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Tuesday, October 4, 2011
BD impressions: Torso
11:09 PM / BD Impressions / 
63 Comments
The film: I've always thought TORSO was the missing link between the giallo and the later US slasher movie movement, far more so than the usually cited BAY OF BLOOD. (Mikel J. Koven makes a similar argument in his book LA DOLCE MORTE, but I noticed the connection first, dagnabbit! :D) It's unusual among gialli in that it focuses on an all-girl group of college students (most gialli tend to be about mixed sex groups of adults in their late 20s or 30s) and, while it features a whodunit of sorts, it's half-hearted to the point of not mattering. It's therefore worth seeing for its status as a sort of bridge between two distinct filmic movements, and for the superb final 25 minutes - an almost dialogue-free game of cat and mouse in which the Final Girl (told you it was reminiscent of US slashers) is trapped inside an isolated country villa with the killer, who doesn't realise there's someone still alive in the house.
It's a shame the rest of the film doesn't live up to the quality of that final act. I've never had as much time for Sergio Martino as some giallo fans, but I'll concede that he did do some very nice work with the giallo/ROSEMARY'S BABY rip-off hybrid ALL THE COLOURS OF THE DARK. Quite a few people consider TORSO his best effort, and I think there's an argument to be made that the aforementioned climax is the best thing he's ever directed, but the rest of the film is a fairly bland plod through the usual clichés, with a grubbier, less refined visual style than his earlier gialli. Suzy Kendall (perhaps best known as Tony Musante's love interest in the vastly superior THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE) does reasonably well as the fairly bland heroine, and the late Tina Aumont looks resplendent (it's those big smoky eyes that do it for me), but beyond that there's not a massive amount to recommend. You'll likely guess the killer's identity in his first scene, despite the numerous red herrings Martino and co-writer (and giallo legend) Ernesto Gastaldi throw our way. It ultmately all just feels a bit tired, only truly coming alive for that outstanding third act. 5/10
Image quality: The good news: it looks much, much better than THE CAT O' NINE TAILS... though that really wouldn't be difficult.
The bad news: it's derived from yet another seriously compromised CRT-based telecine from Italian post house LVR.
One of the claims most frequently repeated by the anti-screenshot contingent is that screenshots don't accurately represent viewing the film in motion, and there is a degree of truth in this, although it has been twisted and blown out of proportion by certain individuals who don't seem to properly understand how the process works. Yes, it's true that you can come across captures that feature additional processing and are therefore unrepresentative of the disc (such as those found on a certain prolific image comparison site that has yet to amend its practices despite having been notified about the problem several times) but for the most part the captures the various review sites and individual users upload are accurate reproductions of individual frames on the discs in question. However, while you can tell a lot about a disc's look from an individual capture in terms of colour, brightness and overall detail, it's much harder to discern the overall texture of the movie, particularly those shot on film, given that the entire image is made up of individual grain particles that change on a per-frame basis.
Why is all this relevant? Because, when I came across captures of this disc in the review at Rock! Shock! Pop! I was pleasantly surprised. The same machine noise that afflicts all LVR's CRT jobs (even the better ones, like THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE and DEEP RED) seemed to be present and correct, and a number of shots had that familiar smeary look, but others looked quite impressive and film-like. I bought the disc primarily on the strength of those captures, only to be a little let down when I saw it in motion.
Don't misunderstand me: there's nothing wrong with Rock! Shock! Pop!'s captures. They're an accurate representation of what's on the disc. The trouble is, what they don't reveal is that a heavy pass of noise reduction has rendered the grain that's visible in the captures largely static when played back. I've no idea at what point this happened (the CAT O' NINE TAILS debacle suggests that, at least on some titles, LVR are actually performing DNR at the telecine stage) or whether the responsibility lies with LVR or Blue Underground, but either way the result is not particularly filmic, and introduces some nasty artefacting in certain scenes: the forest murder, shot day-for-night (and correctly tinted here, unlike on the German X-Rated Kult DVD release), is a particularly strong offender. Close-up shots with little movement in them generally fare quite well, with a decent amount of genuine detail coming through, but movement and especially wider shots reveal a lack of fine detail and a generally mushy appearance that I don't think can be blamed on the original photography.
I suppose on the whole it's a fairly acceptable presentation of materials that likely didn't look too stunning to begin with, but it's a problematic release all the same. Now that we've identified the company responsible for these transfers (and the less than state-of-the-art equipment they're using), we at least have something approaching an explanation for why so many of these titles have such a weird look. Perhaps, just perhaps, now's the time to admit that there's a problem and take steps to correct it. 6/10
Note: The BD contains both an export version and a slightly longer Italian cut of the film, presented as two separate encodes without using seamless branching. Barring the first image, the captures below are all derived from the Italian cut. There's no appreciable difference in image quality between the two versions, both of which are derived from the same scan.
Torso
label: Blue Underground; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.66:1
63 Comments
Kentai:
Yeah, the TORSO title overlay is just bizarre. To be honest I don't really see the logic in including two separate cuts of the film. I can understand it with DEEP RED, where there are major differences between the two versions, but in the case of TORSO, the export version is only a couple of minutes shorter than its Italian counterpart. I'm not objecting to its inclusion - it just seems slightly superfluous.
Marc:
There are several "right" ways to do it, and to be honest I'm at a loss to explain how it is that the other site I mention is managing to get it wrong. Personally I use a program called DGAVCIndex, but there are plenty of other methods, such as creating an AVISynth script and loading it in VirtualDub (probably more trouble than it's worth given the proliferation of other, less complex methods), or simply loading the movie into any software player that supports 1:1 scaling and using the PrintScreen function (e.g. VLC Media Player or Media Player Classic Home Cinema HD).
(Posted on Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:21 PM)
Sundance:
Ah yes, I forgot to mention that. I've used ATI cards exclusively for several years now (since the demise of 3Dfx actually - I never did get round to picking up an nVidia card, though I'm considering doing so for my next purchase) and their automatic video "enhancement" tools are a pain. At least nowadays you can disable most of that stuff in the control panel - it used to be the you had to use registry hacks to get rid of the edge enhancement and noise reduction. I haven't used Windows XP for ages so I've no idea whether it's still the case, but there was a point where ATI's Vista control panel was in much better shape than its XP equivalent, with a whole bunch of video controls only accessible in Vista. If memory serves, the TRDenoise registry entry was needed to disable an additional NR pass that only affected interlaced content.
None of this should matter if you're using DGAVCIndex, but it will definitely be relevant if using a player like VLC or Media Player Classic to take captures.
(Posted on Saturday, October 15, 2011 at 8:08 PM)
Someone (I think it might have been Kentai, but I could be remembering this wrong) did email Blue Underground when THE STENDHAL SYNDROME was released and its odd look raised some eyebrows, but their response was very much of the "it's an old film so it looks grainy" variety.
(Posted on Monday, October 17, 2011 at 7:50 PM)
Adam:
Great to have you commenting here. I've long considered you to be one a handful of reviewers (along with a few others like Geoff Dearth at the Digital Fix) who really know what they're talking about. Most of the time, anyway - I do remember your 5-star review of DJANGO :D ...but I'm hardly one to talk as there's also my slightly perplexed but overall very positive 8/10 review of THE STENDHAL SYNDROME.
To be honest I'm not surprised by your tales of gangster-like behaviour, threatening to withhold review copies and so on. I get the impression that the smaller labels rightly or wrongly feel that the reviews can make or break a release and are desperate to do whatever they possibly can to ensure good publicity. The larger labels presumably feel they can shrug off negative reviews - look at the way Universal keeps churning out swill AND sending out sample discs - but there are only so many reviewers that are going to cover a title like TORSO or ZOMBIE, so negative coverage from even one site is probably a major issue to them. Not that that justifies making threats, but it probably goes some way towards explaining why they often seem so protective of their output.
Phil:
Not noticing a bit of missing footage or a mixing or grading error are the sorts of things that keep me awake at night too. I've overlooked plenty and I think the only thing a reviewer can really do in that situation is to issue a correction as quickly as possible.
I also have some sympathy for people who just want to write about films suddenly being expected to be tech experts, but I always feel that if you don't understand of something then it's better not to make out you're an expect on it, as certain reviewers I'm not going to name repeatedly do. I've always felt that the best anyone can do is listen to the people who DO know what they're talking about (guys like Torsten Kaiser, for example) and avoid making the same mistakes after they've been pointed out.
General points:
I think it's great that people are slowly but surely waking up to the realisation that something is seriously wrong with these Italian releases (I've noticed the issue gaining some traction on the AVS Forum too). For a long time it did feel like I was lone voice of dissent and consequently the one who inevitably got it in the neck from the usual suspects (though I hasten to point out that Kentai deserves a massive amount of credit for persevering with this issue and continuing to report on his blog, in great detail, on dodgy discs). Multiple people pointing out the same problems means that, on a personal level, it lightens the load a bit, but also makes it more likely that something will be done. Suddenly I don't feel quite so much like a lone crackpot! :D
(Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 11:05 PM)
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1. Kentai said:
Can't argue a word of this one, Michael. The final third is really amazing stuff, and the rest - while engaging enough to keep me interested - simply doesn't stack up in comparison. I'll admit that I think Martino's MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD is a more amusing film, though it actually suffers from a weak first act as well now that I think of it.
What really vexes me is that BU/LVR went out of their way to include the "Carnal Violence" export cut, and then overlaid a brand new (TORSO) title on the print anyway! They even simulated the print's gate-weave to try and make it look more organic... why bother? It's a shame they didn't include that scummy vintage print they took the US titles from in its entirety, now that would have been a fun alternate print to watch!
The X-Rated release also lacks English subtitles during the bits that are only presented in Italian, on top of not having the color timing right on a lengthy sequence and replacing the title with an absolutely ghastly video generated one. It's really a pretty frustrating release, but at least it wasn't missing footage, which is more than I can say for the old Anchor Bay release. I think the AB release "created" another closure of the camera shutter to slide in their original title, but I've never seen it in motion, so I'm not positive.
(Posted on Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 12:16 AM)