Amuck! (1978)

Overrated and overhyped

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The stunningly beautiful Barbara Bouchet plays Greta, who gets a job working as a secretary at the large house of writer Farley Granger with the motive of solving the disappearance of her friend/lover Sally, who had previously been employed there. In my opinion this is borderline horror/giallo. There is no gloved maniac killing people off and the few deaths, when they do happen, aren't especially gruesome. In terms of horror we get a couple of raging thunderstorms, a very good night time disposal of a corpse and a rather bizarre incident of psychic powers. But that's about it. However, what this movie does have is lots of female nudity, including a couple of lesbian sex scenes. Like many Italian movies of this time it is beautifully filmed, the reflections of Venice in the water being particularly stunning. There's a fair amount of suspense, especially when Greta explores the house. Plus it has a great 70's euro groovy, jazzy, psychedelic score. This one won't tax the brain and like I said, may disappoint some giallo or horror fans, but it's visually it is highly enjoyable. No masterpiece but well worth seeing.

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!

Well, when you've got Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri in your movie it seems like a no-brainer to involve them in a lesbian scene, but maybe this film should have delayed it a little longer; it comes in the first 15 minutes, with next to no buildup, and despite both stars' phenomenal bodies, it falls a bit flat (another lesbian scene later in the film, between Bouchet and Patrizia Viotti, under a waterfall, works better). "Amuck!" does not have a great story to tell, but it finds an interesting way to tell it, using the (SPOILER, of course) "partially false flashback" technique that Alfred Hitchcock made famous in one of his lesser-seen movies, "Stage Fright", so it manages to surprise the viewer after all. It's not one of the greatest mysteries ever brought to the screen, and although it's set in Venice we don't get to see much of Venice, but it is quite watchable. **1/2 out of 4.

"Amuck" (Alla Ricerca del Piacere) tells the story of a young girl Greta (Barbara Bouchet) who goes to work as a secretary for an American writer, Richard Stewart (Farley Granger). Richard Stewart lives with his wife Eleanora (Rosalba Neri) in a palazzo in Venice. Greta wants to investigate what happened to her friend Sally, that disappeared leaving no traces, while working for Stewart. The police in Venice have no clues about what happened. The couple involve Greta in psychological and sexual games, but if Greta's suspicions are right she may be playing a very dangerous game."Alla Ricerca del Piacere" is thrilling and sensuous at the same time. The lesbian scenes played by Rosalba Neri and Barbara Bouchet are fantastic. Throughout the whole film an atmosphere of ambiguity prevails. Relations grow and seem to fade, threats hover around and nothing is sure. There are other characters in the film: A silent butler, always present when one least expects and who seems to have a thousand eyes; and a gigantic and menacing fisherman who is their neighbor and is always walking around.Sally, Greta's missing friend, (Patrizia Viotti) appears is some flashbacks. In one scene she is bathing under a waterfall with Greta. Both are naked (of course!), embracing themselves, kissing and laughing a lot. They seem very happy! In another flashback, Sally is dancing and seducing - a scene that reminded me of an old song that said; "don't play with me cause you're playing with fire". The scene is fabulous. Patrizia Viotti should have had her place among the giallo female stars, but some years later she disappeared from the screen.This film is a small gem, but it's hard to find it in DVD. My DVD is from "Eurovista - Digital Entertainment". The DVD seems to have been copied from a VHS tape - it is not what one would call a good quality DVD, but still it is watchable (if you care about the film and not about technicalities).A good, weird and suspenseful story plus very sexy actresses. And there's Venice too. Everything is allowed under the venetian skies. What more do you want? So don't look back and go for it.