TORSO (with David Cotner)
- Tuesday, Sep 5, 2023, 7:30pm
50th anniversary screening of Sergio Martino's classic work of towering terror, presented by David Cotner, author of the book A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (1973).
A History of Violence (1973) is a memoir of the human race. Its concept is simple: take the date in 1973 on which a violent film was first screened – and go beyond the film to see the world that exists outside the theatre. It’s a book that realizes that the line between life and cinema is as much a horizon as it is a terminator. A History of Violence (1973) takes you across that horizon to places in time you never even imagined existed. Because bombs don’t explode in only one direction.
From the end of the ‘70s giallo boom, TORSO finds director Sergio Martino reveling in the genre’s time-honored traditions while also laying groundwork for the modern slasher. It delivers copious violence, sleaze and one of the tensest cat-and-mouse games ever committed to celluloid.
A maniac prowls the streets of Perugia, targeting picturesque university students. Alarmed at the plummeting life expectancy of the student body, Jane (Suzy Kendall) and her friends elope to a secluded country villa to discover that, far from having left the terror behind, they’ve brought it with them…
David Cotner is a culture critic, composer, and conceptual artist. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. Weekly, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere. He lives in and around the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area.
David will also be appearing at the inimitable Apparition Books in downtown Renton on Friday, September 1st at 7pm for An Evening of Violence with David Cotner: Author Presentation & Book Signing and at Scarecrow Video on Saturday, September 2nd from 1-3pm.