Diagonaldi Very well executed

SincereFinest disgusting, overrated, pointless

Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

morrison-dylan-fan With the October Horror Challenge taking place on the IMDb Horror board,I decided to take a look at film maker Lamberto Bava's IMDb page,where I discovered that Bava had made a torturer horror which appears to have not come out on non-Italian DVD.Talking to a DVD seller,I was pleased to discover that he had recently tracked down the movie,which led to me getting ready to face the torture.The plot:Auditioning for the latest film from underground director Alex Scerba, aspiring actress Ginette Cazonni is taken by Scerba's charms,and ends up having a one night stand with him.Getting set to leave his place, Ginette finds an ear ring which looks just like the ones that her missing friend Marzia Foster used to wear.Fearing that something has happened to Foster, Cazonni starts to investigate and discovers that before she disappeared,Foster had auditioned for Scerba.Breaking into Scerba's house, Cazonni soon finds Foster and makes a torturous discovery.View on the film:Stabbing the torturer horror set pieces,co-writer/(along with Diego Cestino/Luciano Martino/Dardano Sacchetti/Michele Massimo Tarantini & Andrea Valentini) director Lamberto Bava and cinematographer Ugo Menegatti drizzles the sequence in stylish silver which allow for the blood to burst across the screen.Stepping out of the torture chamber,Bava clouds Ginette (played by a cute Elena Bouryka,who also appears naked) in moody low-lighting,which thanks to shooting the film on grainy digital,gives the title an unexpectedly icy Gothic atmosphere.Displaying a desire to stray away from the torture horror foundations,the writers attempt to give the film a Giallo bite in the search for the missing Foster,which sadly dries up due to the title having to go back to the gore.Whilst they are unable to torture the Giallo,the writers give the terror a sly satirical edge,as each of the actresses sees the gory acts as the demands of a "sadistic" director,as the torturer gets tortured.

BA_Harrison Aspiring actress Ginette (amazingly hot Russian stunner Elena Bouryka) attends an audition with underground director Alex Scerba (Simone Corrente), who wastes no time in getting his lovely young performer to strip for him. While on stage (on all fours, in her undies), Ginette discovers an earring identical to one worn by her friend Marzia, who has been missing for several days. After a one-night stand with Alex, Ginette accompanies the luck S.O.B. on a visit to his studio where she meets his mother, who is barking mad; while there, she finds a second matching earring on the ground. Suspecting that Alex has something to do with Marzia's disappearance, Ginette breaks into the house after dark to investigate. Meanwhile, a gloved maniac is auditioning three sexy babes for a special one-night-only performance—as the stars of a snuff video!The Torturer sees director Lamberto Bava cashing in on the success of gruelling gore-fests like Saw and Hostel, presenting 100 minutes of insanely hot women being stripped and mutilated at the hands of a sadistic maniac; before the opening credits have even finished, a whimpering victim has had her breast impaled on a hook and her leg roasted with a blowtorch, and the nastiness continues throughout, with other deviant delights on display including electrocution, flogging, and a nasty instance of nipple mutilation. It's exploitative, misogynistic trash devoid of artistic merit or anything resembling a decent plot, with characters who behave in an extremely illogical manner; but while no means a great film, it's far from Bava's worst (if you want to know the true meaning of torture, try a triple-bill of Devouring Waves, Graveyard Disturbance and The Ogre!). The director at least delivers what the title promises: lots and lots of mean-spirited violence. The fact that all of the victims are female, drop dead gorgeous and mostly naked is just the icing on the whole sleazy cake.

The_Void Good old Lamberto Bava - he may not have the film-making talent of his father, but you can always count on him to come up with something sleazy and violent! That's exactly what he's done here, as although The Torturer is pretty crap really, it's graphic and violent enough to please fans of this sort of stuff (people like me, then). In true Italian style, The Torturer would appear to be Lamberto's way of cashing on the successful snuff-themed films of late, which includes the likes of Saw. It would seem that he didn't really have time to come up with a viable plot in his rush to rip these successful films off, and the result is a more than somewhat lacking thriller. The film focuses on a casting director, who gets beautiful but dumb as two short planks girls down to his studio for their auditions. The auditions he gives aren't exactly orthodox, although the girls don't seem to mind much until he starts to brutally torture them! We then focus on one slightly smarter girl who gets wind of what is going on.The cinematography is glossy, but the film very much feels like it was made for television (except for all the blood and gore). This low quality feel goes on throughout the film, and while this same thing has often gone on to make several seventies films more of a blast; somehow the same just doesn't apply to most modern day films. The torture scenes are fairly good, however, and without doubt the most realistic thing about the film. Most of it feels fairly standard, but there is a sequence involving a nipple piercing that is bound to make some viewers squirm! Lamberto Bava seems to have an eye for the ladies, however, and the film isn't exactly short on buxom women for the slaughter! The actresses auditioned by the casting director are extremely nice to look at, and this bodes well with the ghoulish torture sequences! Most of the film is nothing to write home about (at all), but one thing that stood out for me was the music played while the torture is going on - Bava proves that heavy rock can sometimes be just right! Overall, I can't recommend this film really - but it's not too bad, and it's likely to entertain anyone with a will to track it down.

Vomitron_G After 14 (!) years of hanging around quietly on TV-sets and directing things unknown to the masses, Lamberto Bava finally shows some signs of life again by returning to familiar horror-territory. Yay! Only... it's damn sad to see it's only an unimaginative twitch and a pathetic attempt to ride the successful wave of torture-horror à la SAW and HOSTEL and the recent outbreak of fake-snuff related horror-flicks.Cinematographically speaking, Lamberto Bava sure tries to do his best with the very low budget this movie had. Seemingly shot on video, the movie shows us examples of original and even captivating framing (like the one shot were you see a dead girl's body laying in the mud on the foreground when Elena Bouryka is pulling electrical wires out of the ground in the background) and Bava also used a lot of contemporary editing-tricks to make it all look a bit more modern and slick. The lighting wasn't bad at all, really, but the few daylight scenes looked awful.Now as far as the story goes: It's retarded. They might have gotten away with a "plot" like this during the 70's, but having to sit through something like this these days, simply is an insult. The women are all such stupid and dumb characters you just want to hit them in the head with a blunt object yourself and get it over with. They're just too dumb to realize what they are getting themselves into, while any person with at least the braincells of a frog would realize that they should get themselves out of the situation they have gotten themselves mixed up in. I really scratched my head numerous times.The scriptwriters (including Bava) didn't even try on this one. They tried to disguise this torture-movie as some sort of Nu-Giallo movie, but they failed to insert any kind of red herring and you just know right away who's doing the killing. It can be only one person, really. And then there's this totally pointless and ridiculous sub-plot about 'traumatized mommy' babbling nonsense and a kiddies song with the lyrics "this door stays locked" (or something like that). It doesn't even lead to anything. And what about a hero who saves his girl, then walks by a female victim who's still alive and tied to a cross, simply ignores her, leaves her in pain, walks outside the building, closes the door, holds his girl and says "I'm glad it's all over now"??? I think "OMG" would be slightly appropriate... And what about the previous scene where our hero pulls his girl out of the water after she had drowned like 30 minutes ago... and then after 5 minutes of violin-music she opens her eyes again...??? Come on, please... I rolled my eyes on that one.I have to admit Elena Bouryka is quite pleasing on the eyes as the leading lady... even for a skinny blonde bimbo, ehrr... I mean: Lady. And she can even act a bit... but only when she does NOT speak and looks scared or is investigating things. Seriously, her high-pitched, squeaky (dubbed, probably...?) voice had me convinced she was born in the wrong era. She should have been an actress back when they were still making silent movies... Well, yeah, I'm being a bit harsh on the lady probably. She's still young and I'd like to hear her talk once with her real voice (preferably with a sexy Italian accent), instead of this dubbed one. The dubbing was quite good in this film, actually. But really, it should be in this day and age.So were the several gruesome and bloody make-up effects. Good and numerous enough to please any gore-hound or torture-fan. And that brings us to the only point this movie has to make: coming up with as many inventive ways to torture attractive women to death and try to get them all to take their clothes off in front of the camera. And that's all this movie is about. It's pretty sick, yes. It has a lot of beautiful women showing skin, yes. I even liked it for that. But it's a very bad film, children.