Amuck!

Amuck! is a giallo movie. Giallos are a type of stylistic, explicit murder mystery film usually from Italy. Giallos usually feature glamours women, sleazy men and generally, a cast of characters so suspicious that the mystery comes from the fact that any one of the characters could believably commit a murder. Realistically, most of the characters in any given giallo are probably guilty of a crime, just not the one this particular movie is concerned with. Amuck! has all of these staples of the genre. Because I happen to love giallo films, I enjoyed Amuck!. But can I objectively say it’s a good movie? No.

The lead character in Amuck! is Greta. At the start of the film, Greta begins work as a secretary for a famous writer named Richard. It is soon revealed that Greta’s interest in this position was due to the fact that the last secretary, Sally disappeared. Greta and Sally had known each other since childhood and were lovers. It is quickly revealed that Richard uses his riches and large, fancy house to have a lot of sex parties. These parties challenge Greta to maintain her cover while also allowing her to discover some clues about the disappearance of her missing friend. The top suspects are Richard, who acts so suspicious the whole movie, his wife Eleanora who Greta had a drugged sexual encounter with at the start of the film, a butler named Giovanni and the muscular but simple Rocco.

There’s a lot to critique about Amuck! Mostly, it’s super sleazy. Much as there’s a female protagonist and some lesbianism, this is not a feminist movie even remotely. It’s male gaze bullshit start to finish with lots of unnecessary nudity and sex and little character work.

On the other hand, I love giallos and 70’s European sleaze. I even give Amuck! a bit of a pass on how much it focused on how beautiful the lead actress was because, well, she is. How can I be mad at the movie for being distracted by how pretty Barbara Bouchet is when I am likewise distracted? Look, to my knowledge, there aren’t any actually “good” films whose lead character is a beautiful, well-dressed WLW investigating a murder. I’m so into that character description that I can enjoy it even in a film that’s uneven.

One of the creepiest scenes in the movie is one that’s actually meant to be sexy. It’s a flashback of Greta and Sally. The two women are frolicking naked under a waterfall. They kiss and then laugh about it. All of this is shot in slow motion. Seeing these women laugh in extreme slo-mo is extremely unsettling.

Admittedly, the film does run out of gas before the end. I really loved the first act and setting up of the characters and mystery. But as the film went on, some of my interest vanished. Amuck! doesn’t do anything new or surprising as a mystery film. It does existing cliches with competence and style. For a while, this was fine but it did get a little tiring near the end as there’s little mystery to the film. It’s pretty obvious as to whodunit. Frankly, Greta is sort of a bad detective because she’s pretty much told exactly who did it and how and this somehow isn’t the end of the movie.

Amuck! is objectively not great; it’s exploitative and doesn’t really work as a mystery because it’s too obvious. But I really enjoyed watching it. Amuck! gets a failing grade for writing and characters but gets an A in aesthetic and atmosphere. Sometimes, that’s enough. It’s not a movie for everyone but it was for me.

Overall rating: 6.0/10

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