Day Six.

While searching my shelves for another title to watch, my eyes were drawn to the angelic form of Barbara Bouchet on my bootleg cover of Silvio Amadio's 1972 flick Amuck.

After her friend disappeared while in the service of eccentric writer Richard Stuart (Farley Granger), Greta (Barbara Bouchet) arrives at his island villa to investigate.

It was fortuitous that I chose this one, as it was the last on my watch list of Bouchet's ventures into the gialli. She was, of course, as beautiful and vibrant as ever, and along with her co-stars Rosalba Neri and Patricia Viotti, I have to argue there was never a more intoxicating era than seventies Italian genre film.

The incomparable Barbara Bouchet as Greta in Amuck. 

As for the movie, it didn't take much to reel me in. It had your familiar murder mystery plot, the striking locale (in this case Venice) and lots and lots of skin. A prolonged slow motion sequence between Neri & Bouchet early on sure put the UK release title Hot Bed of Sex into perspective. Although, as the film goes along, the sex became a bit more salacious than I tend to enjoy.

As with most gialli, the music by Teo Usuelli was fucking stellar. I couldn't even start the movie until I'd jammed out a bit to the song that played during the main menu screen. There's also a dance party sequence involving Viotti that reminded me of the one from Torso.

Unfortunately, as was common in Italian cinema at the time, there's a lot of onscreen animal deaths. I mean, I'd like to think that all of those birds that were being shot out of the sky weren't real, but I wouldn't bet on it. You know what else I noticed? When was the last time you saw someone fall into quicksand in a movie? Nobody does that anymore and I think filmmakers should totally bring that back.

Amuck was titillating to a point, and there were some effective twists and turns, but I wouldn't put it up against some of Bouchet's other horror films like Don't Torture A Duckling and The Lady In Red Kills Seven Times. If you are a completist like me though, I'd would definitely track it down.