The Torturer

I am not very familiar with Lamberto Bava oeuvre, but after 'The Torturer' I don't know if I want to become familiar with it. Story, if there is any, revolves around young director whose work is in vein of grand guignol, and his new mistress - a wannabe actress. She shows up for an audition, but eventually they become lovers. In the background there is plot about mysterious torturer, who does couple of nasty things to some fine looking young woman. But it is really irrelevant, as the main point of the movie is to show some nudity and sex, and a little bit of torture. Movie is done in porno aesthetics - camera focuses on women's breasts and crotches (nothing hard core of course), and the viewer isn't spared camera angle from between one heroine's legs. Acting is completely lame, plot laughable, so it's hard to sit through it. Of course nudity and violence compensates a little the rest of the movie, but only a little bit. Nods to gialli (especially Argento's work) are completely redundant, as they don't add up to the story. Yet violence sometimes becomes very graphic and nasty. and actresses are really good looking. nothing really catchy in here, but one can give a look.

The Torturer is an Italian rip-off, knock-off in the torture mainstream movies trend that Saw and Hostel begins. This time, Lamberto Bava (the son of the great Mario Bava and the maker of the amazing gore movie Demons) directs this movie about beautiful babes being tortured by a psycho snuff filmmaker. Thats all about the plot, and, who needs a plot in this kind of movies? nobody. The main problem with The Torturer is that its like a PG-13 movie. Not much blood or gore here, not a lot of nudity or sex. The girls are really beautiful, porn star-looking some of them and models others(the main babe is really beautiful) but this movie is too bland. And thats a shame because Italian cinema uses to make rip-offs with lots of gore and T & A. Not the case here, just an average movie, nothing memorable here.

Like most of his Italian contemporaries Lamberto Bava's career as a feature film director more or less ran into the ground by the end of the 80's. The money in the Italian industry moved into the television environment and subsequently most of the film-makers who had worked in cinema started making stuff for the small screen. Bava was no different and seems to have operated in TV oblivion since those days. So it was good to see that he had stepped back into making cinematic output in 2005 with this film, The Torturer.

Having just seen it, it seems quite obvious that the level of production value available to Italian genre film-makers had dropped dramatically over the intervening years and consequently this comes across as a very cheap movie indeed. It follows the trend of the day in that it is a torture flick that revels in sadistic violence in a similar way to the American big hitters Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005). I don't particularly have any objection to this, nor do I mind that it is shamelessly derivative. Copycat movies can often be a lot of fun and sometimes more of the same is kind of what you want. What was an issue here though was the sheer cheapness of the production and the general resultant ropiness that comes along with this. The story-line is half-hearted to say the least and isn't really worth restating. The plot-line is really no more than an excuse to show half-naked women being tortured and terrorised. It sounds quite sleazy and it is really but its alleviated a lot by its general low quality presentation. The dubbing is atrocious, more like the level of a 70's chopsocky production that an Italian film, while there is more or less a complete absence of style not helped by the whole thing seeming to have been shot on digital video. So what we have is ultimately a pretty unpretentious and straightforward bit of horror trash. It's difficult to recommend this one too much on account of its significant deficiencies. It's not in the same league as Bava's better work clearly but it was still good to see him at least make a newer horror film even if it's a not very good one.

This is only the fourth effort from Bava Jr. that I've watched – not counting the co-directing credit on his father Mario's last film, THE VENUS OF ILLE (1978); the others were BLASTFIGHTER (1984), DEMONS (1985) and DELIRIUM (1987). I hadn't been impressed thus far, and this latter-day giallo with the current (regrettable) torture-porn mentality certainly didn't improve his lot – if anything, it further sank his chances of ever hoping to equal his old man's influential achievements!

Being shot on Digital, the film displays no style whatsoever and looks ugly into the bargain; as for the plot, it's strictly by-the-numbers fare and, therefore, wholly uninvolving. A handsome young man is revealed to have had a disturbed childhood – cue an excruciatingly annoying and recurring ditty – so that we're led to believe that he's the titular figure (especially since the victims are aspiring actresses who had just been auditioning for the would-be boy genius). Then comes the admittedly stunning heroine – who's really there to probe into the fate of a friend who's gone missing but, lo and behold, she instantly falls for the hero. Also involved is his domineering father-in-law/agent and mother (a Daria Nicolodi wannabe) who's all-too-obviously crackers.

Needless to say, Bava Jr. lazily opts to pile up, and linger on, the gore (and nudity) rather than – pardon the pun – pump new blood into the exceedingly tired situations. As I said, the revelation – of both the reason behind our hero's torments and the villain's identity – provides no surprise at all, nor the fact that the heroine is rescued (by her lover's mother, who suddenly regains her senses!) in the nick-of-time from a fate worse than death. For what it's worth, I have a bunch of other titles by Lamberto on hand – namely GRAVEYARD DISTURBANCE (1987), UNTIL DEATH (1987), THE PRINCE OF TERROR (1988) and THE OGRE (1988) – which I may or may not get to in time for this Halloween challenge

Even though "The Torturer" certainly doesn't qualify as a great horror movie, I would still like to use this opportunity to state: Thank you for doing it again, Mr. Bava! Thank you for demonstrating to us that the Italian horror industry is not yet dead, despite the severe lack of genre outings during the past two decades. Thank you for showing that 'Grand Guignol' make-up effects still exist in Italy and - most of all - thank you for continuing to exploit popular horror themes. During the 70's and 80's, the Italian horror & cult industry became notorious because they gratuitously imitated films that were extremely popular overseas. The Italians blatantly copied the basic story ideas of these films and simply added a whole lot of extra gore and sleaze, which worked just fine for me as well as for many other fans of the genre. Lamberto Bava's "comeback" movie (nearly 15 years after "Body Puzzle") still thrives on the same principle. "The Torturer" cashes in on the contemporary hype of sadistic torture movies, like "Saw" and Eli Roth's "Hostel". The film somewhat neglects logic and story building and puts the emphasis on sadistic and shocking images of mutilation, sexual aggression and purely relentless agony. Bava's venture opens marvelously, with very cruel images of a scarcely dressed and tied-up girl being submitted to vile torture by an unidentifiable person whilst adrenalin-rushing music bursts through the speakers. The faint-hearted as well as people with a weak stomach will already have difficulties enduring this footage and the movie only just started. The actual plot is, understandably, quite skimpy and the events aren't very likely to happen in real life. The gorgeous young actress Ginette auditions for the lead role in the first long feature film of the controversial artist Alex Sherba and she's almost immediately submitted to a long series of harassing questions and indecent proposals. Alex quickly turns out to be a mentally unstable and potentially dangerous man, and when she finds an earring belonging to a missing friend of hers, Ginette even suspects that he might be a killer and starts her very own private investigation. Meanwhile, the torturing of other poor girls cheerfully continues in the dungeon of Alex' parental house. The plot is quite stupid, but it's praiseworthy how Bava tries to implement typical Giallo-elements (like the childhood traumas and the twisted ending) and several scenes DO contain a fair amount of good suspense. Unfortunately, it's a little slow in places and the grand finale is sadly too idiotic and embarrassing for words. Also, the wannabe actresses that end up gruesomely tortured are just a tad bit too naive and dumb to be believable. I don't care how desperately you want to make it in the movie-industry, if your audition is with a perverted guy whom you can't see, talks through a voice-adapter and demands you to assume awkward positions ... you just get the hell out of there. And if you stay, don't be surprised when you end up dead in a spiked chest. They are exceptionally beautiful and sexy, however, and they're definitely not the worst actresses I've ever seen. Especially leading lady Elena Bouryka is truly ravishing and if she stars in a couple of more films, she might even become a good actress.