THE TORTURER

Young Ginette goes to the audition to become the lead actress in the next film by an acclaimed and mysterious director. The girl meets the director in person and a morbid sexual attraction immediately sparks between them. Meanwhile, other girls go to the audition in the eerie theater adjacent to the director's house, but they are kidnapped and tortured by a mysterious individual with a hidden face who pretends to be the director. After another friend of Ginette also disappears after attending the audition, the protagonist will try to uncover the mystery behind the intricate story. Fourteen years have passed since Lamberto Bava's last foray into the genre that made him famous (his last thriller/horror film was "Body Puzzle" in 1992), and after several fantasy "family" works destined solely for television programming, the legendary Bava Jr. returns with a thriller full of gore, distributed solely in the home video market. However, after such anticipation, one would have expected to see a decent or at least a fun splatter pastiche like those made twenty years ago. But unfortunately, the 1980s are now only a memory for Italian genre cinema, and "The Torturer" is a testament to this, because behind this operation one can glimpse a general commitment completely nullified by the total lack of available means. Despite the fact that the horror genre has made a comeback worldwide and has become one of the most profitable in commercial terms, in our country producers persist in not trusting it, preferring tried-and-true Christmas comedies with sure appeal or presumptuous works that have the sole aim of winning a festival; naturally, then, if willing artisans attempt the tortuous path of zero-budget genre cinema, the results are not the best. Sergio Stivaletti tried a little over a year ago with "I tre volti del terrore," a work that was only partially successful, and Ruggero Deodato is trying again with an upcoming "cannibal movie." "The Torturer," however, it must be said, really represents the worst that a genre film can offer us: starting from the unoriginal story of the faithful Dardano Sacchetti and the shaky and confusing screenplay written by six hands (including Bava), to the cheap special effects and the questionable cast. But let's proceed in order. The film tells a story that differs little from the countless Italian productions of the already mentioned 1980s (and this would not really be a defect for the nostalgic), but the whole thing is filled with annoying clichés, sometimes gratuitous, sometimes clumsy: so we go from the beautiful protagonist very generous in showing us her charms, to the childhood trauma with its unsettling music (this time I would say ridiculous), to the scalding revelations linked to the family past. Naturally, everything is updated to our times: the young victims of the Torturer are dressed up as showgirls, among the tortures there is a nipple piercing torn off (the piercing is flaunted on several occasions in different variants, almost in a form of modern fetishism) and the falsified voice of the Torturer resembles terribly that of the Enigmista in "Saw." The imaginative and gruesome tortures are rather poorly executed with explicit prosthetics and mannequins, and the low budget certainly cannot justify it, given many low-budget works that our cinema has given us in the past, characterized by special effects of all respect. The cast is composed of actors from the disastrous television landscape, including the protagonist played by Elena Bouryka (seen in the Rai programs "Blablabla" and "Stracult") and the director played by Simone Corrente ("Distretto di polizia"), but among them one can also recognize Carla Cassola, known for some of Lucio Fulci's last films ("La casa nel tempo" and "Demonia"). One can only hope that Lamberto Bava with his next thriller (already ready and of imminent distribution) manages to make something at least decent or fun, because with "The Torturer" he has probably hit rock bottom of his (in any case not excellent) career.