Torso

A masked killer is murdering female students in Perugia. Four women retreat to a country villa. One of them wakes to find she is not alone in the house and the others are dead.

Sergio Martino made one of the most influential gialli: the shift from a whodunnit into a pure stalk-and-kill in an isolated house prefigures the American slasher by years, and the extended final sequence, a woman hiding while the killer dismembers bodies in the next room, is almost wordless and superbly sustained.

The English title is a distributor's addition. The Italian means The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence, which is more giallo.

It is nastier and pulpier than Argento and a key film in the transition from giallo to slasher.

Suzy Kendall, who was also in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, is the survivor.