Saturday, October 20, 2018

Torso – The Evelyn Dick Story (Canada, 2002)

So, anyway, we were invited over to a friend's place to watch a flick entitled Torso. We went expecting the legendary Italian giallo from 1973, starring the great Suzy Kendall and directed by multi-genre specialist Sergio Martino — trailer directly below — but, no: instead, we were served some Canadian TV movie from 2002 entitled Torso - The Evelyn Dick Story. Our friend has a lot to make up for.
Trailer to
Sergio Martino's Torso (1973):

Not that we knew this Torso here to be a TV movie; indeed, we knew nothing about the movie at all. But what is it about so many TV movies, even well-made ones, that makes them feel like a TV movie even if you don't know it's one? Despite the beautiful classic cars and period clothing, enough of both that a budget must have been present, Torso — The Evelyn Dick Story still felt, looked, smelt like a Movie of the Week. Not that we don't like Movies of the Week; we just tend to like them a bit older, more in the direction of tacky TV GILF like Moon of the Wolf (1972 / full movie) or Bad Ronald (1974 / trailer) or Killdozer! (1974 / trailer) or Wes Craven's hilariously bad Invitation to Hell (1984 / great scene). Torso — The Evelyn Dick Story is just a tad too "good" to truly be our cup of tea.
Trailer to
Torso - The Evelyn Dick Story:
Outside of Canada, the story of Evelyn Dick is pretty much unknown; in terms of true-crime murders, hers are relatively mundane in comparison to, dunno, the Moors Murderers or Dorothea Puente or even Caril Ann Fugate. Nevertheless: a husband murdered and reduced to a torso found in the woods by kids, a dead baby encased in cement in a suitcase, and a by-the-hour goodtime girl who slept with as many men as most men wish they had slept with women — no wonder the case was such a scandal back in '46-47, when Evelyn Dick sat at the dock. In the end, after a retrial, she was found not guilty of the murder of her husband, John Dick, but went to jail for the murder her baby son….
The real Evelyn Dick
As a TV docudrama of the case, Torso — The Evelyn Dick Story is worse than some and better than most. That isn't to say that it isn't well made and interesting, it's just that it is also annoying superficial at times and, as perhaps appropriate to the case, leaves as many questions open as it does semi-answer others. And not just the question of who actually murdered John Dick, a question that [officially, at least] has never truly been answered. In Torso, however, doubt is definitely cast upon the guilt of Evelyn, whether for the murder of her husband or child, as either instigator or perpetrator. In fact, if we are to believe the tale as told in the movie, she was probably innocent of the death she was convicted of: that of her baby son.
As directed by the well-employed TV director Alex Chapple, Torso — The Evelyn Dick Story adds a sheen of neo-noir for much of the film, complete with the hardnosed inspector, Inspector Wood (Callum Keith Rennie), a beautiful but [possibly] heartless killer, Evelyn Dick (Kathleen Robertson), and cheap blasts of stereotypical saxophone music in the background. (The saxophone is such a cliché that it almost induces involuntary laughter whenever it toots.) Wood stays hard-nosed throughout the movie, but Evelyn proves to move beyond her cigarette-enveloped face to become something more than just some fem fatale.
To what extent the movie follows the book it is based on — the last book written by Marjorie Freeman Campbell (1896-1975), likewise entitled Torso – The Evelyn Dick Story — we know not, but as the movie unfolds one definitely gets the impression that Evelyn Dick paid for either the crimes of others, or was the lone scapegoat for crimes committed in cohorts. (The "truth", needless to say, will never be known.) As the titular Evelyn Dick, the Canadian actress Kathleen Robertson (of Nowhere [1997 / trailer], Psycho Beach Party [2000 / trailer] and I Woke Up Early the Day I Died [1998 / opening scene]) is vacuous in a way that is almost aggravating, but on the other hand, as the film progresses her very emptiness does well at reflecting a damaged, slightly brainless girl-woman under the manipulative thumb of parents from hell.
In the end, however, Evelyn remains a cypher. If, indeed, her parents were so manipulatively evil; and if, indeed, she experienced the molestations of her father; and if, indeed, her parents killed her child son unbeknownst to herself; and if, indeed, she so loved her daughter; and if, indeed, her parents literally frame her for the death of her son, what sense loyalty, what sense of debt, what extent of manipulation could be so strong as to make Evelyn watch silently as her mother, Alexandra MacLean (an excellently duplicitous Brenda Fricker), walk free and easy out of the courthouse with Evelyn's daughter, Heather Dick (Hannah Lochner of Dawn of the Dead [2004 / trailer]), without finally opening her mouth? 
And it is the discovery of the cement-encased dead son that outs Inspector Wood as possibly a man more interested in his record of success than in uncovering the truth, for the film makes it clear that although all the evidence found during the second search of the house was known not to have been there during the first search — ergo: it was planted, most likely by the parents — he never pursues the "why" and simply lets it paint Evelyn into the corner. Once again, what matters is not that justice gets served correctly, just that it gets served.
Now, decades after the fact, whether or not justice got served or shortchanged is probably irrelevant. And Evelyn, to some extent, was undoubtedly involved in her husband's death. But like all murders, you can take the "facts" and spin them in many different ways, especially so many years after the fact. (Cf.: Alex Jones, flat-worlders, Kavanaugh, and just about any conspiracy theorist you meet.) The spin of Torso - The Evelyn Dick Story is basically that not everyone who should have paid, did. But the movie fails to cast any light upon Evelyn's reasons for her action(s) or inaction(s), from the why of the marriage to the why of her silence.
Torso — The Evelyn Dick Story, a good-looking, tightly acted TV movie that feels like the TV movie it is, displays a convincing if clean sense of time and place, and is populated by a convincing cast with too little to do. Hardly the worst thing you can watch when bored, but a far cry from being exceptional, either as a conveyor of history or as a cinematic experience. You can watch this one with your grandparents.
John Dick (1906–46)
Like Lizzie Borden (19 July 1860 – 1 June 1927) in the US, Evelyn Dick was immortalized in verse in Canada, where children were once wont to sing:
You cut off his legs...
You cut off his arms...
You cut off his head...
How could you Mrs Dick?
How could you Mrs Dick?
Undoubtedly, were the crime one of today, the verse would instead surely be something like:
You cut off his legs...
You cut off his arms...
You cut off his head...
Tell us, Mrs Dick,
Why didn't you cut off his prick?

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