“There exists a material origin,” says Alain Robbe-Grillet towards the production of his film Glissements progressifs du plaisir (1974). “I was dining with a wealthy man who had produced fairly expensive films and had lost money on them. He knew that I made films that were not very expensive, and he asked if I could make a film for 500,000 francs. I said I could, so we reached an agreement.” (from The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His films by Anthony N. Fragnola and Roch C. Smith, Southern Illinois Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1992, p. 70.)
[Pete Tombs writes, “Eden and After gave a boost to Robbe-Grillet’s reputation as a man who made tastefully kinky movies for the intellectual set. Soon he was approached by the Boublil Brothers, who ran a successful chain of Paris sex cinemas. They agreed to finance his next film, Slow Slidings of Pleasure. (from “Oddball Kinkiness & Intellectual Conceits, The films of Alain Robbe-Grillet” by Pete Tombs, Flesh and Blood, No. 9, ed. Harvey Fenton, FAB Press, 1997, p. 69.)] 
Robbe-Grillet continues, “The project I had in mind was inspired by Michelet’s The Sorceress, as interpreted by Roland Barthes in his Michelet par lui-meme. That gave me the idea of making the character of the sorceress a young woman who upsets masculine discourse. The sufferings that the masculine order subject her to are described in Michelet’s text with a certain delight. The Sorceress is an ambiguous book. One the one hand, the sorceress is the spirit of revolution, while on the other, she also serves as a sexual object. Those conflictual drives can be discerned in Michelet’s style. I took up that conception in The Progressive Slidings of Pleasure, with the fundamental departure from Michelet that she upsets the masculine order not only with her body but also through her reasoning by which she undercuts the logic of a police investigation. 
“The third origin of The Progressive Slidings of Pleasure is a structural one: to make a film in which the narration is intercut with punctuation shots that serve to separate the scenes. Little by little, “slippages” occur from the punctuation shots towards the narration, from the narration towards the punctuation shots, and from one scene to another through the intermediary of punctuation. Punctuation shots, whose origins are ‘tailpieces’ in typography and ‘fades’ in film, are gradually integrated into the narration. There is a structural slippage from punctuation shots towards the diegesis. The structural idea was, in short, this concept of slippage.” (from Erotic Dream Machine, p. 70.) 
“It was filmed in an inexpensive little studio in Paris. We shot quickly, and then we all rushed to the railroad station…And it worked because I had an excellent rapport with that young girl [Anicée Alvina]. She was quite willing to do virtually anything that was demanded of her. When she was painting her body before pressing it against the wall, she would listen to me, and I would tell her, ‘Okay, a little lower on your belly.’ She carried it out, and one does not have the impression upon seeing the film that she is listening to instructions. Yet she certainly was not a professional actress. She simply handled her body with naturalness. 
“Catherine [Robbe-Grillet] had seen her in a film called Les Remparts des béguines (The Nun’s Ramparts), where a fifteen-year-old Anicée had a bit part in which she was really not too bad. We were driving through Cognac when Catherine saw a sign announcing the showing of Les Remparts des béguines. She said, ‘That is the girl you are looking for. You should go and see that film.’ I went to see it that evening. We returned to Paris a few days later, I contacted Anicée. Catherine had perceived that she could act without any of the problems that actresses generally have with nudity.” (from Erotic Dream Machine, p. 76.)
“I did not pay myself a salary, while in general the filmmaker pays himself well from the outset. I did everything quickly, and I received a large portion of the returns. Since the film did well, my earnings from Slidings were considerable. The only expensive actor was Trintignant, and he played for free. He is like a well-known painter who cannot afford to sell his paintings for a lower price to a friend, so he performed without charge. That is why his name does not appear in the credits. One sees ‘With the participation of,’ and there is no name, only a shot of a smiling Trintignant.” (from Erotic Dream Machine, p. 127.)
Glissements progressifs du plaisir is sensual, playful, and kinky. A lot of the intellectual allusions are also infused with eroticism. Robbe-Grillet states that, “Because red is the color of blood in the film, and blue is the color of the sky. [Yves] Klein is obsessed by the sky in his first paintings. But that young girl [Anicée Alvina] does not know Klein. She has fun with the paint, and you must not forget that her interlocutor is a nun, and the question of imprints is an important one in religion. She ends up by giving her a red cloth, saying, ‘Here is Veronica’s veil.’ ¶ For me, it was simply a nod at Klein. All I did was to think that since she looks so comfortable with her body, she could go ahead and do it, and, indeed, she carried it out the very first time. There was only one take of that scene. To make a film for 500,000 francs, one cannot have two takes of any shot.” (from Erotic Dream Machine, p. 75.) This scene that Robbe-Grillet describes defies both adequate description here and upon viewing. Alvina stands nude against the stark white backdrop of her room. At her feet is a basin filled with red paint and with a brush she paints the front of her body. She then presses her body up against the wall in various poses and leaves red imprints, creating a mural. While the scene is informed by Robbe-Grillet’s intellectual nod to Klein, its sensual nature is focal. The scene, like most in Glissements, is a fun game between the prurient and the intellectual.
Robbe-Grillet is fond of games as motif and is also fond of playing them with his reader in his fiction and also with his viewer with his films. As in his previous L'éden et après (although in a different manner), Glissements is full of games. Just beyond the opening montage, Trintignant appears as a police inspector investigating a murder. He searches what appears to be one room by opening various doors and even a door in the ceiling. His character does not seem to leave the room, but the room, itself, is being altered. The space is either being manipulated by Alvina’s character or within the frame by Robbe-Grillet or both. The entire narrative of Glissements is both fractured and circular and certainly elliptical.
Even if Robbe-Grillet is playing games for the sake of being playful in Glissements, he will hear no complaints from this viewer. After several viewings of Glissements, the imagery is far too seductive to not become weaved in its web. A beautiful film and a personal favorite.
[Pete Tombs writes, “Eden and After gave a boost to Robbe-Grillet’s reputation as a man who made tastefully kinky movies for the intellectual set. Soon he was approached by the Boublil Brothers, who ran a successful chain of Paris sex cinemas. They agreed to finance his next film, Slow Slidings of Pleasure. (from “Oddball Kinkiness & Intellectual Conceits, The films of Alain Robbe-Grillet” by Pete Tombs, Flesh and Blood, No. 9, ed. Harvey Fenton, FAB Press, 1997, p. 69.)] Robbe-Grillet continues, “The project I had in mind was inspired by Michelet’s The Sorceress, as interpreted by Roland Barthes in his Michelet par lui-meme. That gave me the idea of making the character of the sorceress a young woman who upsets masculine discourse. The sufferings that the masculine order subject her to are described in Michelet’s text with a certain delight. The Sorceress is an ambiguous book. One the one hand, the sorceress is the spirit of revolution, while on the other, she also serves as a sexual object. Those conflictual drives can be discerned in Michelet’s style. I took up that conception in The Progressive Slidings of Pleasure, with the fundamental departure from Michelet that she upsets the masculine order not only with her body but also through her reasoning by which she undercuts the logic of a police investigation. “The third origin of The Progressive Slidings of Pleasure is a structural one: to make a film in which the narration is intercut with punctuation shots that serve to separate the scenes. Little by little, “slippages” occur from the punctuation shots towards the narration, from the narration towards the punctuation shots, and from one scene to another through the intermediary of punctuation. Punctuation shots, whose origins are ‘tailpieces’ in typography and ‘fades’ in film, are gradually integrated into the narration. There is a structural slippage from punctuation shots towards the diegesis. The structural idea was, in short, this concept of slippage.” (from Erotic Dream Machine, p. 70.) “It was filmed in an inexpensive little studio in Paris. We shot quickly, and then we all rushed to the railroad station…And it worked because I had an excellent rapport with that young girl [Anicée Alvina]. She was quite willing to do virtually anything that was demanded of her. When she was painting her body before pressing it against the wall, she would listen to me, and I would tell her, ‘Okay, a little lower on your belly.’ She carried it out, and one does not have the impression upon seeing the film that she is listening to instructions. Yet she certainly was not a professional actress. She simply handled her body with naturalness. “Catherine [Robbe-Grillet] had seen her in a film called Les Remparts des béguines (The Nun’s Ramparts), where a fifteen-year-old Anicée had a bit part in which she was really not too bad. We were driving through Cognac when Catherine saw a sign announcing the showing of Les Remparts des béguines. She said, ‘That is the girl you are looking for. You should go and see that film.’ I went to see it that evening. We returned to Paris a few days later, I contacted Anicée. Catherine had perceived that she could act without any of the problems that actresses generally have with nudity.” (from Erotic Dream Machine, p. 76.)“I did not pay myself a salary, while in general the filmmaker pays himself well from the outset. I did everything quickly, and I received a large portion of the returns. Since the film did well, my earnings from Slidings were considerable. The only expensive actor was Trintignant, and he played for free. He is like a well-known painter who cannot afford to sell his paintings for a lower price to a friend, so he performed without charge. That is why his name does not appear in the credits. One sees ‘With the participation of,’ and there is no name, only a shot of a smiling Trintignant.” (from Erotic Dream Machine, p. 127.)Glissements progressifs du plaisir is sensual, playful, and kinky. A lot of the intellectual allusions are also infused with eroticism. Robbe-Grillet states that, “Because red is the color of blood in the film, and blue is the color of the sky. [Yves] Klein is obsessed by the sky in his first paintings. But that young girl [Anicée Alvina] does not know Klein. She has fun with the paint, and you must not forget that her interlocutor is a nun, and the question of imprints is an important one in religion. She ends up by giving her a red cloth, saying, ‘Here is Veronica’s veil.’ ¶ For me, it was simply a nod at Klein. All I did was to think that since she looks so comfortable with her body, she could go ahead and do it, and, indeed, she carried it out the very first time. There was only one take of that scene. To make a film for 500,000 francs, one cannot have two takes of any shot.” (from Erotic Dream Machine, p. 75.) This scene that Robbe-Grillet describes defies both adequate description here and upon viewing. Alvina stands nude against the stark white backdrop of her room. At her feet is a basin filled with red paint and with a brush she paints the front of her body. She then presses her body up against the wall in various poses and leaves red imprints, creating a mural. While the scene is informed by Robbe-Grillet’s intellectual nod to Klein, its sensual nature is focal. The scene, like most in Glissements, is a fun game between the prurient and the intellectual.Robbe-Grillet is fond of games as motif and is also fond of playing them with his reader in his fiction and also with his viewer with his films. As in his previous L'éden et après (although in a different manner), Glissements is full of games. Just beyond the opening montage, Trintignant appears as a police inspector investigating a murder. He searches what appears to be one room by opening various doors and even a door in the ceiling. His character does not seem to leave the room, but the room, itself, is being altered. The space is either being manipulated by Alvina’s character or within the frame by Robbe-Grillet or both. The entire narrative of Glissements is both fractured and circular and certainly elliptical.Even if Robbe-Grillet is playing games for the sake of being playful in Glissements, he will hear no complaints from this viewer. After several viewings of Glissements, the imagery is far too seductive to not become weaved in its web. A beautiful film and a personal favorite. 
These words are from Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" from the collection of tales In a Glass Darkly upon which Carl Theodor Dreyer based his 1932 film Vampyr. Dreyer begins his film with these words:
The final description comes from Dreyer and Christen Jul's screenplay for Vampyr. In some sense, an understanding or an awareness of all this text is non-essential to Dreyer's film as its visuals are where its magic lies; or perhaps, all of the text is truly essential, as Dreyer's film also takes creative power in its hybrid nature of a silent film of recent past and a film of the burgeoning sound era. 
The opening text of the film which describes Allan Gray appears as exposition but also functions as a primer for viewing. Vampyr clearly adopts the sensibility of Allan Gray as Dreyer is depicting a "dreamer's" dream. The opening text allows an opportunity for the viewer, if he or she wishes, to adopt a detached or objective style of viewing, e.g. watching Allan Gray, the dreamer, and his adventures. I believe, however, this style of viewing is almost resisting the film. Having seen Vampyr numerous times, the visuals, the atmosphere, the music, e.g. its creative rendition, only allow for quick surrender. Seeing Vampyr through Allan Gray's eyes is far too seductive.
A lot of the beauty in Vampyr comes from Allan Gray's smaller journeys within his his larger adventure. Upon his arrival at the inn, he does see the reaper but does not really have an encounter. He only witnesses the man call for the ferry at the river. The "unreality," however, is very much captured.
The morning after Gray's night at the inn and his fateful encounter within, another "aimless wandering" occurs. This world is either Allan Gray's, Marguerite Chopin's, or Dreyer's. 
Once more, near the film's conclusion, Allan Gray leaves the manor after Gisele. As he runs, he trips and falls to then compose himself on a nearby bench. In an audacious move, Allan Gray never leaves the bench but has another small journey.
Despite the interplay of written text within Vampyr (and playing with the outside texts which inform it), Dreyer's film is pure cinema. Dreyer's visuals and Wolfgang Zeller's score capture such beauty, making it timeless. The visuals and music defy description; or more appropriately, the visuals and music defy adequate description.
Il trucido e lo sbirro is a damn entertaining poliziesco, perhaps one of the decade's best: swiftly-paced, exciting and excessively violent, and well-written (by Lenzi and Dardano Sacchetti). By all means a soundly commercial, successful, and almost perfect poliziesco. 
Outside of its commercial genre and within its action, Il trucido e lo sbirro calls for questions. Here's an example: Monnezza is a street criminal; and pick-pocketing and small cons are his trade. Sarti coerces Monnezza into helping him by threatening to lock him up. However, whatever methods that Monnezza chooses to find Brescianelli and the young child, Sarti does not question them. Aboard a moving train, three armed criminals attempt to rob it. The police stop the train, surround it, and make an attempt to raid it. The three criminals escape on foot and take shelter in a moored boat. Enter Monnezza and Sarti who board the boat with an offer to help: Monnezza tells the gang that Brescianelli is the one who tipped off the police about their robbery. Would they be interested in teaming up to take down Brescianelli, as Monnezza also reveals that he and Sarti were double-crossed by Brescianelli? They agree. Now Sarti has three additional criminals to help him locate Brescianelli, but these criminals are not like Monnezza. These cats are seriously dangerous and violent criminals. Can Sarti keep these criminals in line, maintain his cover, or find Brescianelli and his young hostage?
By the numbers, Il trucido e lo sbirro plays out like a Pyrrhic victory but it ain't. The entire premise of Il trucido e lo sbirro is predicated on the presumption that the state of law enforcement and its methods are wholly ineffectual in stopping crime. The kidnapping case becomes the police department's top priority when it occurs. Cassinelli's Sarti was brought into Rome to head the case. Sarti was demoted to a post in Sardinia away from his position in Rome because of his hard-lined intensity and unorthodox methods against criminals. The once-exiled policeman returns home, now embraced by those who put him exile: his methods are now necessary. In a particularly nasty and fascinating scene, Sarti and one of his violent criminal crew infiltrate the home of a promising suspect. A maid answers the door and Sarti pushes through. Sarti is going to raid the suspect's documents in his study, and would his criminal cohort mind watching the maid? No problem, he says. As soon as Cassinelli's character is out of the room, his cohort grabs the woman and rips her blouse. His intentions are clear and unequivocal. Sarti returns to his cohort when he has heard a gunshot. The suspect that Sarti needs to interrogate lays dead on the floor, a victim of Cassinelli's criminal associate. What the hell did you do that for? yells Sarti. He could have led us right to the little girl. Sarti knocks the shit out of the criminal and points his pistol directly at his head. Cassinelli (who gives another fantastic and emotional performance) has generated enough anger to appear that he is going to shoot the man directly in the head but he checks himself: as much as he wants to kill him, he realizes that he needs him.
So what are Lenzi and Sacchetti saying about current culture and crime in Il trucido e lo sbirro? Here's a scene which may hide their intentions: outside of a movie theatre, two very young men enter its lobby. One is holding a box of tissues while the other appears to suffer from nasal congestion. After a toss of the tissue box, one of the young men wipes his nose with a tissue. "Has anyone ever told you that your face is lovely?" asks the young man to the woman behind the ticket counter. "Why no," she says. "No one is going to say so in the future," says the thug and Whack! He hits her directly in the face with the box of tissues (it's hiding something to charge it up). The two young men rob the box office and run out of the cinema. Sarti witnesses the fleeing criminals and begins to give chase. One of his criminal associates stops him: "Where are you going? What do you care? It's just kids having fun." Sarti again checks himself and maintains cover. The scene within the movie theatre is quite kinetic and exciting. It would appear that Lenzi had a bit of fun filming it and maybe wants to share some of that energy with his viewer.
For all of my pontificating, Il trucido e lo sbirro is most famous for Milian's performance as Monnezza (the name roughly translates as "Trash" and he is called "Garbage Can" in the English dub). Not only is the character the most richly-drawn (and not incidentally making everyone around him look more like an archetype or a stereotype), but Milian's performance as Monnezza is the most richly-detailed. Antonio Bruschini and Antonio Tentori, authors of Citta' Violente: Il Cinema Poliziesco Italiano Volume Primo, see Milian's character having its origins in Milian's "Cuchillo" character from Sergio Sollima's masterful The Big Gundown (1966) (p.90, Mondo Ignoto, S.R.L., Rome, 2004). The authors write, "Nel 1976 Lenzi da vita al primo, mitico, personaggio quasi totalmente farsesco interpretato da Tomas Milian, il vero precursore del successivo marresciallo Nico Giraldi." (p.89) Milian's Nico Giraldi character is phenomenally popular, beginning with Bruno Corbucci's Squadra antiscippo (1976) and spanning almost a decade with numerous films. It is difficult to describe how excellent and intricate Milian's performance is: from his facial expressions, to his body language, to his character's charming vulgarity, Monnezza floats through this violent world with a smile on his face, little money in his pocket, and behind all appearances, has a very good heart. Milian is so good that he instantly becomes focal in any scene. Milian drives the narrative of Il trucido e lo sbirro and its investigation. Monnezza is a survivor of this world and his energy is perhaps borne of its chaos. Regardless, Il trucido e lo sbirro is very much worth seeing for Milian's brilliant and landmark performance. Two other interesting facts: the Western playing at the beginning is Tutto per tutto (1968) (Citta Violente, p. 90), directed by Lenzi; and Henry Silva's character, Brescianelli was "the real name of a gangster who otherwise operated in the Milan area within the Marseilles clan." (p. 56, Tomas Milian Il Bandito, Lo Sbirro, e Er Monnezza, Mediane S.R.L., Milan, 2007, text by Pierpaolo Duranti and Erminio Mucciacito with English translation by Pat Scalabrino.)
I didn’t like the looks of that cover. Its shadow wasn’t right. The sun was at our backs, yet its shadow was stretching towards us. Well, all right, it was far enough away from us. It seemed OK, we could get on with our work. But what was the silvery thing shining back there? Was it just my imagination? It would be nice to have a smoke now and sit for a spell and mull it all over—why there was that shine over the canisters, why it didn’t shine next to them, why the cover was casting that shadow. Buzzard Burbridge told me something about the shadows, that they were weird but harmless. Something happens here with the shadows. But what was that silvery shine? It looked just like cobwebs on the trees in a forest. What kind of spider could have spun it? I had never seen any bugs in the Zone. The worst part was that my empty was right there, two steps from the canisters. I should have stolen it that time. Then we wouldn’t be having any of these problems now. But it was too heavy. After all, the bitch was full, I could pick it up all right, but as for dragging it on my back, in the dark, on all fours…If you haven’t carried an empty around, try it: It’s like hauling twenty pounds of water without a pail. It was time to go. I wished I had a drink. I turned to Tender. (Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1977, Macmillan Publishing Co., 2007, Great Britain, p.25)
“What does ‘Stalker’ mean?”
"The perception of colour is a physiological and psychological phenomenon to which, as a rule, nobody pays particular attention. The picturesque character of a shot, due often enough simply to the quality of the film, is one more artificial element loaded onto the image, and something has to be done to counteract it if you mind about being faithful to life. You have to try to neutralize colour, to modify its impact on the audience. If colour becomes the dominant dramatic element of the shot, it means that the director and camera-man are using a painter’s methods to affect the audience. That is why nowadays one very often finds that the average expertly made film will have the same sort of appeal as the luxuriously illustrated glossy magazine; the colour photography will be warring against the expressiveness of the image.
“Redrick walked in his bare feet to the entry hall, took the basket and brought it to the storeroom. Then he looked into the bedroom. Monkey was sleeping peacefully, her crumpled blanket hanging on the floor. Her nightie had ridden up. She was warm and soft, a little animal breathing heavily. Redrick could not resist the temptation to stroke her back covered with warm golden fur, and was amazed for the thousandth time by the fur’s silkiness and length. He wanted to pick up Monkey badly, but he was afraid it would wake her up—besides he was dirty as hell and permeated with death and the Zone. He came back into the kitchen and sat down at the table.” (Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1977, Macmillan Publishing Co., 2007, Great Britain, p.59)
“What matters to me is that the feeling excited by my films should be universal. An artistic image is capable of arousing identical feelings in viewers, while the thoughts that come later may be very different. If you start to search for a meaning during the film you will miss everything that happens. The ideal viewer is someone who watches a film like a traveler watching the country he is passing through: because the effect of an artistic image is an extra-mental type of communication. There are some artists who attach symbolic meaning to their images, but that is not possible for me. Zen poets have a good way of dealing with this: they work to eliminate any possibility of interpretation, an in the process a parallel arises between the real world and what the artist creates in his work.
While I am typically long-winded in writing about films, I felt that writing about Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) was, at least for me, an exercise in futility. I began with the intention of writing a very academic post, detailing production history and the like, before realizing that I was heading into the Dissertation Zone before I knew it. Instead, I thought a collection of some thought-provoking quotes from Tarkovsky and from Stalker’s source novel would be far more interesting. I selected them, and the images from the film, based upon primarily the emotions that they elicited from me. Stalker is a cinematic masterpiece from one of cinema’s masters. Here’s a final quote from Roadside Picnic (also a beautiful work of art), and quite possibly my favorite:
“He had never experienced anything like this before outside the Zone. And it happened in the Zone only two or three times. It was as though he were in a different world. A million odors cascaded in on him at once—sharp, sweet, metallic, gentle, dangerous ones, as crude as cobblestones, as delicate and complex as watch mechanisms, as huge as a house and as tiny as a dust particle. The air became hard, it developed edges, surfaces, and corners, like space was filled with huge stiff balloons, slippery pyramids, gigantic prickly crystals, and he had to push his way through it all, making his way in a dream through a junk store stuffed with ancient ugly furniture…It lasted a second. He opened his eyes, and everything was gone. It hadn’t been a different world—it was this world turning a new, unknown side to him. This side was revealed to him for a second and then disappeared, before he had time to figure it out.” (Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1977, Macmillan Publishing Co., 2007, Great Britain, p.67) 
"Now take your hands off my butt, asshole, and bring me to the exit." The hands from this line belong to Paolo (Claudio Cassinelli), and the butt belongs to Marisa (Patrizia Castaldi); and they are a dancing couple. Paolo is flirting with pretty Marisa and asks for a dance; and Marisa reluctantly agrees, because she is scared of the mirrored-sunglassed party guest who has taken an intense infatuation with her. Marisa bolts from the party, knocking Paolo's eyeglasses from his head, and rushes to safety within a seedy boardinghouse. She is killed, and after the police discover her corpse, two police officers chat about the case outside of a cafe. Paolo, playing a game of pinball, overhears the two police officers and decides to begin an investigation, himself, of Marisa's murder.
Since there was a lack of actors those days who represented the poliziesco genre except for Giuliano Gemma, Franco Nero and few others maybe--I had the idea to cast Claudio Cassinelli who had shot several movies to that date but no poliziescos. He was an actor who didn't fit the current beau ideal but who embodied a certain sympathy and who was very believable. Claudio was a very versatile and good actor who, in my opinion fit himself into the role very well. I remember that he was in great shape, and when I watch the film today I can't see any failing in his performance or a non-identification with his character. In the following years, we shot several films of other genres together and therefore I consider him as a friend who became very dear to my heart--unfortunately he passed away--and who I hold in high regard especially from a human factor standpoint and because of his delicacy of feeling.
Cassinelli as Paolo is the biggest attraction of Morte sospetta di una minorenne (1975). In a representative sequence of events, Paolo arranges a meeting with a young prostitute (Barbara Magnolfi) at a hotel in order to uncover the source of the prostitution racket. Paolo plays it cool, but she's even cooler and blows him off. With the help of his young associate, Cassinelli's Paolo is able to follow the young woman through the city to a dilapidated tenement across town. In a bolder move, Paolo walks directly through its front door and is forced into a violent confrontation with its inhabitant. The confrontation does not go well, but Paolo regains his composure and patiently waits at the building. His patience is rewarded with a big score and huge lead in his investigation. The sequence of the narrative events are familiar, yet its Cassinelli who is unique. His character lacks the complete tough-guy quality of the typical poliziesco and also the obsession of the amateur sleuth of any giallo. There is a lot more humility to his character. Martino has Paolo wear eyeglasses in Morte sospetta di una minorenne, and they become his signature. Whenever Paolo gets into an intense situation or when a character remarks upon his eyeglasses, these motifs are subtle symbols of Paolo. Cassinelli's performance follows suit: his character is certainly unorthodox and quirky but very sympathetic. Despite a strong narrative (another well-written script by Martino and Ernesto Gastaldi) in Morte sospetta di una minorenne, it is Cassinelli's performance which stands out.
Adrian Luther-Smith, author of Blood and Black Lace: The Definitive Guide to Italian Sex and Horror Movies, writes:
It is really Cassinelli's performance and character within Morte sospetta di una minorenne which does not fit within either strictly a poliziesco or a giallo. There are giallo elements within the film, primarily the murder scenes: these are not prominent yet are very evocative of Argento's Profondo rosso (1975) (the scenes are also less intricate and orchestrated). During Marisa's murder, the viewer gets treated to a loving shot of the killer holding his knife, and Martino shows the blade in close-up (with the Argento signature "flash" of the blade). Another murder in the film is eerily similar to a famous one with in Profondo rosso. Sergio Martino in his interview included as a supplement on the Region 2 DVD from 
First, who is the main character? There are only two characters within Torso who give a persuasive answer to this question: Jane, portrayed by Suzy Kendall, and Dani, played by Tina Aumont. For the viewer who has seen Torso subsequent to viewing slasher films, such as John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and its progeny, then intuitively, Jane is the main character. She holds a very iconic position within the third act. However, if Torso is viewed as a mystery or more specifically, a giallo (which its first half certainly appears to be), then Dani is the main character. Dani is the one character who has seen the mysterious killer within the film, and the killer knows it. Hence, the viewer intuitively knows that Dani is the next prospective victim for the killer. In the most uninteresting way, minutes on screen can determine who is the main character, and even a by a few seconds, the viewer can determine its protagonist. Even if Torso does not have a main character, it is not a film driven by an ensemble cast. Some characters are red herrings for the mystery, some are eye candy, and some serve plot devices, such as a victim for a brutal killing, for example. By and far, Torso is a plot-driven film, rendered creatively in sequences with different characters, like a collage.
One of the boldest and most creative moves by Martino and company within Torso occurs at the halfway mark in its violent shift in setting. The expansive setting within the city, which houses the university where Jane and Dani attend, is removed to a villa secluded atop a hill, overlooking a small village below. This one change in setting completely fractures the narrative of the film. The isolated villa with Dani and her two friends, Ursula (Carla Brait) and Katia (Angela Covello), kills any of the mystery within Torso. The narrative becomes focused on this small group of characters at the setting, and the viewer knows as these characters unwind and relax (the narrative also unwinds and relaxes), the more likely they are to become victims of the killer. To be fair, it is fairly obvious to identify the killer by deduction right before the beginning of the third act, so it did not seem that Martino nor his co-screenwriter, Ernesto Gastaldi, really saw this fracture in the narrative as a deficiency in their plot. By the way, when the killer's identity is revealed and in the classic moment where the killer reveals his/her motive, it is truly irrelevant to whom the killer is revealing.
Torso has an interesting history. Adrian Luther Smith, author of Blood and Black Lace: The Definitive Guide to Italian Sex and Horror Movies, writes: "The American release proved to be extremely popular on the drive-in circuit and along with Bava's A Bay of Blood probably had a significant part to play in the development of the stalk 'n' slash genre." (p.120, Stray Cat Publishing Ltd., England, 1999.) Craig Ledbetter, editor of European Trash Cinema, writes, "Like most Americans, I first saw this on the lower half of a double-bill with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While the former went on to fame and fortune, poor Torso still gets no respect. The ironical thing is that "Society" would have you believe that TCM was the goriest of the two, NOT!" (European Trash Cinema, Vol. 2, No. 6, Kingwood, TX, 1992.) The authors of Violent Italy, Daniel Dellamorte and Tobias Petterson, write: "His [Martino's] last giallo, Torso, is mostly remembered for its brutality. None of the previous leading actors [from his previous gialli] take part in this film and it is obvious that Martino had lost interest in the genre at this point. The film lacks the flair and visual style that is so evident in his previous films, and he left the genre for other projects." (p.43, Tamara Press, Malmo, Sweden, 2002.) (Interestingly, the Violent Italy authors note that the giallo peaked in 1972 with twenty two released in theatres in Italy (p.39). According to the 
If Torso is truly influential upon the subsequent slasher genre, then it is not solely because of its brutality but also its boldness and creativity. As to whether its boldness and creativity was borne from hearing the death knell of a dying genre and attempting to be as shocking and provocative as possible to draw in the genre's last viewers is unknown. Torso is, however, a terrific film and like a lot of Martino's cinema, it is beautifully and elegantly photographed (by Giancarlo Ferrando) and populated with beautiful people. By far not a shy film, Torso is very provocative and very playful. In a wonderfully lurid sequence, Carol, friend and classmate to Jane and Dani, portrayed by Conchita Airoldi, upon hearing of the murder of her friend, becomes overwhelmed with both fear and grief. She takes a ride from the open-air piazza at the university with two friends to a dingy den somewhere in the city to get high. Carol wants some comfort; her two friends want to sleep with her; and Martino has a beautiful and scantily-clad woman dancing alone in the center of the den. After a fairly bold composition of the woman dancing, Carol tires of her two friends' fondling and she bolts from the den. Martino gets a laugh from the viewer when one of Carol's shunned suitors stupidly crashes his motorbike into the mud. Poor Carol, both dejected and disoriented, continues into the ash-colored and mud-soaked forest alone, where Martino delivers one of his most effective atmospheric sequences. It becomes quite brutal as well. Like most of Torso, there is no consistency in tone to the sequence, but this lack of consistency is not borne from carelessness but playfulness. Torso is daring, perhaps in its creative impetus but definitely in its execution. A personal favorite. Ernesto Gastaldi's contribution cannot be overstated: his screenplay is essential to Torso's success. Gastaldi's body of work is astounding, and he deserves wider praise in subsequent entries. The music by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis is an excellent accompaniment.