Amuck! is a great title, but this is a movie that has a ton of great other titles –Alla ricerca del piacere (In Pursuit of Pleasure),Maniac Mansion, Leather and Whips and Hot Bed of Sex were also used and the working titles were Replica de un delitto (Repetition of a Crime) and Il passo dell'assassino(Footsteps of the Killer). No matter what name you give it, this is one dark little film.

Greta (Barbara Bouchet, who next to Edwige Fenech could be considered the queen of the giallo thanks to turns in Don't Torture a Duckling and The Red Queen Kills Seven Times ) is an American abroad, working as the secretary to Richard Stuart (Farley Granger, So Sweet, So Dead and What Have They Done to Your Daughters?).

Along with his wife Eleanora (Rosalba Neri, Lady Frankenstein),the writer lives in comfort on his own island. Their past secretary, Sally, disappeared without a trace. However, Richard and Eleanora don't know Greta's reason for joining them — the missing girl was her lover, a fact we find out via a flashback lovemaking scene that is artful, if stilted, awkward and the way that men would assume women would couple (staring at one another and attempting to kiss, then going to sleep). Indeed, it feels like the fever addled wet dream of a maniac, which pretty much sums up what giallo can be at times.

The more Greta gets close, the more sex, drugs and violence is unearthed. The Stuarts often hold sex parties in their palatial home. Oh yeah — Eleanora has ESP, seeing Great's death, screaming about it while in a fit of prophecy.

Indeed, death begins to follow our heroine. The next day, a hunting trip turns into a brush with quicksand, that most evil of all movie doom.

Richard reveals that Eleanora fascinates him because of her duplicitous nature and he is falling in love with Greta because of how honest she is. He then reveals the accident that claimed Sally's life in a flashback: Eleanora watches Rocco through her hunting scope before inviting him to a rendezvous with her and Sally. They both dance for him in a series of druggy jump cuts — perhaps the film's most assured scene. After making love to Eleanora, the fisherman kisses Sally tenderly before losing control, which is shown by how the film speeds up, like the Keystone Kops. He ends up choking Sally to death while Eleanora watches, powerless to stop him.

Richard and Greta end up making love later that night during a storm. Eleanora watches through the doorway before looking directly at the camera, as if she is sad yet not surprised.

Gorgeous young American secretary Greta (Barbara Bouchet) accepts a job with successful and charismatic author Richard Stuart (Farley Granger) in order to find out what has happened to her close friend Sally (Patrizia Viotti),who has mysteriously disappeared while in the writer's employ; to get to the truth, Greta must become a participant in the hedonistic lifestyle enjoyed by Richard and his beautiful wife Eleanora (Rosalba Neri) and ultimately risk her life in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

With stars as stunning as Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri, neither of whom mind shedding their clothes when called upon, a strong story wouldn't be much of a priority to many, but to his credit, writer/director Silvio Amadio still bothers to weave a pretty good tale amidst all of his film's eroticism and debauchery, creating a neat little mystery that offers up several well executed scenes of suspense, excellent location work in the waterways of Venice and the surrounding marshlands, an atmospheric score (which utilises a theremin to add extra eeriness),and just a smidgen of gore.

Nail-biting highlights include Greta's search of the Stuarts' cellar and a duck hunt that goes horribly wrong for our heroine, but the most memorable moment for me (as I imagine it will be for most men) has got to be Bouchet and Neri's amazingly hot, slow-motion, lesbian sex scene, which is more than worthy of a rewind or two.

Basically, you only require two main reasons to make this "Amuck!" priority viewing, namely the starring of both female leads Bouchet and Neri, so all the cool story lines, nifty camera-work and bizarre sense of humor are just welcome bonuses. But let's focus on the sexuality aspects some more, first! The very first lesbian sequence involving both aforementioned beauties is so HOT that it nearly burnt holes in the screen of the TV. It's redundant eroticism, but extremely elegant and pictured quite tastefully. Bizarre sexual tendencies and decadence are the most prominent themes in this early 70's giallo (at least, I assume it qualifies as a giallo) and fans that like to see explicit sleaze combined with gory murders will be sorely disappointed since there isn't any of that. Young Greta travels to Venice to work as a secretary for the famous novelist Richard Stuart but her main mission is to personally investigate what happened to her vanished lesbian lover Sally. She was previously employed by Richard and Greta suspects that she had become too much of a burden in the sex-parties that involve all of the writer's acquaintances. Richard knows what Greta is looking for and messes with her mind by making the story of his new book suspiciously sound like Sally's presumable fate. The story is compelling enough to keep you interested, but some sequences, like the swamp-hunting, feel a bit overlong and tedious. A bit of gore would have been nice too, though. Still, this is a very enchanting film, professionally directed by Silvio Amadio and benefiting a great deal from the charisma of its two lead lead actresses.