Alla ricerca del piacere

'Amuck' is a stylish and erotic Giallo thriller with a simple yet effective storyline that creates some genuinely suspenseful moments and brimming with sexual tension, all of which is bathed in a stunning yet hypnotic dreamlike atmosphere. The pace could have done with a little tightening, but there's enough on display for even the most avid fans of the genre.

The plot centres around Greta Franklin (Barbara Bouchet) who takes a new job as a secretary to novelist Richard Stuart (Farley Granger) on a secluded island with his wife Eleanora (Rosalba Neri). But Greta's really to investigate the disappearance of her friend who also worked for the couple and soon enough Greta finds herself the target of the couple's erotic desires and quite possibly her life's in danger.

The movie is a hell of a lot of fun with excellent direction and great writing both by Silvio Amadio who creates a compelling narrative and infuses the flick with fantastic energy especially in the tasteful seductive scenes without coming across as trashy as well as putting in plenty of red herrings and twists and turns to keep the momentum going. The movie isn't perfect by any means as there's a few dull moments here and there and the climax could have been a lot less predictable, but the fantastic cast more than makes up for the movie's short comings.

The performances are fantastic here with Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri providing engaging performances with excellent chemistry together and totally stealing the show. Farley Granger also provides a solid performance as the male lead, but he's totally overshadowed by the female leads.

Overall 'Amuck' is a steamy seductive thriller with plenty of style and entertainment and a firm highlight of the Giallo genre.

Holy Sheeit! Although plot wise this giallo is the old-school type where a bunch of folk in a huge mansion double cross and play mind games with each other before everything comes to a head (like The Third Eye or Libido), this one also gives everything a contemporary seventies vibe with wall-to-wall nudity from start to finish – and those getting naked are Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri!

Barbara Bouchet is the newly appointed secretary employed to transcribe a novel that smug writer Farley Granger is writing, and this involves shacking up at his huge mansion where he lives with his equally smug wife Rosalba Neri and their butler Umberto Raho. Seems that the police have been sniffing around for a while as Farley's last secretary Sally has gone missing, and Barbara doesn't seem too surprised to overhear this.

She is surprised by finding a hulking brute standing outside of her window and is given a chill pill by Rosalba, which leads to an eye- popping scene where a half-conscious Barbara writhes about naked while Rosalba also strips off and gets busy with her – all in slow motion and immaculately filmed. But don't knock one out yet fellas, there's much, much more where that came from!

The next day Barbara doesn't recall that Sapphic encounter but is clued into things right away when, during one of Rosalba's sexy parties, she puts on an adult version of Red Riding Hood ("That hood will be red from all that riding!" – someone exclaims!) and Barbara recognises the actress as her pal Sally! A brief and subtle flashback showing the two of them naked under a waterfall may or may not hint that they might have been more than friends, but I'm not sure.

There is actually some sort of mystery in amongst the boobs and arses. Barbara thinks someone has killed Sally, and coincidentally the audio tapes that Farley gives her to transcribe seem to detail the plot of the film she's in, and around this time she begins to suspect that she may be next. Who can she trust? Rosalba, who at one point jumps out of a swimming pool to have a quick puff on a cigarette? Umberto, whose motives are unclear? How about the big brute guy, who guts a live eel in front of Barbara for some reason? Could have done without that bit, which is something I seem to be saying more frequently.

It's not very violent and as you'd expect things kick off at the end a bit. There are twists right up until the last thirty seconds. The thing with Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri is that the two of them can actually act too – especially Rosalba, who can switch from sweet to evil to sexy at the drop of her knickers.

Barbara Bouchet's Boobs will return in Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture A Duckling!

This is one of the better-known giallo titles, if mainly for the presence of two of the more luscious "Euro-Cult" starlets – blonde Barbara Bouchet (whom I saw, still looking good, quite a few times at the Italian B-movie retrospective held during the 2004 Venice Film Festival!) and brunette Rosalba Neri – in perhaps their role of greatest significance; it goes without saying, then, that the film's piece de resistance is their celebrated slow-motion love scene (which actually occurs very early into the proceedings)! With a generic if definitely attention-grabbing moniker that has no direct bearing on the plot, the movie has been given many an alternate title – such as MURDER MANSION and HOT BED OF SEX, depending on which aspect the respective distributors chose to spotlight (for the record, the Italian original translates to IN THE PURSUIT OF PLEASURE); incidentally, the English-dubbed and regrettably panned-and-scanned VHS-sourced copy (as a result proving soft and occasionally battered) I watched boasted no credits apart from the names of the picture itself, Bouchet and leading man Farley Granger! By the way, the film marked the second of three giallos the American star appeared in back-to-back (I watched the others, which I quite liked, only a few days ago) but, though I felt he delivered surprisingly committed performances in all of them, once again this one afforded him the meatiest characterization. Having said that, it makes for a good transition between SOMETHING CREEPING IN THE DARK (1971) and SO SWEET, SO DEAD (1972) – featuring elements from each, specifically the old dark house setting and a high sleaze factor respectively! The premise is simple enough, with heroine Bouchet insinuating herself into the Venetian household of renowned novelist Granger and his much younger wife Neri, in order (unbeknownst to them) to probe into the disappearance of their secretary – her colleague/flatmate/lover!; it transpires that the outwardly respectable wealthy couple leads a libertine existence, given to stag parties fuelled by drug-taking and the exhibition of snuff movies: starting to involve a dim-witted brute in their exploits, one day things turn sour and it is the secretary who gets the short end of the stick (no pun intended)! The local Police are aware of Bouchet's undercover 'mission' but, soon enough, she realizes that her employer is too – since the plot of his new novel begins to parallel the events that had taken place in the house and, more importantly, indicate what her own fate will be (a blackmailing servant is similarly gotten out of the way)! To further muddle the waters, Granger pretends to fall for Bouchet (thus getting a piece of the action himself for once!) – in fact, two of the film's highlights involve the depictions (via flashback confessions) of the former secretary's death and the disposing of the body; another – this time around a recollection by Bouchet – is a skinny-dipping episode (which goes a bit beyond that) involving her and the murdered girl, and yet one memorable sequence is the climax (planned to be a reprise of the secretary's unlucky demise, the tables are smoothly turned on the perpetrators: Bouchet had met the couple's unwitting associate during a chance but cringe-inducing encounter where he, a fisherman, had nonchalantly flayed a live eel in front of her and she even treated his injured finger!). As was often the case with the "Euro-Cult" style, one of the lasting ingredients here is Teo Usuelli's score which is versatile enough to suit the film's many changes of mood.

A twisted tale of control and seduction involving the lovely Greta (Barbara Bouchet) who is hired by a perverted writer Richard with an even more kinky wife, Rosalba. Greta however has a reason for being there as her friend/former lover Sally who happened to be the previous secretary hired and who has disappeared. On the way to discovering what happened to Sally, Greta has various adventures from being drugged and seduced by the bisexual wife in a wonderfully surreal, slow motion scene to almost getting swallowed up by quicksand whilst being "hunted" in the marshes. Interesting movie to say the least.

While labeled as a grindhouse movie, there is not that much wrong with "Amuck". For it's time it's decently acted, filmed and edited. It also isn't shy on showing nudity which I leave to you to decide is that good or bad. However, as a thriller, other than it's OK premise and some creepy atmosphere greatly achieved by decent use of music, "Amuck" fails to be either thrilling or entertaining to make it a good movie. Problem is that our heroine is very bland and she is seldom in real danger. All in all, "Amuck" is passable, sure, and it stands out from sloppily made exploitation movies from those times, but other than that, "Amuck" is just something for genre fans. It's far from the worst thing to watch, but it's also far from something you just have to watch before you die. 6.5/10!