a proto-type for the later slasher films. But this presentation will also point towards how, in general, the slasher drew on the giallo tradition, demonstrating a cross-cultural dialogue between Europe and North America whose common tongue was horror cinema.

conference poster

European Nightmares - An International Conference on European Horror Cinema

1st – 2nd June 2006

Further Information